One of the paradoxes of pop music is that a technically weak voice can deliver a vocal performance that conventionally “great” singers can’t touch or improve upon. There’s no better example than Vanity 6’s 1982 hit “Nasty Girl,” in which lead singer Vanity (Denise Matthews) purrs, sneers and snarls her way through the song’s risqué lyrics – “That’s right, I can’t control it / I need seven inches or more… get it up, get it up, I can’t wait anymore.” The exotically funky, Prince-written and produced track ends with the most brutal emasculation as Vanity sniffs, “Is that it? / Wake me when you’re done / I guess you’ll be the only one having fun.” This is not a song that calls for textured, gospel-trained vocals.
As with a large number of girl-groups throughout pop history, Vanity 6 was the product of male imagination – the male in this case being Prince. According to pop lore, after meeting Vanity and deciding she’d be the perfect frontwoman for the all-women trio he was putting together, Prince wanted to rename her “Vagina.” She refused that name, suggesting “Vanity” instead. (Other versions of the story claim “Vanity” was also Prince’s idea, his second-choice after the first was shot down. The group’s original name was The Hookers.) Though the sexually empowered pop femmes of today are often deemed daughters of Madonna (and in most ways most are,) Vanity 6’s eponymous debut album of unbridled, unapologetic female lust and sexual empowerment dropped a year before Madonna’s debut, which was positively tame in comparison. And the trio rocked lingerie as stage-wear long before cone bras were a gleam in Madonna’s (and Gaultier’s) eyes.
The group’s influence on R&B women singers and musicians of the ‘80s was enormous, and manifested in countless ways – ushering in a sexual revolution that forced many R&B singers of the day to awkwardly sex up their music and image. (Angela Bofill’s “Too Tough” is just one example.) And in music mecca Detroit, where Prince was selling out major venues following his very first album, and was thus a God, his protégés the Time and Vanity 6 were megastars from jump, revamping the local music scene and influencing fashion. Countless teen girls rocked Vanity’s key earring, and took to wearing camisoles under tuxedo jackets like their new heroine. And just as Beyonce, Rihanna, and Nikki Minaj float the dreams of many young queer boys, Vanity 6’s frank sexuality and its lack of victimhood made them idols for a lot of queer youth back in the day.
Vanity 6 were a rebooting of the girl-group as sprung from the mind of a horny, preternaturally gifted man with complicatedly racialized and retro gender politics. As such they were fantastic and fucked up in equal measure. (It’s always an interesting look into the minds of straight male artists to see what women inhabit their unrestricted imaginations.) Vanity was the core, the one who immediately grabbed your eye and then disemboweled you with her feline voice and Prince-penned lyrics. (In the “Soul Train” clip below, the late Don Cornelius introduces the group by saying they wrote and produced their album. That’s pure PR. Prince wrote the album, co-writing two tracks with members of the Time, and produced the whole thing.) Brenda was the white butch femme whose eyes stayed full of disdain, and whose demeanor was, “I have killed muthafuckas, so you really don’t want to fuck with me.” And Susan was the Lolita of the group, baby girl with ass hanging out and teddy bear in tow. That shit would not fly today. The trio only made the one funk & New Wave album (highlights: “Nasty Girl,” “Makeup,” and “If a Girl Answers”) before disbanding, and then regrouping with lackluster Appollonia in the lead. (Brenda absolutely kills the track “Blue Limousine” on the Appollonia 6 LP, by the way.)
A professional falling out with Prince led to Vanity backing out of the movie Purple Rain (which would have been immeasurably better – an entirely different film – had she and not the beautiful but bland Appollonia been the female lead) and embarking on a solo career. That included music which still bore the imprint of Prince (the albums Wild Animal and Skin on Skin; minor hit singles “Pretty Mess,” “Under the Influence,” and “Mechanical Emotion”) and films that have become cult favorites (The Last Dragon; Action Jackson.) Her addiction to crack cocaine in the ‘90s took a toll on her health, resulting in kidney failure. Health issues eventually led to her becoming a born-again Christian with her own Evangelical ministry. News reports say her death Monday was due to kidney failure and a long standing abdominal illness.
What was notable about Vanity was the way that she, like other women whose force of personality allowed them to transcend the male fantasies that launched their careers, outstripped the prescribed fantasy. (Ronnie Spector immediately comes to mind.) Prince has said that Vanity was the female version of him, and that was what drew him to her. (Diana Ross and Berry Gordy come to mind.) That’s not to make the argument that Vanity was in the same league or has the same cultural stature or importance as Spector or Ross; not at all. But she was an incredibly magnetic woman who more than brought to life the femme who’d begun existence in Prince’s color-struck fantasies and in many ways she trumped him; that’s no small thing. Vanity, in Denise Matthew’s hands, was a sex vixen brutally cold and incredibly sensual all at once. Her humor was wicked and biting, sometimes cruel. She promised sexual experiences that would change your life, but she would drop you in a heartbeat if you bored her or were less than satisfactorily endowed. She was raunchy, funny, and in many ways – for all her cartoonish outlines – much more human than many femme pop stars today who crib costumes and aesthetics from sex workers (nothing wrong with that except it’s become a boring uniform,) sing formulaic anthems of empowerment, and have all the sexual heat of aging CEOs, despite the flesh on display.
The beautiful biracial Denise Matthews was very much a figure of fetish, of the projected “exotic” sexuality that has long dogged mixed-race women, especially those who are both black and white. The subtext of her public persona was about wrestling the myths of the mulatta, navigating outlandish sexual expectations and projected myths without succumbing to the narrative’s preordained tragic ending. But she sometimes unthinkingly threw herself in choppy racial waters. She caused a major controversy when interviewed by Joan Rivers in the mid-eighties about her role in the 1980 film Tanya’s Island, in which one of her co-stars was a gorilla. When asked by Rivers how she broke the news to her mother that she was acting opposite a gorilla, Matthews replied that her [white] mother was fine with it because, “She was into gorillas. She married my father and he’s black.” The media firestorm that followed put a dent in her career from which she never fully recovered, especially amongst black fans, though she tried to exculpate herself later in an interview with Jet magazine. Her lone, brief marriage (after many high-profile relationships) was to African American football player Anthony Smith.
No, her thin, piercing voice wasn’t one of the great underrated instruments of our time, and her music – while full of genuinely funky tracks – isn’t really mandatory listening. But she had genuine star quality, and used it to co-create a character she isn’t given enough credit for and whose uncharted DNA swims through a host of today’s pop divas.
Vanity 6 in concert. Vanity up front, Brenda in the back.
