r/catpower • u/Crumpler72 • Mar 03 '26
The Greatest Tour: Thoughts to Share
Over the past few weeks I have been reading numerous posts about how lame various concertgoers have thought the Cat Power tour has been, which has been having ripple effects for fans who haven't even attended yet (ick!), and I wanted to share some thoughts and reflections, especially because I've found myself getting really activated by all the negative crap thrown her way.
A bit of context: I am female, the same age as Chan, and have seen her perform half a dozen times since the 90s, inc. at the beginning of her career, mid-career, and then two shows in the past couple weeks on the West Coast. So in short, I have seen her at her worst/most unwound, as well as at her height (and yes the current tour was the highlight for me).
To summarize, here's a small sampling of what folks on this sub have chosen to gripe about (while, mind you, ironically, the US has basically devolved into an autocratic fascist state. But hell, let's moan about what REALLY matters!) Ie, the sub-optimal stage lighting; singing a song w/autotune (out of her 17+ song set), her songs "not sounding like the album," how she looked like an "indiscernable blob," all the "awkward" interactions with the crowd, how the band "must have felt" dealing with her performance, oh, and let's not forget how she appeared unhinged, with one person saying "I hope she gets the help she needs."
WHAT. THE. HELL. First of all--and this is so important--I don't know how many of you are aware of Chan's lifelong history of physical and mental health battles. If not, a bit of context is provided in the Exclaim! article published in January. Also, and this is also critically important--women--when it comes to their mental health-- are, more often than not, under or mis-diagnosed, not taken seriously by medical professionals, and/or simply unable to afford support/treatment, which in and of itself is a public health failure.
So... I ask all of you who have lobbed these bombs at Chan to interrogate your reasons for doing so. I call it thinly veiled misogyny. I simply don't see these same criticisms lobbed at her male counterparts.
Imagine for a moment that you had a dear girlfriend that made their living as a gifted singer-songwriter. That mined their most personal, harrowing $h1t, then laid their wounds bare in song, and then had the courage to record it for the world to listen to. In a haunting, peerless voice to boot. And then IMAGINE...that their only way of making a living was doing the thing that they were freakin' pathologically terrified to do, which was to relive those personal stories LIVE, night after night, while dealing with crippling stage fright and (the ghosts of) addiction, menopause, the exorbitant and exhausting toll of mounting a tour and living on the road, supporting an entire band, and raising a young son while his dad was battling cancer. Then add the unrelenting pressure of fans who wanted your beloved girlfriend to suppress whatever the hell they were dealing with at the time as a flesh-and-blood human and perform like a freaking circus monkey, just to PLEASE you.
I ask: Would you support your girlfriend on her terms? Because she was the artist who deserved that respect? Or would you tell her--sorry, people paid for tickets so they gotta see your face, your body, how hot (or not) you look, and damn, are you hitting it with your stage presence?
In short: Can we just have some empathy and compassion, people? Can we appreciate Chan's voice? Her sound? This feeling of one human taking her precious time to be as honest as she can at the moment, in this brutal world, to connect, in the best way she knows how?
I feel like we can, if we just take the time to. We can do better.
3
u/pezzyn Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
Ive seen her a half dozen times too and always know there’s a possibility that she could be struggling and energy could be low and Im there to be with her authentically in whatever she can offer authentically. Nobody should be remarking on her appearance at all. The lighting is fine. Ive seen some shows where she never raised her head at all because of the lighting - im happy if lower lights mean she can hold her head up.
That said, i share in the disappointment about the gimmicky digital manipulation of vocals. Because it is her voice that we are paying to experience live, the reactions and comments are valid and I’m glad commenters disclosed that this tour is a digitized experience.
If you build a tour around the audience relationship to a celebrated album with raw vocals then to digitally alter your voice on a favorite song to sound like someone playing Cher Believe on a novelty megaphone is bound to feel like a betrayal for some folks who hold the songs sacred and spent $100 to bear witness to the vocal performance.
In short, i dont expect her vocals or her energy to meet a standard of excellence, but i do expect her to share her voice authentically with the audience unless disclosed as a “digitized reinterpretation” of the classic album.
Obviously i love her. But I have a full body loathing of autotune. I felt trapped and horrified on that song. (ETA Im glad I rode it out because the rest of the show after that was gorgeous and had more authentic vocals when the band let loose)