Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford have been composing fine music and lyrics for the theater and for just plain singing for a long time, and now, suddenly, people are beginning to listen to them. They started too soon, before women's experience was accepted as the stuff of hit songs, and so they had to wait. And wait. But now the waiting may be over.

Their newest record, "Cryer and Ford: You Know My Music" … has lyrics so timely (mostly by Cryer) and music so appealing (mostly by Ford) that it should make people look for their earlier album, "Cryer and Ford" …; between them, they contain all the thematic music that American feminism needs to keep it singing for a generation….

Their music is made of the vast experience they have been through: joblessness, love affairs, failure (their musical, Shelter, which didn't stay long on the boards) and success...