The Queen of Rock & Roll

Tina Turner died this week.

The legendary musician, Tina Turner, died this week at the age of 83, leaving behind a legacy defined by her unequivocal brilliance and influence. Beyoncé called her “the ultimate,” and “[m]y beloved queen.”

This week’s TBL

¹

will look at Tina Turner’s place in rock & roll history … with a twist. RIP, Tina.

If you like The Better Letter, please subscribe, share it, and forward it widely.

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: Some email services may truncate TBL. If so, or if you’d prefer, you can read it all here. If it is clipped, you can also click on “View entire message” and you’ll be able to view the entire missive in your email app.

Thanks for reading.

---

The Queen of Rock & Roll

The following creation is an amazing homage to rock & roll, a vital expression of our living culture. It takes nearly 15 minutes to tell the History of Rock, but it’s worth it. Please have a look (and a listen). I’ll wait.

This incredible mash-up includes 348 rockstars, 84 guitarists, 64 songs, and 44 drummers in a burst of creative awesomeness, included as part of a mock Facebook newsfeed, with plenty of purported likes and comments from great artists. It begins with Elvis and Jailhouse Rock, mashes it up with the Yardbirds’ For Your Love, and takes off (mostly) chronologically from there. The Stones join in. Then Cream. Then Zeppelin. 

Oh, my. 

It is a giant jigsaw puzzle of sound that is wildly entertaining.

The video went viral when it was made, aided by links from sites like Mashable, (“rock & roll’s entire timeline”), Fast Company, and BroBible (which claims it includes “every notable act”). The music site Exclaim! exclaimed, “This Video Will Make You a Rock Music History Expert in 15 Minutes.”

But hold on. If you’re sufficiently aware, you might notice what’s missing.

Little Richard, who was one of the ten original inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, makes no appearance. No Little Richard in a video that calls itself “History of Rock” is a striking omission.

It’s not nearly the only one, and there’s an obvious pattern.

“I know why I don’t get the protection that I’m supposed to get,” Little Richard’s character in Down and Out in Beverly Hills says. “Because I’m black!”

The “History of Rock” ignores Chuck Berry, too (but for a “post” that Jimi “likes” him).

In fact, the whole video includes only two bands with black artists in them: the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Rage Against the Machine. 

No Slash (although he’s allowed to “comment”). No Sly & the Family Stone. No Billy Preston. No Lenny Kravitz. No Isley Brothers. No Temptations. No Four Tops. No Spinners. No James Brown. No Michael Jackson. No Sam Cooke. No Marvin Gaye. No B.B. King. No Smokey Robinson. No Muddy Waters (he does get a comment). No Jackie Wilson. No Otis Redding. No Al Green. No Curtis Mayfield. No Earth, Wind & Fire. No Ray Charles. No Prince. No Stevie Wonder.

Perhaps worse, this “History of Rock” is even more male than white.

Out of the 64 songs included, all of them feature men. Alice Cooper performs, and Queen gets four songs, but real live women are quiet throughout. There are a couple of entries by the mixed-gender groups Fleetwood Mac and The White Stripes, but the songs chosen are both sung by male band members. Stevie Nicks is allowed a “like.” 

Here’s the worst omission among many bad ones: The undisputed Queen of Rock & Roll is nowhere to be found.

“Lots of stars had claimed to be the Queen of Rock & Roll, but after (her 1984 album) Private Dancer, nobody came near that crown,” Rolling Stone wrote.

Born Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, Turner began her singing career alongside her husband Ike Turner in the 1960s and ‘70s. She divorced him after suffering physical abuse and began a meteoric solo career with her 1984 album Private Dancer, which won four Grammys. At the 1985 Grammy Awards, “What’s Love Got to Do with It” won three awards, for record of the year, song of the year and best female pop vocal performance, and “Better Be Good To Me” won for best female rock vocal performance.

Yes, indeed, could she rock.

In 1986, Tina was onstage with Paul McCartney when he sang “Get Back” live for the first time since that London rooftop at a star-studded charity event with Elton John, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Eric Claptan, Phil Collins, and more. Princess Diana was in the audience. Tina sang the verse about Sweet Loretta, an American girl who leaves a home she can’t get back to. She was the only black artist there and the only woman, too.

As Rolling Stone noted, she “lived Loretta’s story before Paul even wrote the song. The jam keeps rolling, but after Tina, nobody goes near that microphone. She has just shut up the planet’s most un-shut-uppable men. She’s the grown-up on this stage. Every other rock star here is a child.”

So let’s “get back” to this alleged history of rock & roll.

There’s no Aretha, either. No Carole King. No Chaka Khan. No Chrissie Hynde. No Grace Slick. No Pat Benatar. No Go-Gos. No Linda Ronstadt.

C’mon, man. 

No Patti Smith. No Joan Jett. No Carly Simon. No Heart (although Ann Wilson gets to “post”). No Diana Ross. No Judy Collins. No Bonnie Raitt. No Donna Summer. No Janis Joplin. No Joni Mitchell. No Grace Jones. No Joan Armatrading. No Beyoncé.

Now, before you start in with excuses – like trying to force a clear distinction between rock & roll and R&B – note that the video pretends that rock & roll started with Elvis and was pioneered exclusively by white men. No Ike Turner. No Sister Rosetta Tharpe. No Fats Domino. No Ruth Brown. No Big Joe Turner. No LaVern Baker. No Bo Diddley. No Chuck Berry. No Little Richard. And no Tina Turner. 

The Stones’ Honky Talk Women is loud and clear, as is Duran Duran’s Girls on Film, but the actual women of rock remain voiceless.

I am virtually certain that the (totally delightful) video’s creators did not see themselves as anything less than fair-minded and committed to diversity. I highly doubt that it would have occurred to them while making the mash-up that they were missing anything whatsoever. Especially because it was a puff marketing piece designed to showcase the (amazing) skills of their firm, by far the most likely scenario is that the producers were simply blind to their inherent biases.

All of this is consistent with in-group favoritism, whereby members of a group favor their own. It applies to friends, teams, clubs, schools, towns, political parties, religious organizations, ethnic groups, and nations. It also applies to police investigations and judicial decisions. Bias persists even for matching gender and ethnicity.

We are social creatures, made for community, who instinctively group like-to-like in relatively small numbers. The vast majority of us think opposites attract, but that’s not what the research shows. We readily recognize and congregate into affinity groups, echo chambers, and mutual admiration societies with our “alsos,” as in also went to Duke, also played lacrosse, also loves/hates Trump, also knows Dick.

When we don’t think we’re biased and are sure that we’re committed to avoiding it, we’re almost certainly wrong. Consider, for example, a study on racial discrimination and NBA referees, which found that white referees called substantially fewer fouls on white players and black referees called substantially fewer fouls on black players. We must act aggressively to counter bias even when we’re sure we don’t have any.

Somehow, women S&P 500 CEOs have been dramatically outperforming their male counterparts yet only comprise less than eight percent of the overall class.

Neuroscientist Vivienne Ming and her team analyzed huge amounts of data about more than one hundred million people and calculated the average cost – she calls it a “tax” – that women, people of color, and other minorities pay for the extra education, training, and experience they need to get the same jobs and promotions as straight white men. She calls it the cost of being different. 

“The tax on being different is largely implicit. People need not act maliciously for it to be levied.” For example, women in the U.S. tech industry pay a tax of between $100,000 and $300,000. If you are different, Ming says, “you have to go to better schools for longer and you have to work for better companies to get the same promotions, to get the same quality of work.”

It’s a tax, Ming continues, that doesn’t pay for anything, like roads or schools. In scientific terms, “it’s heat loss in our economy,” she says. Worse still, the tax is superlinear, which means that a black woman pays more than a white woman and a black man combined. In a truly sad summary, Ming adds that “[w]e are bad at valuing other people and we are worse the more different they are than us.” Accordingly, “[d]iscrimination is not done by villains,” she says. “It’s done by us.” 

Ming estimates the economic cost of this unrealized human potential to be nearly $1.5 trillion per year. Indeed, “reams of research” establishes that there is tremendous “bottom line value” to real creative diversity.

If we aren’t prepared aggressively to try to make our lives and our businesses more diverse because it’s the right thing to do, we should consider doing so to become more profitable. I’m not talking about social justice. I’m talking about simple fairness and cold hard cash.

Study after study after study after study shows that firms with diverse leadership perform better. Diversity improves decision-making at the firm level while companies with more diverse workforces are more profitable (more detail here, here, and here). Indeed, racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits while gender diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, and greater relative profits. 

From an investment perspective, we all understand the value of diversification. Bear that in mind and take a look around. 

If your reading lists, your colleagues, your department, your friends, your follows, your buddies, your boards, your party lists, or your firm aren’t at least as diverse as you want your portfolio to be, you’re missing a major opportunity. Note, for example, that using blind auditions for symphony orchestras increased the selection of women as much as 30 percent, to the shock of conductors and administrators who were no doubt certain they were already picking the best person for the job.

Your most dangerous bias is the one you don’t know about. Getting the most out of ourselves, our networks, and our businesses require actively shaking up the status quo – including our personal status quos.  

Nobody shook or shook up rock & roll quite like Tina Turner. We ought to shake ourselves up too.

---

Memorial Day

My parents called it Decoration Day – the day we honor those who “gave the last full measure of devotion” so that we might live free.

Thirty-five years ago this week, in Moscow, President Ronald Reagan talked with students at Moscow State University about freedom in a speech written by a friend of my daughter.

Here’s the money quote, with its oh-so-subversive message, needed now in America at least as much as ever.

“Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream – to follow your dream or stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.”

This Decoration Day, let’s remember those who gave all, and let freedom ring.

---

Totally Worth It

Ira Byock is a nationally known hospice M.D. who wrote the book, The Four Things That Matter Most. As a hospice physician, Dr. Byock has spent lots of time holding the hands of people breathing their last. My good friend Mark, who was a long-time hospice chaplain, says that there is nothing like being close to those reflecting on their lives in their last moments to teach you to examine your own. Dr. Byock’s book outlines four things we should learn to say often so we can live well and approach the end of life with integrity, faith, and love. Those four things are (1) “Thank you;” (2) “Forgive me;” (3) “I forgive you;” and (4) “I love you.” 

Try each of them out over the next week.

Feel free to contact me via rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or on Twitter (@rpseawright) and let me know what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see changed, and what you’d add. Praise, condemnation, and feedback are always welcome.

Of course, the easiest way to share TBL is simply to forward it to a few dozen of your closest friends.

As Anne Lamott says, grace gives help, says ‘buckle up,” and always bats last.

You may hit some paywalls herein; many can be overcome here.

This is the best thing I read or saw this week. The saddest. The sweetest. The smartest. The silliest. The funniest (NSFW). The most beautiful. The most interesting. The most insane (unless it was this). The most important. The most predictable. Not a parody. When to raise prices. Debt ceiling possibilities. Obviously. RIP, Jim Brown, the GOAT in both football and lacrosse (more here). RIP, Tim Keller, whose primary focus was on “our own disordered hearts, wracked by inordinate desires for things that control us, that lead us to feel superior and exclude those without them, that fail to satisfy us even when we get them” (for more, check out this interview, this, this, and this).

Please send me your nominations for this space to rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or via Twitter (@rpseawright).

The TBL Spotify playlist, made up of the songs featured here, now includes over 260 songs and about 20 hours of great music. I urge you to listen in, sing along, and turn up the volume.

My ongoing thread/music and meaning project: #SongsThatMove

---

Benediction

To those of us prone to wander, to those who are broken, to those who flee and fight in fear – which is every last lost one of us – there is a faith that offers hope. And may love have the last word. Now and forever.

Amen.

Thanks for reading.

Issue 154 (May 26, 2023)

1. A different version of this post appeared in the early days of TBL, long before the vast majority of you were here.