Which songs did Janis Joplin actually write?
From an early age, Janis Joplin knew what it felt like to be an outcast.
While this was often the ideal fodder for being a singer-songwriter, it usually meant she was on the receiving end of the industry’s judgmental eye. Being the quintessential tortured poet, a term often romanticised in today’s world, Joplin’s craft was defined by her own loneliness, her unkempt demeanour and off-kilter presence on stage, her raspy vocals a true signifier of the misery that seeped through onto the surface.
“I can’t write a song unless I’m really traumatic, emotional, and I’ve gone through a few changes, I’m very down,” Joplin once told Rolling Stone. “No one’s ever gonna love you any better, and no one’s gonna love you right.” At the time, she was talking about how ‘Kozmic Blues’ was about how, “no matter what you do, you get shot down anyway”.
Joplin carried this hefty sense of resignation in her expression and posture. She was that kind of presence, a dark, looming figure whose eyes said it all. To some, she brought with her a sense of unease. To others, she was the ultimate genius, or someone whose performance was the ultimate portrayal of tragedy and trauma. But what’s different about Joplin, at least when compared to other tortured peers, is that she saw herself the exact same way as the world saw her.
Which almost always came across in her music. Joplin wasn’t the biggest songwriter, not by a long shot. In fact, she only penned a handful of her own songs, proving her main area of expertise to be her covers and bringing the words of others to life. But the ones she did write said more about her world than you could imagine – like ‘Kozmic Blues’, a devastating song inspired by her experiences never getting anything she wanted in life.
So, which songs did Janis Joplin write?
Along with ‘Kozmic Blues’, Joplin also wrote the first song she ever recorded, ‘What Good Can Drinkin’ Do’, quite literally about her woes stuck in a constant cycle of intoxication. ‘I Need a Man to Love’, ‘One Good Man’ and ‘Move Over’ continued her streak for looking for things she didn’t have or finding herself in the mix of messy endings and complicated rumination. ‘Turtle Blues’ tackles inward-reflecting independence, while ‘Intruder’ looks at all the things people got wrong about Joplin herself, and how they wanted to come into her life and change everything about her.
‘Women Is Losers’ seems to be one of her most misunderstood tracks, but its premise is actually simple, and one many of us see and experience every day. In the song, she looks at how, often, for men, it’s easy to land on top, while for women, things look starkly different. In Joplin’s world, she knew this disparity well, as did the countless songwriters who came before and after and had to face up to the industry’s unjust prejudices.
However, one of Joplin’s best, by far, is ‘Mercedes Benz’. Co-written with Bob Neuwirth and based on the poem by Michael McClure, the song captures the countercultural zeitgeist by criticising capitalism with stark, direct lyrical precision. It also seemed to fall out of Joplin when the world needed to hear it the most, as recalled by Patti Smith, who once said she’d sang the first line randomly one day, which caused those around to launch into an impromptu singing session.
