25 January 2025, Hilton Anaheim Pacific Ballroom, Anaheim, California, USA
Hi everyone.
I cannot tell you how honored I feel to be invited here to accept this award tonight, to speak to all of you.
I’ve been thinking a lot these past few weeks—especially since the inauguration—about women, and about volume.
Volume; as in the dial from being silent to screaming your head off.
So many people I know right now—especially women, and artists, and my friends who are trans, and friends with trans kids—are just profoundly exhausted. And they’re feeling like they’re losing their voices.
The act of singing is built into us, it’s built into our DNA. Human beings aren’t built to be silent.
Especially human beings who are in pain. Our bodies are built to scream when we’re in pain, for a reason.
After The Dresden Dolls’ second record came out and we were touring the world nonstop, I had to get vocal surgery to remove nodes that had built up on my vocal cords from overuse—from literally screaming onstage every night—and in order to recover, I couldn’t speak—or even whisper a teeny whisper—for three weeks. (My friends later told me after the fact that they very much appreciated the reprieve.)
I grew up listening to—and worshipping—women singers who screamed to be heard and accepted, and to me, back then, those women were the “real-deal,” authentic artists. It was Courtney Love and Bikini Kill, and Diamanda Galas screaming, from stage: “I WILL NOT LET YOU DOMINATE ME.”
And because I wrote songs on piano and wasn’t a guitarist, in high school my friends gave me Tori Amos CDs, but … I was not able to believe in her.
Because she wasn’t screaming.
I loved her lyrics but couldn’t accept her delivery, because it made me nervous. It took me until I was in my 30s to understand that she was just as powerful, if not more so, as the other women who were screaming at maximum volume.
I think artists can be like two discordant piano strings that are just almost completely in tune with one another but not quite, and the nearness of the tune without exact resonance creates the harshest discord. She’s kind of like me ... but not ... quite ... right.
And now we’ve got Phoebe Bridgers and Boygenius and Billie Eilish and Sofia Isella, and even Taylor Swift has kinda gone quiet-core, and they sometimes scream but quieter, like: “I will not let you dominate me.”
It’s sort of scarier, isn’t it? To hear someone whisperthat at you.
It reminds me of the Serious Mom Voice I’ve learned how to use with my son, when you’re like STOP THAT RHHGGAGAHHAAAHA, and then you’re like:
“Stop. And listen to me.”
And your kid’s like: “OH SHIT IT’S THE SERIOUS MOM VOICE.”
Photo: Kevin Graft
I think lowering your voice can be so powerful, but women are afraid to do it, as we fear we’ll just get erased.
I’ve come to think that real freedom is not the freedom to be loud; it’s the freedom to be heard at any volume.
The same way that real freedom is not about the freedom to have babies, it’s about the freedom to choose. And it’s the freedom to control your own gear, because, contrary to the belief of many club owners, we actually know how to use our own fucking gear.
It isn’t about the style, or the volume or the timbre (or, don’t kill me—even the Auto-Tune) of the other woman.
It isn’t about whether she’s manicured, or unshaved, or high-glam, or unfashionable. That’s like complaining about the gift wrap.
You let her sing, you let her whisper or you let her scream, let her play ukulele or do death metal or whatever—but:
You listen.
It’s about the story in the song that gets out. And a woman’s song is like her Shawshank pickaxe; you have to listen to her choice, her control over her own gear and personal transmission, because whether you like it or not doesn’t matter as much as the fact of her choice, her song, her way of using her voice. Because that voice may be her unique key to getting out of wherever she is trapped.
Or, to put it another way:
Do not criticize the fingernails of a woman who is clawing her way out of prison.
I want to thank Brian Viglione for being one of the best-ever supportive bandmates and male allies for 25 years now, in The Dresden Dolls. And I’d like to thank my love, Brendon Downey, who is going to be mixing my sound tonight. He’s been saving my life for the last couple years and has also been an incredible ally.
It’s a rare honor to be in an actual room of women who make all kinds of music gear, so I would also like to thank the endless people backstage here tonight and out in the audience and the real world, for all they do to help us all to sing, and to transmit whispers and screams; thank you to all the people who make stuff, and the mics work. Thank you for making it possible to do what we do.
And I want to say thank you to the Women’s International Music Network for putting this all together, and to the incredible crew here who helped make this whole night happen … and truly: thank you for this award.
I’m really grateful to be in this room full of women. It really means the world to me to be here and to be a part of this.
And now, I’m gonna play you a song.