...if you follow the stereotype, if you're a woman, you're meant to be sexy and beautiful. She was that, but people saw her nose ring and chain and could never get that out of their heads. It was as if she was nothing more than the funky white woman with a chain.

I do remember that she was called "the female Prince", because she played a wide range of instruments, did a lot of her own vocal tracks, wrote her material, even had a hand in production. But how does one become "the female Prince" when you're also on the same record label as Prince?

In a lot of ways, what Jane Child did with her music either:
1) did not fix expectations for her
2) was too much

The industry was, and still is, very much about sticking you in a box and keeping you there. Everyone wanted multiple versions of Paula Abdul. When Soul II Soul had hits, everyone wanted to have a bit of British soul. Child's perceived "freaky" factor was not what she wanted to push, this was just her. That ended up hurting her, and her second album was a flop. Since she was self-contained, she could have been pushed towards the "alternative" side, but "alternative" back then represented Bjork, Pixies, and every other college radio favorite. Child was soulful, but didn't "look" the part. She put together pop craftsmanship, but she didn't "look" like someone who deserved pop accolades. She was edgy, but not as edgy as someone with "indie cred".

To be honest, Warner Bros. did not know how to handle an artist like her. She had two hits from that album, and "Welcome To The Real World" was and still is a great song. Someone like her with that album could have easily had four to five hits. Jane Child was very much a part of her own rhythm nation, but a nation that involved her own talent, and no one was ready to hear something so moving by someone who actually wrote it. If you wrote and played your own material, you're supposed to look like Tracy Chapman. The ears do wonders, but they were pushing what you should be looking at, and unfortunately it was Warner Bros. who failed, not her.





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