A San Francisco songwriter whose labor anthems and pointed folk songs documented decades of struggle.
For a quick sense of her range, listen to 'Little Boxes' and then something like 'I've Got a Song.' One is a wry observation that stuck in the culture; the other is a more direct, personal statement about why she kept writing.
Her song 'Little Boxes' became a cultural shorthand for suburban conformity, but that was just one piece of a much larger catalog. She wrote for the labor movement in the 1940s, pieces like 'Everybody Talks About Mine Mill,' and kept recording pointed folk songs into the 1970s. Her outspoken nature on social issues led to government surveillance and blacklisting, which tells you something about the kind of truth she was singing.
Born in San Francisco in 1900 to socialist parents, she wrote her first song at age twelve. By the early 1940s she was writing for the labor movement, and her debut album 'Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth' arrived in 1958. She kept writing and recording through the early 1970s, with albums like 'The Struggle' and 'There's a Hole in the Bucket.'
Keep it compact: a lyric you come back to, a live memory, or the part of the catalog you would point someone toward first.
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