Difranco, Ani

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ANI DIFRANCO

Born: Buffalo, New York, 23 September 1970

Genre: Rock, Folk

Best-selling album since 1990: Living in Clip (1997)

Hit songs since 1990: "32 Flavors," "Not a Pretty Girl"

Singer, songwriter, outspoken feminist, and punk-folk prodigy, Ani DiFranco has released more than a dozen albums on her own label, Righteous Babe records. Her impassioned singing, rhythmic approach to playing the acoustic guitar, and incisive political and personal lyrics have inspired a loyal legion of fans. DiFranco has released at least one album a year since the mid-1990s, after the stunning Not a Pretty Girl (1995) set the stage for her fame. A true original, DiFranco is punk rock in her approach and in her spiky-haired appearance but folk in her musical preference for confessional and occasionally didactic songs.

Ambition, Purpose, and Will

Ani DiFranco's rise to success is a tale of singularity of purpose. Growing up in a blue-collar town listening to the music of the Beatles and Joni Mitchell, DiFranco picked up the guitar at age nine and started writing her own songs. By the time she was a teenager, she was playing in bars and clubs in upstate New York. At fifteen she moved to New York City, and at nineteen she released her self-titled debut album. DiFranco started touring coffee-houses, bars, college campuses, and music festivals to support each successive album in the early to mid-1990s. She credits her uniquely percussive acoustic guitar style to years of struggling to be heard over the chatty crowds at bars and clubs.

By the time Out of Range (1994) came out, DiFranco was starting to attract attention in the folk music circuit, and critics started paying attention to this unique voice. Never one to cow to the tall orders of others, DiFranco defends her right to create her own music, her own image, and her own voice. Throughout Out of Range DiFranco mines her acoustic guitar for all its sonic possibilities: furious strumming on the title track, knocking and rapping it on "Buildings and Bridges," and cascading arpeggios on "Hell Yeah."

Success for Not a Pretty Girl

In 1995 Ani DiFranco officially hit it big with the release of her album Not a Pretty Girl. The album landed on many magazines' top-ten lists, and DiFranco appeared on the cover of Spin magazine with spiked-out hair and leather pants. DiFranco's success showed that a female musician did not have to fit into a music-industry pigeonhole; female musicians could contain a multitude of complexities and still be successful. Her next album, Dilate (1996), was equally progressive, finding DiFranco more comfortable with the range of her voice. Dilate features some slightly more edgy sounds of an electric guitar and seems to chronicle a messy relationship and its fallout.

Touring and Recording

DiFranco spent most of the 1990s touring and recording, splitting her time between Buffalo and New York City. She became increasingly productive toward the end of the 1990s, releasing two double albums, one of which, Living in Clip (1997), is a live album with the band she had formed. Living in Clip is treasured by fans, for it ably captures the energy of her live performances and showcases Ani DiFranco at her best. In 1998 she married her sound engineer, Andrew Gilchrest, and seemed happy to discuss her marital state in interviews. This seemingly conventional act angered fans who felt betrayed by their unorthodox, free-thinking, sexually progressive role model. In 1999 DiFranco released two so-so albums that continued to show her discursive lyrical style, Up Up Up Up Up Up and To the Teeth, the former of which spawned the single "Angry Any More."

By the year 2000 Righteous Babe had sold more than 1 million copies of her records, Surprisingly, DiFranco slowed down a bit; she did not release anything in 2000 but made up for it with Reveling/Reckoning (2001). A double album that is at times heavy-handed in its polemics, it sold more than 37,000 copies in its debut week, quite a feat for a woman whose music is not embraced by commercial radio. In 2003 DiFranco released Evolve, an album that employs a horn section and shows that she has become wiser as a songwriter and as a person in the nearly fifteen years she has been recording music. The political statements never become overwrought diatribes, and the arrangements are spare, raw, and intimate.

Ani DiFranco is a folk poet with the ferocity and spirit of a punk rocker, a woman with an independent mind and a formidable technique on the twelve-string guitar. Having snubbed the corporate overseers to kick-start and master her own career, she is an inspiration to countless singer/songwriters.

Spot Light: Not a Pretty Girl

The tongue-in-cheek title of DiFranco's breakthrough album just barely hints at the firestorm that brews throughout the fourteen thoughtful, polemic, anthemic, and literate punk-folk songs. The saucy leadoff track, "Worthy," spins a relationship on its head in the kiss off in the opening lines: "You think you're not worthy / I'd have to say I'd agree / I'm not worthy of you / You're not worthy of me." But DiFranco is clever and strong and disinclined to let her lover off the hook so easily. Not a Pretty Girl also features songs about fame, the death penalty, bisexuality, and abortion. In the title-track manifesto DiFranco defines herself. She starts off with sarcasm and moves to self-assurance, "I am not a pretty girl / That is not what I do / I ain't no damsel in distress." DiFranco then effortlessly moves on to her generation and pop culture, explaining that she is not an angry girl but that "Every time I say something they find hard to hear / They chalk it up to my anger and never to their own fear."

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Puddle Dive (Righteous Babe, 1993); Out of Range (Righteous Babe, 1994); Not a Pretty Girl (Righteous Babe, 1995); Dilate (Righteous Babe, 1996); Living in Clip (Righteous Babe, 1997); Little Plastic Castles (Righteous Babe, 1998); Up Up Up Up Up Up (Righteous Babe, 1999); To the Teeth (Righteous Babe, 1999); Reveling: Reckoning (Righteous Babe, 2001); So Much Shouting/ So Much Laughter (Righteous Babe, 2002); Evolve (Righteous Babe, 2003).