50 Years of Music: 1986 – Throwing Muses - "Hate My Way"

As KEXP celebrates its 50th anniversary, we're looking back at the last half-century of music. Each week in 2022, KEXP pays homage to a different year and our writers are commemorating with one song from that year that resonates with them. This week, Janice Headley reflects on teenage angst and the 1986 Throwing Muses song "Hate My Way." Read or listen to the piece below.

From the very first opening seconds of the Throwing Muses song “Hate My Way,” it resonated. A forceful stomp, like a petulant brat, which I was — as an angsty teenager, when I first discovered this song, or as Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh was when she wrote it.

Hersh was only 14-years-old when she convinced her stepsister Tanya Donelly to start a band with her. They recruited their Rogers High classmates Leslie Langston and David Narcizo to fill out the line-up. By 1984, they self-released their first EP on cassette, which led to producer Gary Smith of Fort Apache Studios recommending them to Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the highly-esteemed 4AD Records who released Throwing Muses’ self-titled (or untitled, depending on who you ask) debut album in 1986. Hersh was still only 19 by the time it was released.

I was around 16-years-old when I first discovered Throwing Muses. I remember sitting in my high school art class with my Walkman on, listening to their music so loudly that Kristin’s anguished yet girlish voice was bleeding out from behind those flimsy foam headphones. My teacher would lightly tap my shoulder as she strolled past my table, our code for “turn down your music now.” (This happened so frequently, she didn’t even need to bother verbalizing it.)

I hated high school. I hated Texas, where we lived and where I completely did not fit in. I hated the bleached-blonde cheerleader clichés and the dumb jocks who would taunt me in between classes. I hated the “ropers,” a lesser-known high school clique named for the cowboy-types at my school who roped cows and/or wore a brand of jeans called “Ropers.” They would harass me, too. And I hated the so-called “teachers” who were actually football coaches. They would push “play” on a VHS of the Kevin Costner movie Dances with Wolves and call that “educating.” 

I hated a lot back then, but I loved music. And I loved Throwing Muses. I admired how they never let their age nor gender hold them back, not even when faced with a male-dominated music scene. Their defiance of societal norms and embrace of DIY was something I could (and still do) relate to. 

It doesn’t even matter that the lyrics in "Hate My Way" are actually a conglomeration of ideas: a shooting in 1984 at a San Diego McDonalds, a goofy guy with a mohawk Kristin met who was handing out pamphlets about killing God. To me, that song encapsulates the angst I felt, trapped in tiny-town Texas, feeling isolated and misunderstood by anyone outside of my cassette player. The frustration, as pounded out by the drums in the song’s first few seconds. The way Kristin’s voice would alternate between sweet and childlike to furious and fed-up, just like my own teenage mood swings. I mentioned this to Kristin when I interviewed her for KEXP back in 2010. 

“That's perfect!,” she enthused. “That's my goal as a songwriter, is for you to have adopted that music as your soundtrack. The songs aren't finished until I give them away.”

With “Hate My Way,” Throwing Muses has given me the anthem for my adolescence.