Every Joan Jett song should feature her barking out “Fuck you!” within the first fifteen seconds.

Jett was all over the radio when I first really started paying attention to it as something other than background the adults had on. With backing band the Blackhearts, her cover of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” was the number one song in the country for seven weeks in the spring of 1982 (originally recorded by the British band Arrows, Jett had taken an earlier pass at it in 1979, with no less than the Sex Pistols in tow). It was absolutely everywhere, heralding Jett as the likeliest breakthrough artist from the crumbled Runaways. While she had other Top 40 achievements, including a quick follow-up visit to the Billboard Top 10 with her take on a much covered Tommy James and the Shondells hit, “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” was the clear peak, the song she’d have to play for the rest of her life any time she got on stage.

By the early-to-mid-nineties, Jett was clearly trying to work out where she’d head as an artist, especially as Top 40 radio was beginning to show the first signs of hostility towards her brand of straightforward rock ‘n’ roll. Even though she’d been to the Top 10 again as recently as 1988, her new albums were already being tagged as potential comebacks. She seemed to be chasing a very particular, modern rock audience with her 1991 album, Notorious, which featured an opening track and lead single penned by Paul Westerberg. But commercial radio didn’t really have an ear for the songwriting of the Replacements frontman and college radio afforded little room for Jett. I’m not even entirely sure we were serviced with the record at the time.

The more interesting Jett album arrived in 1994. Pure and Simple was her first for Warner Bros. Records, which was snapping up all the cool kid artists, having released label bows for Elvis Costello and R.E.M., among others, within the prior half-decade or so. Jett had a revised lineup of Blackhearts behind her and the collaborative help of Kathleen Hanna, a clear of an heir apparent as a seasoned performer could have. I wouldn’t necessarily call the album great, but it is consistently interesting. And in those moments when Jett is seemingly goosed alive by her young punk collaborator, as is the case with “Spinster,” it’s pretty fabulous.

Listen or download –> Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, “Spinster”

(Disclaimer: To my untrained eyes, it appears that Pure and Simple is out of print. There are a big batch of Jett compilations out there, so it’s possible this track shows up on one of those I guess, though I don’t think it’s likely. Sadly, I don’t have a crack research team to help me out. My main point here is that I’m sharing this song in this space because I believe it to be something that cannot be purchased in a physical format from your favorite local, independently-owned record store in a manner that would duly compensate both the artist and the proprietor of said store. And Hanna, too, as a songwriter. Because I’m worried she might beat me up, a residual fear from her Bikini Kill height of fierceness.)