Remember Mary Chapin Carpenter? Mary is your hard-knock, single aunt, the one who is all, “You look like you need a mojito and a trip to the shooting range,” which are probably the last two things on earth you really need, but somehow it works. She’s fiercely political, feminist, whip-smart. She has a generous, pure authenticity, the kind that died for most people somewhere in the 90s. A couple of years ago, Mary almost died of a pulmonary embolism, and then she lost her father, and then she got divorced, and then she picked up her guitar again because she was fifty-fucking-whatever and life goes on.
I grew up with her music, with Mary telling it like it is–but gently, at nice, uncomplicated dinner parties, the kind with pasta and unintentionally mismatched placemats. I’m going to go ahead and argue that everything that went wrong in our lives can be traced back to that foolish moment where we decided we were too cool for adult contemporary country music.
Therefore, I submit: there is no moment in your life so painful that it cannot be made more bearable by a Mary Chapin Carpenter song.
*
You’re 22 and pulling out of the driveway with a backseat full of trail mix, absolutely convinced that something is going to change–like change is imminent, it’s out there, you’re driving towards it. Somewhere just off the highway in South Dakota. You’ve been sleeping in a single bed shaded by the green hills of Vermont for the past four years. You grew up by the ocean. Seven years from now you’ll live alone for the first time, in an apartment where actual mushrooms protrude from your bathroom ceiling when your upstairs neighbours use the shower, and you will love it and it will feel nothing like home. Mary knows this.
You need: Almost Home (Party Doll and Other Favorites, 1999)
I’m not running, I’m not hiding, I’m not reaching, I’m just resting in the arms of the great wide open.
*
Even if you didn’t get married at age 21 to a man who wants to keep you down, this is for those days when you worry every tiny choice you didn’t even realize you were making has suddenly locked you to a life you’re really not sure about. The woman in this song leaves her husband at 36 and gets a minimum-wage job in the typing pool (!), and it’s the most awesome act of strength. Why has no one made this into a fabulously empowering movie?
You need: He Thinks He’ll Keep Her (Come On Come On, 1992)
Everything is so benign, safest place you’ll ever find–God forbid you change your mind.
*
Do you remember those nights when your friends all said, “Let’s go dancing!” and you thought, when in the entire history of the world has anyone ever really wanted to go dancing? And you ended up face-down on the couch, trying to warm up the half bottle of fridge-chilled red wine by sticking it in your oven? That’s when you listen to this song. It’s important to remember that the world is not always your friend, but you can will it to submit. Also, Mary Chapin Carpenter is a badass–she actually PURRS–and somehow makes the lyric “Hot Dog, I feel lucky tonight” sound irrepressibly cool.
You need: I Feel Lucky (Come On Come On, 1992)
Dwight Yoakam’s in the corner, trying to catch my eye. Lyle Lovett’s right beside me with his hand upon my thigh.
*
Every moment is a decision. Breathing in is a decision, sometimes a very difficult decision, and then you do it, and it feels like a little miracle in your chest. Mary Chapin Carpenter was light-years ahead of the radical vulnerability movement. “Show the world a little light,” she croons. Oh, do.
You need: The Hard Way (Come On Come On, 1992)
We’ve got two lives: one we’re given, and the other one we make.
(Bonus: AMAZING BADASS COUNTRY WOMEN AND SEQUINS in this video.)
*
Before a date. After a date. During a date. While you’re getting ready for a date and you perform a debilitatingly awkward striptease in your mirror to get revved up. Fuck, any other time works too. This is a great song. Mary gets low and sultry here. She’s been hurt before. Maybe the one person she thought would keep her safe decided to head for the hills and then maybe she went dark, built a little house made of yoga classes and all the fragments of all the silly times she said “yes,” and then maybe years passed and one day she realized how much she missed the feeling of removing her heart from its cave and just sort of looking at it, gutted and fish-red and alive. Maybe.
This is the soundtrack for setting up your first OKCupid profile.
You need: Shut Up and Kiss Me (Stones in the Road, 1994)
Love’s as much the symptom, darlin’, as the cure.
*
A hideous Entertainment Weekly profile from 1994 (“Country’s favorite folkie examines the sorrows of single life on her latest album”) names Mary “a spokes-singer for the thirtysomething single woman.” Mmmkay. The piece verbally bullies her into tragedy, at one point calling her a “postmodern spinster” (SHE WAS 36 AT THE TIME) for the loneliness she weaves through her music, and you can feel her bucking against this narrative with everything she’s got. “I don’t want to grow old by myself, but I also believe that if it’s going to happen, it will. I can’t force it,” she says, and the writer clucks back in pity. Mary Chapin Carpenter could crush you like a bug, but she has a heart of gold. Mary Chapin Carpenter wants you to know that you are not alone. Mary Chapin Carpenter says sure, maybe you’re no longer 24 and life hasn’t quite played out the way you imagined it would, and sure, maybe there are times you are deprived of some essential functioning, feel the love you have to give against you like a ghost, but Mary Chapin Carpenter will never let you settle for anything less than you deserve.
You need: Passionate Kisses (Come On Come On, 1992)
Shout it out to the night: “Give me what I deserve, cause it’s my right.”
(This is actually a Lucinda Williams cover, but Mary did it harder and better. Sorry.)
Tags: clucking in pity, don’t you dare pity me entertainment weekly, growing old by yourself, mary chapin carpenter, meghan nesmith, music, nicole endorses this message
<3333 MCC.
Come On Come On is a perfect album. I need to re-buy it.
Oh my. That “I Feel Lucky” video took me back to my high school days watching too much GAC. Or, is there such a thing as too much GAC?
I love Come On Come On (and everything is stated so well above), and State of the Heart is excellent too. I heard “Never Had It So Good” right after my summer crush got together with his ex-girlfriend, and it just resonated with me. “This Shirt” is also a good way to get me teary. The album has a little more twang than her later stuff, but it still evokes so many strong and mostly good feelings. I lost track of a lot of her music after Stones in the Road, so now is a good time to catch up again. Thank you for this article!
Yessssss. “This Shirt” was next on my list!
She sounds like an amazing lady whose music I really need to check out, because all I associate her with is Passionate Kisses, which is seriously just. UGH. THE WORST. I haven’t even heard it in years, and yet now just from seeing her name appear in my Feedly, it’s playing in my head and irritating the fuck out of me. God, that song. I HATE IT.
She sounds like super cool shit, though. Spinster rocker ladies FTW.
You definitely need to give her another try. I’ve been a big Chapin fan for over 20 years, but I too HATE that fn song. Luckily, she did not write that song. Lol.
It’s heartening when pop music (OK, country pop) chances across true musical gems like Mary Chapin Carpenter and you realize the whole world gets the opportunity to listen to greatness. And it’s just as disheartening when the machine is done chewing on it and spits it back out so it can try some of that new Taylor Swift or whatever. MCC forever!!!
And when you need to just cry it out about the state of your existential angst, you’ve got “Come On, Come On.”
I hadn’t heard or thought about Mary Chapin Carpenter for YEARS but then I read this and I realized I still knew all the songs mentioned by heart and I realized she (+Lucinda Williams, Nancy Griffith, Iris Dement, and other incredible artists I used to lump together as “sad lady singers,” oof) was the soundtrack to my childhood, and THAT prompted a personal epiphany about my mother, life, and feminism, so thank you for that.
Nanci Griffith was also the soundtrack to my childhood and I want to write a piece like this about her. She was – and remains – brilliant.
PLEASE DO!
Nanci Griffith is the perfect next artist to write about. I always associate Griffith with Carpenter because growing up in Idaho, my dad used to alternate their albums when we needed a soundtrack.
MCC and Lucinda Williams introduced me to music written and performed by women that wasn’t overtly sexual, about pleasing men, etc… Love MCC!
She’s the only celebrity I’ve ever been told I look like (a high forehead will do that), so I’ve always had a narcissistic soft spot for her. But I also secretly loved Come On, Come On my senior year in high school, when I was openly loving Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Twenty-one years later, you have inspired me to admit it.
I think Stones in the Road changed my life in early high school.
I straight up gasped when this started showing up in my Facebook feed this morning. Mary Chapin Carpenter is the greatest, I have been advocating for her greatness for years, and the Toast is a gift that keeps on giving. There is not one single album that I listened to more in my childhood, as this was the one album that my family of wildly divergent musical tastes could all agree upon. I remember listening to it endlessly when I was very young, so much so that Mary Chapin Carpenter helped to shape my idea of what grown women were like: resolvedly but not ruthlessly independent, fully formed, confident, dreamy and not a little private. She is the Susan Sarandon of country music. What a gift to myself that influence was.
Meghan, you deserve particular credit for sharing the greatness that is the 1993 CMT Women of Country television special. More sequins and shoulder pads than could sink the Titanic. It is actually easier to count on your fingers the famous ladies who weren’t there (whither Dolly?!). The best part is seeing PATSY MONTANA in her cowgirl shirts at 2:35. Read about her here: Wikipedia. She and her husband got married on July 3rd, honeymooned on July 4th, and then split up so they could go on their respective tours! Lady country singers are absolutely everybody’s cool aunt. I am that girl at 1:58, now and forever.
Gonna go listen to Come On, Come On on repeat over and over. Thank you for this.
Here’s a vote for The Calling, especially “On With The Song”. It’s what you listen to while you drive to the sixth rally in two weeks at the Texas Capitol.
I was 11 when “He thinks he’ll keep her” came out and I remember listening to it on the radio I begged my parents for and thinking, even then, “This is a great song and this woman is brave.”
OH and while we are at it, here’s the best song that you cried to in your childhood:
http://youtu.be/43Tz3pVb9Dg
Just sent your story, and a screenshot of the Mary Chapin tweet, to my mom and godmother. They used to drink lots of wine and then blast “Come On Come On” while playing spades.
This is perfect. I feel so…understood! Thanks, Toast, for highlighting MCC.
Yes, Yes, Yes! MCC forever! Love your playlist and charming annotations. THIS is the music of our lives.
Bless you for writing this. 🙂
I moved to Nashville all alone when I was 22 and I swear Mary Chapin Carpenter was my spirit guide. “Almost Home,” “The Hard Way,” “This Shirt” and every song on the Time Sex Love album (which apparently no one appreciates like I do) got me through all the bullshit of my twenties. Now I’m 35, and single again, and I still blast “Almost Home” on the regular: “There’s no such thing as no regrets, but baby, it’s all right.”
I want to read every single word this Meghan Nesmith person writes.
Love this post and thank you for writing it! MCC is my guidepost, North Star and at the top of my playlist since “Shooting Straight in the Dark” (I then circled back and found “State of the Heart.”) Last year on a solo road trip, I played all her CD from State of the Hear to “Ashes and Roses” and it was an amazing journey. She has traveled in her songwriting and her voice and it was a joy to have her recorded life poetry as my co-pilot!
I was raised on ’90s new country and this is bringing back a lot of memories.
And you’re right, MCC’s “Passionate Kisses” IS way better than the original.