Invincible
Pat Benatar's Soundtrack hit
I had an absolute blast playing Tune Tag with Brad Kyle. One of the songs I used was Invincible and I want to do a deeper dive on it. There’s a Spyder in this one too! (That’s the nickname of Benatar’s partner in crime, the man behind her sound, and the source of those blistering guitar solos, Neil Giraldo)
One of the most amazing things about this song is that Benatar recorded it 3 months after giving birth under pressure from her label. From her biography Between a Heart and a Rock Place:
Invincible had come to us through our friend Holly Knight, who’d also written Love Is A Battlefield. She’d written the song for a film called The Legend of Billie Jean, and not long after Haley (her daughter with Giraldo) was born, she approached us to see if we were interested in recording it. In a perfect world, this opportunity would have come six months later, allowing me to settle into motherhood, but unfortunately it didn’t. I was just beginning to get a routine with Haley, figuring out how to avoid falling asleep on my feet. But there I was, back in the studio laying down vocals.
Nowadays it’s common to see singers have children, celebrate their motherhood, and still maintain their careers. (Hello Beyoncé!) This was the crap execs said to Benatar after she gave birth:
“No one wants to see a rocker who is someone’s mother. Mothers aren’t sexy.”
“You downplay this; no talking about the baby, no photos with the baby.”
“You need to make everyone forget it ever happened. You need to assure them that nothing’s changed. That you’re still the hard-core rocker girl you’ve always been.”
Quite frankly, she’s hardcore in just putting up with this BS. This is the soup out of which Invincible is born. I hear it in her vocals.
We can't afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It's a do-or-die situation
We will be invincible
I adore this woman and I highly recommend reading her book. It’s an important document to just how sexist the industry was. Things may be better but we only have to look at Taylor Swift’s sexual assault lawsuit to see that this stuff still goes on. She put up with so much and yet not only did she survive, she didn’t succumb to all the ways the industry tries to beat down their artists. She thriving and is now deservedly in the R&R Hall of Fame. (As is Giraldo - she refused to go in without him as she contends it was their partnership that made the music what it is.)
As for the video, this is what she says in the book.
When it came time to shoot the video, I hadn’t even lost all my pregnancy weight, and we ended up incorporating live performance footage with scenes from the film.
I love the symbolism. Benatar walks through a cave before singing with her band in partially built houses surrounded by fire. Setting her career on fire was what she was being told in becoming a mother, or marrying Giraldo for that matter, so seeing the symbolism here resonates. She doesn’t move much, which makes sense when you know she’s still postpartum. I can’t find the quote but I remember reading years ago that this shoot went into the night, as if she wasn’t exhausted enough.
As for the film, apparently it was bad but the premise is good. The lead character, Billie Jean, stands up to the bully who beat up her brother and tried to rape her, then goes on the lam when the bully lays charges against her. In telling her truth, she rallies others to stand up for what’s right. Benatar’s voice is perfect for this.
Ok, rant about sexism is over. Enjoy your song of the day!
Hey, Tune Tag pahdnah (hey, I'm from Texas)! I, too, really enjoyed our TT foray, especially as it ended up focusing on so many '80s artists! My pop culture "black hole" was from '83-'86, when I returned to college as a 30-year-old.
Those campus whippersnappers were running circles around me, academically, so in an effort to keep up, I had to all but shut off my supply of new and hit songs....I put off record/cassette/CD buying, radio was off limits, and TV? Forget it!
And, all this after (as is well-documented all over FRONT ROW & BACKSTAGE), I was firmly (and gleefully) plugged into all things pop culture for decades....records, rock, TV, movies, so "this college thing" forced me to go cold turkey, musically...there's so much I missed.
Tune Tag, among other fabulous benefits, helps me fill in that "black hole" with wonderful new-to-me music!
Check out the “Women Who Rock” documentary series on MGM+ if you haven’t seen it. There’s a fair bit of Pat talking about all the sexism and objectification she dealt with. The whole thing is really great.