"We used to have a main female vocalist. But she had a baby. Now we do the singing ourselves"
About this Quote
There’s a whole era of band life compressed into that shrug of a punchline: “We had a main female vocalist. But she had a baby.” Bernie Worrell delivers it like a road-story aside, yet it lands as a miniature thesis about how music scenes depend on women’s labor while building their schedules around men’s continuity.
On the surface, it’s practical: a key singer leaves, the group adapts, someone else takes the mic. The comedy comes from the blunt causality, as if childbirth is just another gear failure on tour. That flatness is doing work. It reflects how bands often treat the most physically consequential event in a member’s life as a logistical inconvenience, not a transformation with costs that the group might share. The line “Now we do the singing ourselves” sounds egalitarian, even plucky, but it also masks a familiar dynamic: the solution isn’t structural support (pauses, childcare, renegotiated roles), it’s replacement by whoever can keep the machine moving.
Worrell’s context matters: as a funk architect, he came out of ensembles where the “family” rhetoric was real, but so were the ruthless demands of touring, recording, and staying commercially viable. The subtext is not necessarily cruelty so much as industry normalization. The joke is how quickly the story is made tidy. A woman becomes “used to have,” motherhood becomes an exit ramp, and the band narrates resilience while quietly benefiting from a world that makes her absence feel inevitable.
On the surface, it’s practical: a key singer leaves, the group adapts, someone else takes the mic. The comedy comes from the blunt causality, as if childbirth is just another gear failure on tour. That flatness is doing work. It reflects how bands often treat the most physically consequential event in a member’s life as a logistical inconvenience, not a transformation with costs that the group might share. The line “Now we do the singing ourselves” sounds egalitarian, even plucky, but it also masks a familiar dynamic: the solution isn’t structural support (pauses, childcare, renegotiated roles), it’s replacement by whoever can keep the machine moving.
Worrell’s context matters: as a funk architect, he came out of ensembles where the “family” rhetoric was real, but so were the ruthless demands of touring, recording, and staying commercially viable. The subtext is not necessarily cruelty so much as industry normalization. The joke is how quickly the story is made tidy. A woman becomes “used to have,” motherhood becomes an exit ramp, and the band narrates resilience while quietly benefiting from a world that makes her absence feel inevitable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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