DiFranco speaks on fame, the pitfalls of social media and why she won’t be reading this article.
Long heralded as a nonchalantly cool musical powerhouse, Ani DiFranco exists at the raucous intersection of alt rock and feminism. With over 20 albums, her own record label and more than 1,300 concerts under her silver-studded belt, DiFranco has established herself as a pillar of the rock community since the early ’90s.
On Sept. 13, DiFranco’s tour will bring her to The Blue Note where she’s celebrating the 25 year anniversary of her album, “Little Plastic Castle.” It’s DiFranco’s highest charting album and earned her a Grammy nomination for rock female vocalist upon its release in 1998.
In an interview with The Maneater, DiFranco reflected on the longevity of her career, plus her evolution as a musician and as a woman.
This text has been edited for length and clarity.
Question: It’s your 25 year anniversary. How do you find yourself reflecting on “Little Plastic Castle” these days?
DiFranco: That particular album has had a great ride out in the world. So I’m really grateful for that. [What] it was being reissued this year, and coming out on vinyl, I was asked to write a statement and try to put myself back at the moment of making it and talking about it[…]On one level, it’s one of my most popular records and on another level, it came from a really hard time. I think, being sort of famous was just starting to happen to me, and there was a lot of downsides with the upsides and there was a lot of criticism of me out there in the world.
I guess I was familiar up to that point with all kinds of criticism, but it was always coming from the man. It was like people calling me “a man hater” or “angry” or this or that. But around that time, when I made “Little Plastic Castle,” the criticism started coming from my people — my tribe. And so that was kind of devastating. I mean, it’s sort of an album about trying to navigate that.
Q: How do you think that criticism from such an intimate place has impacted your work since then?
DiFranco: I guess if I could talk to that girl who was making “Little Plastic Castle” 25 years ago, I would not tell her, “guess what, it gets worse.” In the future, there will be this thing called social media, and it gets so much worse. We’re all public people now in a weird way, and so we are all prey to that kind of shaming and ostracization. So lots of us — not just performers — have to figure out how to deal with it and keep going. Like anybody, I struggle with it. It’s hard. I’m a very thin-skinned person, so that makes being public property tricky.
Q: How do you decide which criticism is worth listening to and learning from and which [you should just move on from]?
DiFranco: Well, I’ll tell you I tend to take my criticism, through loving filters […] and I think that really helps me — which is to say I do not read press about me. In fact, “Little Plastic Castle,” when that record came out, that’s when I stopped reading reviews and articles about me because I just got really claustrophobic.
Even the stuff that’s not negative, even the stuff that’s positive. It’s just hearing other people’s take on you, other people’s ideas about you, or their assessments. It’s just so much to do that all the time. I guess that “Little Plastic Castle” record is a record about being famous and I’m reacting to the reactions. And I just looked at myself and I thought, “this is a fucking inward spiral. I have to stop. I have to get off, I have to get off this ride.” So I don’t read stuff about me. What I do is I keep my ears open in real time[…] I’m just literally too sensitive to go on social media.
Q: You’ve spoken very openly about sexuality throughout your career. How do you think that your sexual expression has evolved throughout your life?
DiFranco: I think that there was something that was coming through my songs, my being and therefore my songs, right from the beginning, where as much as I worried about not being good enough, pretty enough, this enough, that enough, I couldn’t let that stop me from being free [and] from finding my joy, my pleasure.
I think there was something that was being transmuted through the songs that was like, ‘I don’t fucking care how you see me. I don’t care. I don’t care. I care about being alive in my body. I care about what I care about, and it’s not what you think about me.’
I presented myself in so many ways, the way I would change my hair and my clothing based on who I was hanging out with or what was happening, but there was a lot of “fuck it” in there, you know? I think that might have been helpful or liberating for other people, especially other young women. I’m more interested in how I see myself, not how you see me. And I’m trying to really find the authenticity of that, not based on some foreign unit of measurement.
Edited by Annie Goldman | agoldman@themaneater.com
Copy Edited by Natalie Kientzy and Sterling Sewell | ssewell@themaneater.com