Meg Christian (born 1946 in Lynchburg, Virginia) is an American folk singer associated with the women’s music movement. (More from Wikipedia)
Another lesbian singer-songwriter Meg Christian once interviewed Cris Williamson, and this connection led to the creation of Olivia Records, the foremost record label in what became known as “women’s music”. Their first release was a single in 1973, with Meg singing the Carole King/Gerry Goffin song “Lady” on one side and Cris singing her own song, “If it Weren’t for the Music” on the other.
Olivia Records was conceived as a recording company that would be geared to gay women, but as discussed below, it was more than just that. The title of the label’s very first album, I Know You Know (1974) by Meg Christian is not hard to figure out; nor are the implications of the best-known song from this album, “Ode to a Gym Teacher” (written by Meg and performed live to an enthusiastic audience). However, women’s music is not overtly sexual, or at least I have never heard any that was. For the most part, the romantic songs are addressed to the lover; as with Melissa Etheridge, the gender is beside the point, lending the music appeal to all listeners.
There is a strong feminist stance in women’s music, however; and that was largely absent from the music scene in the mid-1970’s, Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” (1972) notwithstanding. Besides her own fine compositions, Meg Christian reinterprets a Rolf Kempf song, “Hello Hooray” as a feminist anthem, with some new lyrics that she added. The song had been included on one of Judy Collins’ best albums, Who Knows Where the Time Goes (1968). Jimmy Webb is not a songwriter where one would expect feminist sensibilities, but Meg reworks his song “The Hive” as a tale of female oppression – not at all the way that Richard Harris performed the song several years earlier. Meg Christian also covers one of Cris Williamson’s songs, “Joanna”; a single lyric in “Joanna”, “I need to touch you” was the only hint of lesbianism on the Cris Williamson album.
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The Changer and the Changed (1975) was Olivia Records’ second album release, and this album by Cris Williamson quickly became the biggest seller in women’s music, eventually selling 500,000 copies.
Behind the scenes, Olivia Records started to put the full weight of its philosophy into place on this album: To the extent possible, their work was to be in women’s hands from start to finish. As in most fields during this time period, women were regularly excluded in the music industry from working as backing musicians, producers, arrangers, engineers, etc. Thus, besides performing on guitar, Meg Christian produced The Changer and the Changed; other contributors later released women’s music albums, such as Margie Adam. June Millington, previously in the all-female rock band Fanny, provided backing vocals and also played drums, acoustic and electric guitar, slide guitar, and keyboards; Millington shows up on later Cris Williamson releases also. In all, Allmusic lists 50 people in the credits for The Changer and the Changed, with the vast majority being women.
Cris Williamson and Meg Christian celebrated the 10th anniversary of the founding of Olivia Records by holding a joint concert at Carnegie Hall with several other women’s-music stalwarts, as documented in the double album release, Meg/Cris at Carnegie Hall.
