Pat Benatar Boldly Walks Through The Wreckage

I don't usually play favorites when it comes to this blog but for today I'll make an exception because I'm spotlighting a true living legend, Pat Benatar, the woman who made my subscription to Billboard magazine worth the sticker shock. Time and again she has delivered. Her latest, "Dancing Through The Wreckage" adds a delicate layer to her astounding body of work. There's none of that balls on full blast sensibility of her earlier work. Here she's tackling the sad and completely unnecessary plight of homeless female veterans. The band flanking her knows the huge importance of the topic so it declares itself in hushed fashion. The drums pour down from above like shampoo lightly penetrating the hair shaft. Piano strikes the maternal note that all moms and daughters should be fortunate enough to have. Guitar gets toned down as well. But make no mistake, this track from the critically acclaimed film "Served Like a Girl" is a 100% Benatar production. Doesn't matter who she shares the soundtrack credits with (for the record that would be Gwen Stefani and Natasha Bedingfield among others). When Pat plays the mother hen card there's a not a woman alive who can challenge her supremacy. The voice of the 63 year-old has naturally obtained some added rasp over the years but that was what was pulse pounding about her in her salad days. She's had social gravitas back to the late '70s when she had to defend the child abuse tirade "Hell Is For Children" as not being a veiled reference to sending children to Hell. Being a mother of two has not lessened her fierceness one iota. The video's black and white appearace underscores how you can't put a Band-Aid on something like homeless female veterans. This is a wrong requiring concentrated boot strap pulling effort. Some of the lyrics very much mirror Pat's own struggles with Chrysalis Records which insisted she continue to play the goose that played the golden hits. The last line of chorus 1 hints that..."I was raised to always hold my head up high." The last line of Verse 2 sums up the story adeptly..."Even with the pain, beauty still remains inside." Pat doesn't have to do the heavy lifting but she still totes around the something to prove attitude and that's what makes her stand a cut above any number of pop princesses dotting the landscape. "Dancing Above The Wreckage" struts its substantial stuff with patriotic aplomb.