While herd is the most common collective noun for horses, a group of horses is also called a harras. So now I am going to ‘harras’ you with some more ‘Horse’ related songs all performed by women.
“Dead Horse” is a song by Hayley Williams in which she sings about betrayal and everything that led to her divorce, including the affair she saw herself in. She talks about the shame she has been carrying for over 10 years in this poppy track, which after writing, she felt embarrassed to release; she told the New York Times: I came close to stifling my creative process because I didn’t want to live up to those expectations of what it looks like when a female leaves a band and makes a project on her own. It was included on her 2020 album Petals for Armour.
“Dead Horse” is the final song on the ‘Reap What You Sow’ EP by Rachel Croft. She says that “It is the most fun to play, and seems to be the favourite on the whole EP according to most people I’ve asked. It’s full of energy, and I had the greatest time layering my voice about 25 times for the choir at the end on the original track – though I don’t think it misses it too much in this live version! I wouldn’t profess to be much of a guitarist, so my voice is where I can be my most creative, with harmonies in particular, but also recreating instrument parts with voice too, which you might have heard in some of the other tracks. Dead Horse is about an unsavoury bunch I had the misfortune to meet once, who in a nutshell, destroyed my creativity and thickened my skin considerably with their actions”
“Guns and Horses” is a song by English singer and songwriter Ellie Goulding from her debut studio album, Lights (2010). The song was released digitally and physically in May 2010 as the album’s third single. It reached No.26 in the UK. The music video for “Guns and Horses” was directed by Petro and filmed at Griffith Park in Los Angeles in March 2010. It was shot by director of photography Adam Frisch. It premiered on YouTube in April 2010. The video shows Goulding walking around a forest finding male and female soldiers, and horses. As it gets to the chorus the soldiers become her backing dancers. In each verse, Goulding keeps on walking through the forest, and on the last verse, she finds some flowers. At the end of the music video, Goulding turns the camera around revealing the production of the shoot. In the video, the female soldiers are wearing white leotards in the style of soldiers, and the male soldiers wear the same, but without leotards. Goulding is wearing a checkered shirt and leggings.
“Horse and I” is the opening track on the 2006 album ‘Fur and Gold’ by Natasha Khan otherwise known as Bat For Lashes. The idea came to Natasha in a dream while she was working as a nursery school teacher. Inspired by tales of Joan of Arc, Natasha is woken by a black horse at the window and sent on a fateful quest. Natasha Khan told Uncut that when she recorded Fur and Gold, she found it restricting singing in a vocal booth. The songstress added: “I took a 50-foot lead into the forest and sang the lead for ‘Horse and I’ – at the start you can hear the rain on the leaves, the crackle of branches.”
“Horse’s Mouth,” is a song by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. The song is the third unveiled from the band’s album, ‘Hunter And The Dog Star‘, which was released in February 2019 via Thirty Tigers. The album features eleven new tracks which debuted to critical acclaim. Of the song, American Songwriter praises, “Upbeat and empowering at the exact time we need a song to lift our spirits, it is at once vibrantly new while also resounding with the timeless vibe of a classic R&B hit,” while The Dallas Morning News declares, “a funky mid-tempo rocker steeped in ‘70s pop and vintage Lou Reed.”
