“Here’s how I know you’re not in your twenties,” said a twentysomething friend. “Your music taste.” He began to list off singers in my musical wheelhouse, like Cyndi Lauper.
Since hitting my mid-30s, I’ve leaned in hard on listening to female singers of a certain age, including Kylie Minogue and Mariah Carey, both of which are still releasing new music, because I dig their experienced outlook on love and being single. It’s like having your aunt or older sister sing to you that love happens — and unhappens — at all ages, and there’s something soothing and hopeful about it. Plus, these women are hotter than ever, which gives you some aspirational aging goals.
And then one day, for no explicable reason, I entered a Bonnie Raitt phase, and it felt so right.
Maybe it was because I’ve always imagined Raitt’s voice as the inner voice of women, but suddenly she spoke to me. Her voice is rich with maturity, seasoned with heartbreak and resilience. I have always enjoyed her music — who doesn’t sing along to “Something to Talk About” when it comes on Spotify? — but I now had an urge to venture through her whole catalogue. I discovered she spoke to me because she speaks to not only women as they get older, but specifically single women. Even one of TV’s best displays of modern singledom, Liz Lemon, is a fan (Jack Donaghy…
