Friday Five: Jezebel

I’m no biblical scholar, but I’m vaguely familiar with the Old Testament figure of Jezebel. You know, Ahab’s wife–the painted Baal-worshiper who was defenestrated and eaten by dogs. (There’s a New Testament Jezebel too, but we’ll ignore her.) Over the years, poor Jezebel has become cultural shorthand for “manipulative skank.” This week we’ll be looking at songs about both versions of Jezebel: the woman in the Old Testament and the cultural symbol.

• 5. “Jezebel (LP Version)” – Iron & Wine

  If you’re not listening to the folk stylings of Iron & Wine, aka Sam Beam, aka Jamey Johnson’s brother in beardyness, you’re missing out. Here he takes a progressive view of the Old Testament figure, singing “Who’s seen Jezebel?/She was born to be the woman we could blame/Make me a beast half as brave/I’d be the same.”

• 4. “Sinful Daughter” – Dave Alvin

  Jezebel is just one of three Biblical women Alvin sings about here, women who’ve been “banished and branded, force to wander.” As always when it comes to Dave Alvin, there’s some badass guitar on this song. Co-writer Shannon McAnally does a lovely solo version below.

• 3. “Hey Jezebel” – Allison Moorer

  Moorer lays the verbal smackdown—and threatens a physical one—on a high-heeled hussy after her man on this alt-country toetapper. Well, I suppose if you mess with Steve Earle, you get what’s coming to you.

• 2. “Jezebel” – Gene Vincent

  The rockabilly luminary covered this Frankie Laine hit about a faithless lover for 1956 LP Blue Jean Bop. Vincent sure makes it sound like a pre-murder ballad, singing “if ever a pair of eyes promised paradise/Deceiving me, grieving me, leaving me blue/Jezebel it was you” with barely restrained menace.

• 1. “Jezebel” – Chely Wright

  “Jezebel,” the second single from 2001’s Never Love You Enough, topped out at #23 on the charts. The music video—which involves a voodoo doll and Wright in a series of bizarre, fringy, midriff-baring outfits, one of which includes a Carmen Sandiego-esque hat—definitely deserves watching, though it does raise one question: why does she forgive her straying man at the video’s end? After all, it takes two to do the Tempur-Pedic Tango.