Unfairly forgotten song #10: Girls With Guns by Tommy Shaw

I'm not gonna lie:  what made me think of this was a comment by politician who stated, "I’m all in favor of girls with guns who know their purpose."

How could this child of the 80s not think of Tommy Shaw?

Tommy Shaw, as most students of pop music history probably know, was the lead guitarist for Styx through the late 70s and early 80s but left the group due to dissatisfaction with the direction in which other members wanted to take the band.  (Meh, go look it up on Wikipedia.*)

Mr. Shaw's first solo album, which came to mind after I heard the statement above, was called "Girls With Guns", and its title track was Mr. Shaw's only Top 40 solo appearance, spending a grand total of three weeks on the Top 40 charts and peaking at #33 on November 17, 1984, before falling completely out of the Top 40 the following week.  All in all, it spent 12 weeks in the Hot 100.

(Tommy Shaw's debut solo album, Girls With Guns, peaked at #50 on the Billboard 200.)

It should be noted that, as I and others (such as "cassiemay10" over at SongMeanings.net) understand it, Mr. Shaw was writing not necessarily about girls carrying actual guns, but about strong, independent women. (It should be noted that in a comment on the original version of this post, Cassie May commented: "I agree; this is an unfairly forgotten song. 'Girls With Guns' is a great song, and an overall pretty good album.")

An interesting trait about the video for this track is that it is all one take; there are no cuts, which is quite different from the frenetic editing seen in most videos that I've ever watched.  Last I checked, it was pretty easy to find on YouTube.

And, as usual, I have never heard this song on the radio in the past 20 years apart from "Crap From the Past".



*Note:  some information on this blog comes from the always-reliable Wikipedia; as such, its veracity may be questionable.