The kitchen is for crying (and sometimes killing)
Let's sing about it.
I was driving home the other day when Lori McKenna’s Stealing Kisses came on. I hadn’t heard it since high school. It’s a song about a woman who remembers being in high school 20 years earlier “stealing kisses from a boy” but “Now I'm begging affection from a man / In my housedress don't you know who I am /Don't you know who I am / Standing in your kitchen.”
At the end of the song, the woman stands outside her old high school and wishes she could help the girls there understand that she used to be stealing kisses from a boy too, but now? Now look at her. She whispers to “all of the girls, run, run, run.”
I had to pull over and cry. I’m only a year younger than the woman in the song. And while I am not begging for affection in the kitchen, I’ve found myself begging for so many other things there. Domesticity in America can be fucking lonely, even when you live with someone you love, who loves you too.
I guess I’ve entered the “I need songs about women who woke up, walked downstairs, looked around their kitchen and started to cry” stage of my life.
Some of you have too. When I asked for songs about domestic sorrow and rage on Instagram, my inbox filled right up. So I spent a couple hours making a playlist with some of those recommendations and some of my favorites. It’s my Friday gift to you.
Some of the songs are sad, some are angry, some are violent, some are hopeless. All of them vibrate along a chord I can’t stop plucking.
Women’s pain has always been a living document. I plan on adding songs to this playlist. I know I am missing some good ones. Leave me suggestions in the comments and I’ll add them. I use Apple Music but I know some people need to use Spotify. So you can find the playlist in either place!
Here’s the Spotify playlist
