
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
All music exists on a long continuum of gradual changes, inspirations, appropriations and occasional small earthquakes, and any suggestion that artist A or song B wouldn't have existed if not for artist C or song D is almost always a bad argument. So while it would be stretching the laws of art and physics to suggest that JOAN JETT, DESTINY'S CHILD, CARDI B and MEGAN THEE STALLION wouldn't have existed if not for a certain middle-of-the-road '70s pop singer from Australia, let's note, for the record, that it would be equally wrong not to notice that songs from "BAD REPUTATION" to "INDEPENDENT WOMEN to, yes, "WAP" do in fact exist on a long, squiggly cultural line that had no choice but to go through "I AM WOMAN," one of those small earthquakes. Inspired by her newfound interest in the women's liberation movement, HELEN REDDY wrote the lyrics and recorded the song in 1971 for her little-noticed debut album, and rewrote them and rerecorded the song a year later for her third album, after which it still had to wait several months before it truly caught on. "I am woman, hear me roar / In numbers too big to ignore" may not sound like much today, but it was a radical proclamation half a century ago. And it may have taken the disarming presence of an AM radio pop singer, whom ALICE COOPER would call "the queen of housewife rock" and FRANK ZAPPA would lightly skewer in a song about a date with an office worker with vanilla tastes, to sell it to the world in 1972. (Australian university professor MICHELLE ARROW on the "housewife" dig: "I doubt Helen Reddy saw this as the insult Cooper perhaps intended it to be." She was singing for those housewives, amplifying and enabling their dreams.) "I Am Woman" is an empowerment anthem for the ages—it's my party and I'll roar if I want to—with an unforgettable melody and musical build (guitarist RAY BURTON wrote the music). Plenty of men, not surprisingly, were offended (and not just Alice Cooper and Frank Zappa), and Reddy baited them when she accepted the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female (she was the first Australian to win a Grammy), thanking "GOD, because She makes everything possible." Women's liberation had its theme song. When Reddy got her own TV variety show in 1973, one of her first guests was GLORIA STEINEM. She was a major star for much of the '70s, with a string of hits that were a lot darker than their sunny pop production may have suggested, and she branched out into TV and film. She's the singing nun who performs for a young LINDA BLAIR in AIRPORT '75. She made a brief comeback to live performance in the early 2010s, and was the subject of the documentary I AM WOMAN, which premiered at the TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL in 2019, years after she was first diagnosed with dementia. She died Tuesday at 78. RIP... MAC DAVIS, who died the same day, also at 78, had a '70s pop career that, as Billboard notes, closely paralleled Reddy's. As a performer, he had a laid-back ease with soft-rock, pop and country, and a brief flirtation with disco. As a songwriter, he had range, both stylistically and chronologically. He first came to fame with a string of hits written or co-written for ELVIS PRESLEY (the King of Housewife Rock, if you will), including the masterful "IN THE GHETTO." The last major co-writes on his resume include this worldwide dance hit for, and with, AVICII, and this BRUNO MARS pop jam. Respect. Fellow songwriter BOBBY BRADDOCK called Davis "the BLAKE SHELTON of the 1970s." He was better than that though... K-pop powerhouse BIG HIT ENTERTAINMENT will debut on the Korean stock exchange this month with an implied valuation of nearly $4 billion. The company gifted pre-IPO shares to the members of BTS reportedly worth $55 million. Still working for a living nonetheless, BTS is appearing on THE TONIGHT SHOW every night this week... STEVE STOUTE chats UNITEDMASTERS with LIGHTSHED's RICH GREENFIELD and BRANDON ROSS... WEIRD AL remixes the first presidential debate... The HEROES ACT, including a proposed $10 billion in grants to the US live music industry, has been introduced in Congress... Heartbreaking news from CHRISSY TEIGEN and JOHN LEGEND... RIP also WILLIAM E. MCEUEN, ROCCO PRESTIA, CHRISTIANE EDA-PIERRE and DONNY HILLIER.