Style DiFranco's guitar playing is often characterized by a signature
staccato style, rapid
fingerpicking and many alternate tunings. She delivers many of her lines in a speaking style notable for its rhythmic variation. Her lyrics, which often include
alliteration,
metaphor,
word play and a more or less gentle
irony, have also received praise for their sophistication. Although DiFranco's music has been classified as both
folk rock and
alternative rock, she has reached across genres since her earliest albums incorporating first punk, then funk, hiphop, and jazz influences. While primarily an acoustic guitarist she has used a variety of
instruments and styles:
brass instrumentation was prevalent in 1998's
Little Plastic Castle; a simple
walking bass in her 1997 cover of
Hal David and
Burt Bacharach's "
Wishin' and Hopin';
strings on the 1997 live album
Living in Clip and 2004's
Knuckle Down; and electronics and synthesizers in 1999's
To the Teeth and 2006's
Reprieve. DiFranco has stated that "folk music is not an acoustic guitar – that's not where the heart of it is. I use the word 'folk' in reference to
punk music and
rap music. It's an attitude, it's an awareness of one's heritage, and it's a community. It's subcorporate music that gives voice to different communities and their struggle against authority."
Musical collaborations, cover versions, and samples DiFranco has collaborated with a wide range of artists. In 1997, she appeared on Canadian songwriter
Bruce Cockburn's
Charity of Night album. In 1998, she produced fellow folksinger
Dan Bern's album
Fifty Eggs. She developed a deep association with folksinger and social activist
Utah Phillips throughout the mid-1990s, sharing her stage and her audience with the older musician until his death in 2008 and resulting in two collaborative albums: ''
The Past Didn't Go Anywhere (1996) and Fellow Workers (1999, with liner notes by Howard Zinn). The Past'' is built around Phillips's storytelling, an important part of his art that had not previously been documented on recordings; on the album, DiFranco provides musical settings for his speaking voice.
Prince recorded two songs with DiFranco in 1999, "Providence" on her
To the Teeth album, and "Eye Love U, But Eye Don't Trust U Anymore" on Prince's
Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic album. Funk and soul jazz musician
Maceo Parker and rapper Corey Parker have both appeared on DiFranco's albums and featured appearances by her on theirs. Parker and DiFranco toured together in 1999. She has appeared on several compilations of the songs of
Pete Seeger and frequented his
Hudson Clearwater Revival Festival. In 2001, she appeared on Brazilian artist
Lenine's album
Falange Canibal. In 2002, her rendition of
Greg Brown's "The Poet Game" appeared on ''Going Driftless: An Artist's Tribute to Greg Brown
. Also in 2002 she recorded a duet with Jackie Chan of the Irving Gordon song "Unforgettable" for a record of unlikely collaborations, When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear''. In 2005, she appeared on
Dar Williams' record
My Better Self, duetting on William's cover of
Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb". She performed with
Cyndi Lauper on "Sisters of Avalon" a track from Lauper's 2005
The Body Acoustic album. In 2006, she produced
Hamell on Trial's album
Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs. In 2008, she appeared on
Todd Sickafoose's album
Tiny Resisters. In 2010, she co-produced a track with
Margaret Cho called "Captain Cameltoe" for the comedian's
Cho Dependant album. In 2011, she appeared on
Rob Wasserman's album
Note of Hope, an exploration of the writings of
Woody Guthrie with musical accompaniment, though the track in which she appeared, "Voice", was actually recorded 13 years earlier. Also in 2011 she duetted with
Greg Dulli on the
Twilight Singers record
Dynamite Steps. Other artists have covered and sampled DiFranco's work throughout the years. Her spoken word poem "Self Evident" was covered by
Public Enemy founder
Chuck D's group called Impossebulls.
Alana Davis had some commercial success with DiFranco's song "
32 Flavors". Samples from the track "Coming Up" were used by
DJ Spooky in his album
Live Without Dead Time, produced for
AdBusters Magazine in 2003. In 2010, DiFranco played
Persephone on
Anaïs Mitchell's album
Hadestown. DiFranco was approached by Zoe Boekbinder to work on their
Prison Music Project, an album of collaborations between incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers and musicians on the outside. DiFranco co-produced the project with Boekbinder and co-wrote and performed "Nowhere but Barstow and Prison". The album
Long Time Gone was released on
Righteous Babe Records in 2020 after ten years in the making.
Lyrical content Although much of DiFranco's material is autobiographical, it is often also strongly political. Many of her songs are concerned with contemporary social issues such as
racism,
sexism,
sexual abuse,
homophobia,
reproductive rights, poverty, and war. In 2008, she donated a song to
Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of the devastation done to Southeast Asia from the
2004 tsunami. The combination of personal and political is partially responsible for DiFranco's early popularity among politically active college students, particularly those of the left wing, some of whom set up fan pages on the
web to document DiFranco's career as early as 1994. DiFranco's rapid rise in popularity in the mid-1990s was fueled mostly by personal contact and word of mouth rather than
mainstream media. over the years, including, for example, providing all instrumentals and vocals and recording the album herself at her home on an analog 8-track
reel to reel, and handling much of the artwork and packaging design for her 2004 album
Educated Guess. She has referenced this independence from major labels in song more than once, including "The Million You Never Made" (
Not a Pretty Girl), which discusses the act of turning down a lucrative contract, "The Next Big Thing" (
Not So Soft), which describes an imagined meeting with a label head-hunter who evaluates the singer based on her looks, and "Napoleon" (
Dilate), which sympathizes sarcastically with an unnamed friend who did sign with a label. The business grew organically starting in 1990 with the first cassette tape. Connections were made when women in colleges started duplicating and sharing tapes. Offers to play at colleges started coming in and her popularity grew largely by word of mouth and through women's groups or organizations. Zango and Goldenrod, two music distributors specializing in women's music, started carrying DiFranco's music. They sold music to independent music stores and women's book stores. In 1995, Righteous Babe Records signed with
Koch International for DiFranco's release of
Not a Pretty Girl. Her records could then be found in large and small record stores alike. DiFranco has occasionally joined with
Prince in discussing publicly the problems associated with major record companies. Righteous Babe Records employs a number of people in her hometown of Buffalo. In a 1997 open letter to
Ms. magazine she expressed displeasure that what she considers a way to ensure her own artistic freedom was seen by others solely in terms of its financial success. ==Activism==