Juliana Hatfield

The Blake Babies formed in 1986 at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, in the midst of the city’s musical revival, through the initiative of eighteen-year-old Juliana Hatfield and guitarist John Strohm (who had also played drums for the Lemonheads), later joined by drummer Freda Boner and bassist Seth White. From the start, with Nicely Nicely (Chewbud), the EP released the following year, the group stood out for its delicate guitar-pop harmonies and for Hatfield’s singing, which combined the weak, insecure, frightened inflections of Suzanne Vega with fierce, ultra-feminist lyrics dissecting the traumas of young women of her generation.

It was precisely the vignettes of college life such as Let Them Eat Chewy Granola Bars, Swill And The Cocaine Sluts, and Better’N You that brought success to the Blake Babies, soon making them favorites of the local audience. Behind the social themes, however, lay an enormous pop talent, evident in Wipe It Up, a burst of electrified garage rock. Unreleased until 1992, Boiled Potato (with Evan Dando on bass) already hinted at the direction Hatfield would later take: a childlike nursery rhyme sung in an enchanted tone over sparse accompaniment.

That talent emerged in full glory on their first album, Earwig (Mammoth, 1989), recorded with Evan Dando of the Lemonheads on bass. Cesspool and Lament are two of their pop masterpieces, and no less memorable refrains appear in Rain (one of their very first compositions, written by Strohm) and Alright. The ties to country tradition are clear in Grateful and Your Way On The Highway, somewhere between R.E.M. inflections and Grateful Dead imitations. Yet once again, it was the bitter and violent outcries of Don’t Suck My Brain, Take Your Head Off My Shoulder, and Outta My Head that made their mark—and it is no surprise that in the latter invective Hatfield ends up warbling like Joni Mitchell.
Strohm’s accompaniment, tiptoeing with minimal touches, could not be more discreet and at times ethereal, yet the overall effect turns out magically bold and vibrant. The contrast between the sweetness of the sound and the violence of the lyrics could not be greater.

The second album, Sunburn (Mammoth, 1990), with Hatfield now settled on bass, has more grit and speed, sometimes flirting with the abrasive sound of power pop and at other times with the psychedelic drive of the Bangles. Hatfield vents her venomous mood on I'm Not Your Mother and Star, but reaches even harsher tones on Gimme Some Mirth, with an AC/DC-style riff. This time her childlike register tears through songs that have more substance, though perhaps too many are redundant. Competing for the best track on the album are Look Away, a nimble pop number with a lunar arrangement, and Out There, one of the most perfect folk-rock ballads of their career. Strohm finally finds some space and composes Train, which could easily be a single for Modern English.
Hatfield is more than ever the voice of the anxiety of girls of her time, for whom the main problem remains “the guy,” on one hand grappling with the usual, mutatis mutandis, issues of male chauvinism, and on the other amplified by all the additional insecurities and ugliness that the sexual revolution brought over the years. Sanctify stands as an elegy for that generation. That voice—so ordinary, not at all harsh, punk, perverse, or otherwise—is precisely what can channel emotion most effectively and turn it into great art.

The EP Rosy Jack World, with Temptation Eyes and the acoustic ballad Nirvana, however, marked the premature end of the Blake Babies’ adventure.

Across those three records, Hatfield had only partially been able to highlight her personality. Born and raised in Duxbury, Massachusetts, on the ocean, Hatfield enjoyed one of the few adolescences untouched by alcohol, drugs, or sex. Marginalized by her peers, she took her revenge by singing in local bands until she earned a degree in voice at the prestigious Berklee College of Music. It was then that she began writing songs, learned to play bass and guitar, and decided to form her own rock band.

Barely twenty-four, yet already a cult figure, Hatfield then recorded her first solo album, Hey Babe (Mammoth, 1992), a tender testament to adult romanticism. Her melodicism is a hybrid of beat and gospel, pop and opera, blues and jazz, Broadway and musicals, capable of blending all these elements modestly and shyly into formal masterpieces such as Lost And Saved (with an overtly sentimental beat-style chorus and that breathless, childlike register of a girl justifying herself) and Forever Baby (in rapt abandonment)—both lively yet intimate, carefree yet thoughtful, casual yet intricate, in a festival of contrasts and nuances that aptly represents the post-adolescent anxieties of her generation; without forgetting the girlish register, which transforms sentimental languors into ring-around-the-rosy nursery rhymes, as in I See You.
Hatfield also experiments with harmonic and vocal oddities (like Ugly, a solitary whisper pleading for affection, protection, and understanding; No Outlet, with its dreamlike atmosphere; and The Lights, a slow rhapsody for three guitars and a drum) that open new horizons. At the same time, she can construct hard rock chords (Quit) and express anger (Get Off Your Knees), thereby contradicting those very premises.
Yet her most typical and spontaneous genre is the melancholic ballad, in which she carves new, exciting variations on folk rock, as in the delightful Everybody Loves Me But You, where this high-school Belinda Carlisle around the corner belts out her heart because he does not return her love. These are songs sung by a girl prematurely immersed in the abyssal solitude and gray desolation of a cynical, materialistic world. Suspended in an unexplored limbo between the traditional folk singer-songwriter and the elaborate Broadway performer, Hatfield invents diary-music, rediscovering the value of melody as a means of interpersonal communication and emotional amplification of meaning.

In the autumn and winter EPs of that year, Hatfield also included Raisins, Rider, Here Comes The Pain, Feed Me, and Tamara, completing the portrait of this poet of the female soul.

Become What You Are (Mammoth, 1993) is a reassuring confirmation of Juliana Hatfield’s (existential and musical) immaturity. Her music is increasingly a matter of subtle emotions, and less and less a matter of technique or style. The underlying theme is a morbid but harmless form of youthful frustration, whose most natural counterpart is not found in a literary or artistic movement, but in the letters of adolescents published by Sassy.
The tone is mostly sad and solitary, yet most of her stories are “existential subterfuges” through which she manages to convey a universal message without exerting the corresponding intellectual effort. It is no coincidence that Jonathan Richman occasionally comes to mind (for example in Spin The Bottle, one of her catchiest nursery-rhyme-like songs). Her childlike attitudes are also metaphorical, at once mischievous and scared, bold and shy. It’s all a clever ruse to talk about life and the human condition.
Musically, Hatfield has coined a vocal style that approaches the most daring free-form vocalizations with maximum humility (exemplary is the lullaby of Supermodel, cradled in slow and ethereal phrases and extended into trills bordering on acid rock). It is that noble, understated form of singing that carries the music.
The arrangements are minimal, intentionally amateurish and rough around the edges. They follow the singer with light textures through her tender melismas, punctuate frequent syncopated passages with violent rhythms—where she seems to chant a slogan rather than sing a song (as in This Is The Sound, which sounds like a child humming while playing in the yard) before unfolding into a spacious chorus; they create dramatic contrast by pairing Hatfield’s sweetest register with dreamlike folk-rock chimes, then overlaying aggressive electric riffs. In this sense, My Sister, a typical parabola of her “unlived” life, remains one of her high points.
Her music can also be insistent and noisy, as in the grunge score of A Dame With A Red, which emphasizes a wavering, almost jazz-like melody; or in the vehement blues-rock of Addicted (a typical pose of a girl in love and betrayed); or when Hatfield proudly and vigorously proclaims her personal anthem, I Got No Idols.
Once again, the compositions seem carefully arranged so that the listener is first forced to enter her world of twisted emotions and only afterwards can enjoy the more airy melodies of For The Birds (a hymn to the wonders of nature contrasted with the horrors of humanity) and Little Pieces (a moving and proud confession of a broken heart). A more commercial album, even further from the Blake Babies, it marks a further stage in Hatfield’s existential regression—a state of a lost child.

The major innovation of Only Everything (Mammoth, 1995) is that Hatfield has lost her musical virginity: backed by a fierce hard rock band, with a more controlled and less jagged vocal style, and faster rhythms, she is no longer the despondent girl endlessly whining over a couple of meek chords. In the lyrics, Hatfield addresses the small emotional dramas of her life (real or imagined?), revolving around “him”—now adored, now denigrated, now missed, now dreamed of—with frequent sexual allusions. Taken as a whole, the album presents itself as a cycle of erotic songs, whether autobiographical or not.
What A Life opens the album with full-throttle rock and roll: her childlike voice, seemingly focused on crafting ever bolder nursery rhymes, is overwhelmed by massive guitar chords and carried along by the colossal noise. The pattern repeats more trivially in the rave-up of Ok Ok and the waltz-like Congratulations, reaching its peak contrast in Dumb Fun, the most innocent nursery rhyme, driven by another colossal riff, and in You Blues, the final whisper, steeped in adolescent romanticism, mournful yet equally lost amidst the overwhelming din.
The foundation of this operation lies in Hatfield’s remarkable ear for counterpoint, as seen in Fleur De Lys, built by layering the album’s most violent and driving riff, an innocent, coquettish chorus, mind-bending distortion (worthy of Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man), and a highly catchy bass line (scaffolded by the singer in solfège).
In many cases, the electricity plays a precise dramatic role. When the icy guitar riff erupts, the music suddenly soars, shattering the delicate atmosphere previously created by her understated singing. Bottles And Flowers exploits this effect to construct a shoegaze-worthy crescendo, with vocals sailing over a vortex of distortion, long-held notes, echoes of Cocteau Twins, and a languor reminiscent of erotic fantasy (“reach inside carefully/ make it last”).
As the commotion subsides, the charm of her childlike vocal style becomes more pronounced, supported by Luna-style strumming in Outsider and a funky-jazz vibraphone in Universal Heartbeat. This leads to the two simplest and most humble tracks, which may also be the album’s masterpieces: My Darling, a 1950s-style pop tune, a melody so romantic that sung by another artist it would verge on parody, with lines like “It’s killing me/ my darling”; and Live On Tomorrow, where the faintest imaginable whisper drops an octave to enshrine even the most intimate emotional fiber.
Hatfield’s limitation lies in her continuous self-pity and obsession over her misfortunes—a paranoid form of self-analysis that perpetually places her in a hostile and threatening universe. This acute psychosis almost seems like her very reason for living. Her motto, fittingly, is: “a heart that hurts is a heart that works” (Universal Heartbeat).

After recording the album, Hatfield had to be hospitalized to recover from the bouts of depression that had plagued her since childhood.

As a leading figure in intimate female rock, Hatfield found in the standard texts of her repertoire (Lament, Rain, Look Away, Out There, Temptation Eyes, Everybody Loves Me But You, Lost And Saved, For The Birds, A Dame With A Red) the perfect form to translate the private diaries of the “riot grrrls” into music. Her work consists of private fantasies of youth (fantasy, not lived experience) that employ adolescent slang and mix bittersweet tones, favoring—mysteriously, since they are, by her own admission, purely fantasies—the gray shades of acrimony and disappointment. Her oeuvre is a sort of imagined autobiography, yet all emphasis is on the hostility of the surrounding world. Hatfield is the obsessed and fearful adolescent reacting to the messages amplified daily by the media (from innocent seduction to street rape).

Her musical stature does not depend on the absence of rock star charisma, nor even on extraordinary vocal talent. Her modestly gifted voice, however, carries the spirit (if not the range) of great blues singers. Her image and music make her an anti-Madonna (at twenty-six she repeatedly stated that she was still a virgin), one who shuns multimedia spectacle, erotic exhibitionism, and grandiose arrangements; she avoids anything that might be provocation or outrage—and perhaps for that very reason, she ends up being the most provocative and outrageous of her generation.

Hatfield also recorded an entire album of new material, God's Foot (1996), that was never released.

She returned with a mere EP, Please Do Not Disturb (Zoe, 1997). No matter how much rock and roll sarcasm and anger she packs in Sellout and Give Me Some of That, she fares much better when she is both tender and tragic, as in Trying Not to Think About It and Get Off. As If Your Life Depended On It feels like one Lisa Germano's odes to loneliness.

Hatfield tries hard on Bed (Zoe, 1998) to play the role of a male, suicidal, post-punk James Dean. Heavy guitar riffs propel Down On Me and the catchy Bad Day. The suicide fantasy Swan Song has terrible and memorable lyrics. But she still can't resist the power-pop of I Want To Want You (the title is not the only thing that recalls Cheap Trick) and she still hasn't figured out the role of her voice's breathy register, her main gift but also her main liability in low-key, half-whispered ballads like Sneaking Around, Backseat, and the acoustic Running Out.

Juliana Hatfield came out of the tunnel a changed person. A new solo album, Beautiful Creature (Zoe, 2000), a new band, the Juliana's Pony, that debuted with Total System Failure (Zoe, 2000), and a Blake Babies reunion album, launched a new stage of her life and her career. The solo album is a quintessential Juliana Hatfield autobiography, a little too whiny, a little too verbose. When she was a rare "virgin", her stories had a metaphysical quality that could appeal to an entire generation. Now that she's one of the many aging liberated women dealing with her tormented relationships, she can appeal mainly to her prospective psychiatrists. There are thousands of songwriters who write bare songs like Daniel and When You Loved Me. Only a couple of tracks (Somebody Is Waiting For Me and Might Be In Love) hark back to Become What You Are's punchier and fresher style. If you take her sexy, girlish voice away, Cry In The Dark sounds like Mariah Carey without the arrangements, and Don't Rush Me is mainstream pop.

The band album, Total System Failure (Zoe, 2000), stands up much firmer and stronger than her solo album. Bassist Mikey Welsh and drummer Zephan Courtney propel Hatfield into a raging mood that is a welcome change in her career. Metal Fume Fever and Let's Get Married could be leftovers from Only Everything. But the last thing she wants to be is a living ghost: Hatfield is clearly trying to leave her past behind, like she has been doing most of her life. There may be a limit to how far she can run.

The Blake Babies reunion album, God Bless The Blake Babies (Zoe, 2001), is mainly a showcase for Hatfield's vastly improved vocal style (Disappear, What Did I Do, Waiting For Heaven). Do not be misled by the credits: this is a Juliana Hatfield album. It has little or nothing in common with classic Blake Babies.

Feel It (Koch, 2003) is the debut album of Some Girls, which is Juliana Hatfield, Freda "Love" Boner and Heidi Gluck.

Juliana Hatfield's In Exile Deo (Zoe, 2004) marks, finally, a return to the melodic/rocking combination of Only Everything, particularly with Get in Line, Tourist, Sunshine. The ballads (Forever, My Enemy) reenact the self-indulgent, "whining" part of her career in a more mature voice, but they still detract from her (still under-utilized) potentialities. The overall mood is, finally, optimistic, as if Hatfield had finally left behind her teenage depression.

By the time Made In China (Ye Olde, 2005) came out, the times had dramatically changed since Hatfield first surfaced as an icon of college-pop. However, Hatfield still pretended that she had not aged, and that the world around her had not aged. Her protagonists still roamed the same teenage world, and recited the same delusional roles. Her playing and her singing had changed only in that she allowed more spontaneity and shunned the studio perfection of the previous album. Otherwise, she did everything she could to create a dejavu impression in an almost suicidal way. That said, this is her heaviest, loudest and fuzziest album, notable mainly for Rats in the Attic and especially Stay Awake.

The bitter autobiographical How To Walk Away (2008) presented Hatfield as an adult woman who converted to mainstream pop (Shining On). One has to wait until the very last song (Law of Nature) to hear the Hatfield of the early days.

Peace and Love (Ye, Olde, 2010) was entirely self-produced and self-played, and in a very minor key, a sort of personal catharsis.

There's Always Another Girl (2011) continued to play the young woman confessing her troubles (and in a style remarkably closer to the one of her classic days) but with a bit more bite and wit than on the two previous albums. The trouble with this stage of her career is that she had very little to say that was relevant to the new world, and she didn't even say it in a very musical manner. She was a relic from another era. To her credit, she did not pretend otherwise.

Juliana Hatfield released the mostly acoustic concept Wild Animals (2013).

Nada Surf's frontman Matthew Caws and Juliana Hatfield formed Minor Alps that debuted with Get There (2013).

Whatever My Love (2015) was a reunion of the Three after 20 years but yielded only one remarkable song, Invisible.

She and Paul Westerberg of the Replacements launched the project The I Don't Cares with the album Wild Stab (2016).

Pussycat (2017), mostly a protest album, focused on the angry sneering punkette of Short-Fingered Man and I Wanna Be your Disease, with standouts like the poppy (and gross) political satire of Kellyanne and the nonpolitical Wonder Why.

Weird (2019) is too much about the lyrics and too little about the music, and only All Right Yeah deserves to be remembered.

Sings Olivia Newton-John (2018) is an album of Police covers, and Sings the Police (2019) is an album of Police covers.

For the first 15 minutes Blood (2021), on which she played most of the instruments, ranks as one of the melodic peaks of her career, aptly combined with a punkish attitude. The Shame of Love is catchy grunge-rock that is also heavy and dissonant, an unlikely blend of Nirvana, Kyuss, REM and Green Day. Chunks is another example of rock that is both noisy and hummable, and Had a Dream is a neurotic boogie. Gorgon is a childish singalong with power-pop hooks. Nightmary sounds like a Beatles medley, from Get Back to Abbey Road. Alas, the other half of the album is a letdown, with Hatfield entering with less inspiration her depressed introspective mode (the anti-anthemic Dead Weight, the psychological ballad Torture). Over the years Hatfield has always been more interesting when she was angry, in Bed, Total, Made in China and Pussycat, than when she plays the shy introverted, and this album tries to find a compromise, but it works only for a few songs.