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Tag: 90s songs

  • Tinashe Brings It On In Her Update to TLC’s “No Scrubs,” “No Broke Boys”

    Tinashe Brings It On In Her Update to TLC’s “No Scrubs,” “No Broke Boys”

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    Cardi B might have recently reiterated, “Broke boys don’t deserve no pussy (I know that’s right!),” but it was TLC who helmed that message best on one of their biggest singles, “No Scrubs,” from their FanMail album. Pointedly released in the weeks just before Valentine’s Day of 1999, the song caused an immediately polarizing reaction between the sexes. For women, it was a long overdue roasting of men who presumed that women should “bow down” simply because they were men. For the latter, it was their worst fear realized: the opposite sex not only calling them on their bullshit, but insisting they wouldn’t tolerate it anymore if there wasn’t even any money and associated lavishing to be had out of the deal.

    Thus, T-Boz, Chilli and Left-Eye changed womanhood forever with five simple words, “I don’t want no scrub.” The definition being a guy who’s “always talkin’ ‘bout what he wants and just sits on his broke ass.” Tinashe clearly took that message to heart (as much as Cardi B on the aforementioned “Up”) with “No Broke Boys,” her third single from Quantum Baby. Just how much is made apparent when she declares, “Run up the cost, ‘cause I need me a spender/Love is never really for free.” Such a transactional view of “love” almost makes it seem as if she watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes before writing those lines (and yes, she is blonde in the video).

    In contrast to her last music video and song, “Getting No Sleep,” Tinashe has opted to tap very much into her hetero side for this particular concept, even going full cheerleader in the accompanying visual, directed by Aerin Moreno (a frequent collaborator of Madison Beer’s). But more than just dressing in a cheerleader uniform, Tinashe seeks to evoke the vibe of 2000’s Bring It On, complete with her squad going pom-pom to pom-pom with a rival one. And the callback to that era makes sense considering how “00s hip hop/R&B” the backing track—co-produced by Zach Sekoff, Phoelix and Ricky Reed—sounds (it even has occasional tinges of Nivea’s “Don’t Mess With My Man”).

    Opening with the verse, “Ex on the line, just as I suspected/No one really gets over me/I’m unaffected, why would you try to ever put me second?/You just another groupie to me now,” there’s something in Tinashe’s tone that recalls Mýa, even though the sentiment isn’t “Case of the Ex,” so much as bearing a similarity to (again) Cardi B flexing, “I like texts from my exes when they want a second chance” on 2018’s “I Like It.” As for the Bring It On “codedness” (read: totally overt callback to said 00s masterpiece), Tinashe and co. appear on the football field and on the bleachers to perform their lively choreo with ample confidence.

    In one of the only scenes off the field, Tinashe—in the “costume” of a football player rather than a cheerleader (perhaps a subtle nod to her “swinging both ways”)—teaches her fellow women what she calls “Our Standards.” This done in a manner and mise-en-scène that also harkens back to another 00s movie: Mean Girls. Specifically, when Coach Carr (Dwayne Hill) warns his students in “health class,” “Don’t have sex. Because you will get pregnant and die.” Here, what Tinashe is ultimately saying to men is: Don’t be broke. Because you will be dead to me otherwise.

    As for the standards Tinashe lists for her own far more attentive pupils than the ones in Coach Carr’s class, they are: 1) Not broke, 2) Under 1K followers (an interesting “ask”), 3) Big dick, 4) Not a DJ/promoter, 5) Six inches (or “6’s”) minimum, 6) Good with his hands and 7) Emotionally available. Not just a lot to require of any “modern” man, but additionally rather cliched and outmoded at this point in terms of conveying a stereotype about “what women want.” Nonetheless, as her squad takes notes, even the team led by the other head cheerleader (the one who looks like a version of Megan Fox in the earlier stages of her plastic surgery) has to stop and pay attention. So on board with the list, in fact, that they even put aside their differences/competitiveness long enough for them to nod in agreement, smile and infiltrate the class.

    During the “big finish” of the video, the two groups join in together on their presently shared choreography, having found peace and common ground through this understanding of the “no scrubs” code that has, evidently, been updated to “no broke boys.” A concept Destiny’s Child also spoke to on “Bills Bills Bills,” which, incidentally, was released the same year as “No Scrubs”—but the former put their single out in May of 1999, two months after “No Scrubs” had already caused shock and delight around the world (though mainly in the United States, where a “response song” like “No Pigeons” “had to be” released in order to “keep women in check,” or some such bullshit male logic).   

    But Tinashe actually succeeds more deftly than Destiny’s Child at distilling and repurposing what TLC already said, refreshing their message with the upbeat chorus, “No broke boys, no new friends/I’m that pressure, give me my tens/Ain’t no lie, ain’t no shade/Fuck on me, then you know he paid/Looks so good, makes no sense/Bad ass bitch, with my bad ass friends/No broke boys, ain’t no shade/Fuck on me, then you know he paid.” All sung in a very “cheerleader chant” sort of way.

    By the final frame of the video, however, Tinashe is walking all alone down the fifty-yard line—yet another indication that she’d rather be a “lone” wolf/cheerleader than settle for some dusty football player who’s going to end up as a used car salesman rather than a Travis Kelce. Hey, no one ever said capitalism and “love” weren’t inextricably linked. Least of all TLC.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Week of Laying to Rest a Feud Remixes: “The Boy Is Mine” and “Girl, so confusing”

    The Week of Laying to Rest a Feud Remixes: “The Boy Is Mine” and “Girl, so confusing”

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    In what is perhaps a “sign o’ the times” for the world of pop, the week in music has offered an overarching theme that centers on “laying to rest feuds.” Or, as Junior LaBeija would put it, “Category is: ‘laying to rest feuds.’” Ariana Grande and Charli XCX are weirdly in sync about this topic, for both pop stars have seen fit to put out remixes that are decidedly “bury the hatchet”-chic. In Grande’s case, the “burial” comes in the form of a remix of her latest single, “the boy is mine,” and in Charli’s, it’s another arbitrary remix (like “360” featuring Robyn and Yung Lean) from Brat: “Girl, so confusing.” The latter features Lorde, one of the public figures that Charli was speculated to be singing about on the track (the other was MARINA). 

    Indeed, Brat is an album all about trying to tame the green-eyed monster (hence Charli coming up with the shade that will henceforth be called “Brat green”)…or at least subdue it slightly into submission. And even Taylor Swift appears to be a source of inspiration for Charli’s insecurity flare-ups, as evidenced by another song on the record, “Sympathy is a knife.” On this particular track, XCX confesses, “I don’t wanna share the space/I don’t wanna force a smile/This one girl taps my insecurities/Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling.” Or if the media is a key force in fueling these types of anxieties. After all, Brandy and Monica represented one of the earliest modern examples (following Madonna and Cyndi Lauper—though there wasn’t ultimately much of a comparison there) of how various outlets relish reporting on so-called rivalries between two “similar” female artists. In the wake of Brandy and Monica, there would be Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey (though that’s still a pretty real feud…for Mariah), Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry (fueled by Taylor herself), Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter—and many others in between. Including, of course, Charli XCX and Lorde. 

    While the two have never shared an outright feud in the same way as Brandy and Monica, who were more openly pitted against one another during a time when there was hardly as much space for Black female musicians to thrive (not that there’s all that much now either), there was always a little bit of resentment there. More openly on Charli’s part perhaps…particularly as she was the one who had to deal with being mistaken for Lorde during the Pure Heroine era despite having been in the music game long before the New Zealander traipsed into town (so to speak) with the automatic hit that was 2013’s “Royals.” So it is that Charli pulls no punches when she admits on the song, “Yeah, I don’t know if you like me/Sometimes I think you might hate me/Sometimes I think I might hate you/Maybe you just wanna be me/You always say, ‘Let’s go out’/So we go eat at a restaurant/Sometimes it feels a bit awkward/‘Cause we don’t have much in common.” Save for the crippling sense of self-doubt that even the most successful of women can’t seem to shake. 

    In the revamped version of the song, Lorde responds to these specific lyrics with, “You’d always say, ‘Let’s go out’/But then I’d cancel last minute/I was so lost in my head/And scared to be in your pictures/‘Cause for the last couple years I’ve been at war in my body/I tried to starve myself thinner/And then I gained all the weight back/I was trapped in the hatred/And your life seemed so awesome/I never thought for a second/My voice was in your head.”

    This deeply personal addition to the song layers it with the exact message Charli was talking about when she told The Guardian, “Relationships between women are super-complex… You can like someone and dislike them at the same time; you can have the best time of your life on a night out with someone but not be that close to them at all.” Lorde has fallen into the former category for XCX, mainly as a result of the Brat green-eyed monster affecting her feelings toward the fellow acclaimed singer. Ironically enough, though, in the same interview, Charli insists that female rivalry in the entertainment industry has died down compared to previous decades, remarking, “We’ve got past the point of the media always pitting women against one another. In the mid to late 00s, it literally sold magazines and papers: ‘Britney versus Christina,’ ‘Paris versus Lindsay.’ Then feminism became a popular marketing tool. In the music industry, it was distilled into this idea that if you support women, and you like other women, then you’re a good feminist. The reverse of that is, if you don’t like all other women who exist and breathe on this Earth then you’re a bad feminist. If you’re not a girl’s girl then you’re a bad woman.” And, speaking of that phrase, “girl’s girl,” it was weaponized against Ariana Grande in the aftermath of her “homewrecker” scandal. Specifically, when Ethan Slater’s ex-wife, Lilly Jay, called out Grande for not being a “girl’s girl.” Because “girl’s girls” don’t allow themselves to fall into the trap of being “the other woman.” They instead choose to “walk away”—or simply get the dude in question to actually leave his wife.

    Maybe that’s why Grande is quite deliberate in having Monica tout the line, “Well, he better sort out his business, ‘cause I’ll never be nobody’s mistress.” A lyric that also shows how far Brandy and Monica have come since their teen years when they were singing this song. This declaration is also one that “absolves” Grande of being a homewrecker in the rawer sense of the word. Instead, she falls more into the category of the scenario described by Olivia Rodrigo on “traitor” when ripping into the bloke that left her, “It took you two weeks/To go off and date her/Guess you didn’t cheat/But you’re still a traitor.”

    This sense of feeling stabbed in the back by the woman who “took” her man (in lieu of blaming the man himself for his shady actions) only adding to the overall sense of competitiveness between women. Rightfully convinced of the scarcity of men to “possess” (that is, in terms of the somewhat straight ones who are non-bald and non-short…Grande didn’t quite care about the latter description when it came to pursuing Slater). So on the one hand, there is this remix that addresses a common trope for why women feud—because of a guy—and on the other there’s Charli and Lorde’s remix that addresses another all-too-familiar trope: women being jealous of each other’s looks and success—even their “aura.” But both tropes, more often than not, relate to competing for a man because “being better” is how they’re able to catch and hold his attention. Because, yes, unfortunately, much of what women do is still latently rooted in attracting the male gaze. Worse still, male approval. 

    At the same time, women are just as concerned with gaining the favor of other women. As Charli was when she had to deal with the public shaming from MARINA in 2016 after the “that FROOT looks familiar” debacle. Which is what makes it so momentous that MARINA was actually moved enough by the “Girl, so confusing” remix to publicly comment (yet again), “THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. Just cried listening to it. It’s so courageous and human to make work about this topic and it’s so healing to listen to it. Congratulations on an iconic album @charlixcx.” And yes, she was probably just glad to learn that Charli didn’t end up admitting the song was about her instead of Lorde. Though both Lorde and MARINA can be accused of having “the same hair” as Charli at one point or another… 

    Signs of Lorde’s involvement with the record were already noticeable when she declared on social media, “The only album I’ve ever pre-saved is out today… Charli just cooked this one different. So much grit, grace & skin in the game. I speak for all of us when I say it’s an honor to be moved, changed and gagged by her work. There is NO ONE like this bitch.” That statement feels like a retroactive “Easter egg” about the lyrical contributions she would provide for this particular song. 

    As for Brandy and Monica, their feud might be laid to rest in their personal lives, but for the sake of the song, they can still bring the catty, possessive vibe necessary for a theme of this nature, presently singing, “How could you still be so disillusioned after all of this time, time?/I told you once before, I’ll tell you once more, the boy is still mine, mine.” In his mind, of course, he’s both of theirs, thinks there’s “plenty” of him to go around. And such casual, cavalier thinking on many a man’s part is what helps keep stoking the fires of female competitiveness. Also manifest in Charli allegedly referring to Taylor Swift on “Sympathy is a knife” when she laments, “‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried/I’m opposite, I’m on the other side/I feel all these feelings I can’t control/Oh no, don’t know why…/Why I wanna buy a gun?/Why I wanna shoot myself?/Volatilе at war with my dialogue.” 

    Perhaps the only way to mitigate some of that negative dialogue is by hashing it out with the other woman in question. The one who’s causing all this envy—yet who might actually be envious as well. For no woman, no matter how seemingly self-confident, is immune to the trap of low self-esteem/self-regard that tends to be a more pervasive affliction among this particular gender.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • A Bitch and A Girl and A Mother and A Whore: Julia Fox Takes A Page From Meredith Brooks Re: the Multifaceted Nature of Being A Woman

    A Bitch and A Girl and A Mother and A Whore: Julia Fox Takes A Page From Meredith Brooks Re: the Multifaceted Nature of Being A Woman

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    In 1997, Meredith Brooks single-handedly reminded the masses that women were far more than just one convenient label (most often: “Mother”…or, worse still, “Homemaker”). That a woman could be (and is) so many things all at once, and at any given moment of the day. A multifaceted kaleidoscope of roles and according personalities that the patriarchy is constantly trying to hem in to being just one thing. Or, at best, two: wife and mother. That restrictive, “know your place” kind of thinking is, once again, starting to bubble back to the surface with the wave of conservatism that has continued to crest in America post-Trump (ergo, the emergence of terms like “tradwife” and “stay-at-home girlfriend”). 

    Thus, the time feels especially right for Julia Fox to not only release a song called “Down the Drain” (the same title as her 2023 memoir), but also an accompanying music video. As her first (and more than somewhat unexpected) music release, it seems as though Brooks’ messaging in “Bitch” must have permeated Fox’s psyche at some point (whether it was when the song actually came out in ‘97—when Fox would have been seven—or somewhere else down the line). Whenever it was that the influence clicked, Brooks is clearly all over “the chorus” (read: the majority of the song, save for one deviating verse) of “Down the Drain.” To be specific, Fox chanting, “I’m a bitch, I’m a girl, I’m a woman, I’m a whore/I’m a bitch, I’m a girl, I’m a mother, I’m a whore.”

    Needless to say, it’s not quite as dense or complex as Brooks’ defiant declaration, “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover/I’m a child, I’m a mother/I’m a sinner, I’m a saint/I do not feel ashamed/I’m your Hell, I’m your dream/I’m nothing in between/You know you wouldn’t want it any other way.” Fox’s version of “Bitch” is one for the TikTok age—an anti-patriarchal message for those with the attention span of a gnat. Fox further distills the “Brooks message” with help from producer Ben Draghi (who also, amazingly, has a co-writing credit—because, honestly, couldn’t Fox have just written these very brief lyrics without an assist?). 

    By lending a techno-industrial feel to the sonic tincture of “Down the Drain,” Draghi separates it from the grungier, alt-rock tone Brooks opted for back when that sound was at a peak of popularity in the early to mid-90s. Along with the hippie-dippy (with a “punk” edge) music video that Brooks filmed to promote it (think: lots of florals). Fox’s own video, directed by Draghi (a real renaissance man, apparently), is wielded to make the same statement. But it’s slightly more, let’s say, “hardcore.” It all starts with Fox driving her son, Valentino, to school…to the tune of the kind of opening music that does, indeed, sound straight out of a Safdie brothers movie (as does most of “Down the Drain”). So it is that things begin “maternally” enough, with Fox glancing back lovingly at her child in the seat behind her. After dropping him off at whatever bougie school he attends (as Fox herself said, “We need him to be a nepo baby, and he needs to like own it too”), Fox receives a series of text messages that read, “Hi Julia. We have your friend Richie. Send us 1 million dollars by the end of day. Or else…” This warning includes a photo of the kidnapped “Richie” in question: Richie Shazam (who also just appeared in Charli XCX’s equally cunty “360” video along with Fox as well).

    Horrified by both his abuse and this ultimatum, Fox runs toward her car like a superhero called to action and speeds back to her apartment where she changes into multiple (dominatrix-inspired) costumes while strutting down a darkened hallway. She then descends to her “office,” where two other dominatrixes are punishing a very bad man tied to a bondage cross (positioned as an “X,” not a “T”). Summoning them to join her in her quest to find and release Richie, they leave the submissive on the cross and hightail it out of there. 

    Fox then descends still further down into the depths, suddenly appearing in a dom-approved nurse ensemble as she tortures a doctor to the verse, “Come with me, come down the drain/I’ll be sweet like sugar cane/Come get lost inside my brain/I promise that you’ll go insane/I’m a menace, not a muse/The baddest fuckin’ drug that you’ll ever use/Destiny, it’s yours to choose/Come with me, you’ll never lose.” Her role switches up yet again as she finds herself “materialized” (appearing like television static) in a boxing ring to take on the seemingly much more powerful man she ends up kicking to the ground. 

    Draghi then cuts to the next scene during which Fox essentially “teleports” to another location in a different costume (this time, an all-out superhero one in bright yellow, but still rooted in dom aesthetics—as this period in her life clearly remains influential). That location, conveniently, is where Richie is imprisoned in a cage, his hands restrained above his head. Breaking into the cage (after one of her acolytes is pawed at by a “sanctum monster”), Fox puts an ostensibly magical skull ring on his finger to “revive” him and the two—along with her fellow dom assistants—escape that bad scene. And all just in time to pick up Valentino from school again. Not bothering to change entirely out of her bright yellow superhero dominatrix outfit, Fox instead throws the same coat and hat on over it that she was wearing before. Just further proof that a woman is many things to many people throughout various moments in the day. And depending on what the “need” is from those in her life. 

    Brooks was able to highlight the inherent multifacetedness of what it is to be a woman with less “slickness” than is required of music and messaging now. That “many-sidedness” including the puzzle piece called “Mother.” And while so many people (particularly men of the husband and son variety) want to reduce the divine feminine to that one thing—that one “job title”—there is always so much more to her than just that. Before a woman ever steps into the part of “Mom,” she is her own person, has her own unique identity…one that is separate from whatever personality her children might eventually ascribe to her. Just as Fox’s own son inevitably will.

    But to any of his potential judgment, Julia might simply respond the same way she did about what inspired her to enter her “pop star era” in the first place: “I’m a firm believer in reinvention. The power to transform and become entirely new whenever you choose [is what] inspired writing this song… In this instance, I’m embodying the persona of a pop star. Never stop creating art because you never know where it will take you.” And where Fox wants to take her fans and listeners, just in time for Mother’s Day weekend, is to a place where people are forced to recognize the many conundrums and contradictions of what it is to be a woman. Particularly in an age when they’re still fed the line that they can “have it all” (you know, the way penis-packers can). This despite no one actually wanting them to. In truth, they can still only “be it all” to anyone who demands to suck some of their energy and patience from them. 

    As Brooks warned of that prismatic way of being, “Just when you think you got me figured out/The season’s already changing.” She then adds, “I think it’s cool, you do what you do/And don’t try to save me.” Let’s put “save” in quotes because that’s what men always think they’re doing with women. Maybe the better lyric is, “And don’t try to change me.” Oh would that all men could be like that—like whoever Brooks is describing when she thanks him for, in effect, tolerating her “mood swings” (a.k.a. acting as irascible and erratic as the male species). Alas, most men are, instead, as backward as Fox’s ex, Ye (formerly Kanye West). But maybe Fox more fully learned all about how not to be muzzled or stifled in any way thanks to her brief time with him. Hence, her urging to other women, “Come with me down the drain…/Come get lost inside my brain/I promise that you’ll go insane/I’m a menace, not a muse.” Brooks, on the other hand, is an undeniable muse to Fox. At least in terms of her lyrical template. 

    What’s somewhat unfortunate though—tragic even—is the fact that women, almost thirty years after “Bitch,” still have to remind people that (gasp!) they’re complex, three-dimensional humans. And, you know, not some enduring cardboard cutout of June Cleaver.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Naive Hope Invoked by a New Year As Presented by Counting Crows’ “A Long December”

    The Naive Hope Invoked by a New Year As Presented by Counting Crows’ “A Long December”

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    In the winter of 1996, the Counting Crows’ lead singer Adam Duritz composed the lyrics for a song that would be called “A Long December,” eventually released on Britney Spears’ birthday (three short years before the world would know who Spears was), December 2nd. Leaving the entire month to let listeners either take the song as a call to suicide based on its sound, or as an urging to have hope for the new year based on the lyrics themselves. The ones that naively assure, “It’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe/Maybe this year will be better than the last.”

    Such a foolish statement to make, of course. Especially for anyone who’s lived more than a decade on this planet. But, as it is said, “Hope dies last” (thus, 28 Days Later proves humans keep going even when they should very clearly commit suicide). They say it’s the greatest testament to human strength and fortitude, but sometimes one can’t help but think it’s the greatest testament to human stupidity…and willful selfishness. The fact that, year after year, the worse the world gets, the more people become invested in the idea of their own personal well-being and “growth.” As though “turning inward” and becoming increasingly blind to the collective injustices wrought upon humanity is the best and only way to cope. Maybe it is. 

    In 1996, the Year of Our “A Long December,” things were still, objectively speaking, slightly more “hunky-dory” than they are now. At least, one has to admit, climate change-wise. Hence, 2023’s transition into 2024 marking headlines like, “World will look back at 2023 as year humanity exposed its inability to tackle climate crisis, scientists say.” But since when has anyone ever listened to scientists (as 2020’s pandemic very clearly demarcated)? Not until it’s too late and the forewarning guidance is effectively rendered useless. Even on the U.S. political front, things were undeniably, let’s say “more manageable.” Not only was it pre-Clinton sex scandal, it was pre-existence-of-Trump-as-a-presidential-thought. With the advent of 2024, and the unfathomable reality that Trump somehow has yet another viable shot at the presidency despite being impeached twice, well, that should be enough to indicate, without a shadow of doubt, to even the most Pollyanna-esque of optimists that things don’t really get better with a new year. The more time wears on, in fact, the more it all has the potential to go horribly awry rather than become increasingly “repaired.” Perhaps that’s why when Duritz sing-speaks, “Maybe this year will be better than the last,” it sounds rather half-hearted and unconvincing. 

    Written in response to a friend being run over by a car and getting badly injured, Duritz’s intent was to reflect on the pain of the past, while also looking forward to the “promise” of the future (even if, the older you get, the more society renders you invisible). At that time, it was Duritz’s glamorous present he might have chosen to reflect on, which, one supposes, he kind of did by including Courteney Cox in the video, directed by Lawrence Carroll. Indeed, it was after appearing in the video that the two started dating…this also being not long after Duritz already dabbled with another “Friend’s” vagina: Jennifer Aniston. So yes, his 90s present offered plenty to feel positive about. So did a lot of people’s 90s present, in fact. It seemed as though a general hopefulness had washed over most of the decade, in spite of it heralding the twenty-four-hour “tabloid news” cycle that would create a new breed of desensitization in the twenty-first century. 

    But before that aspect of political fear-mongering and overexposed celebrity culture became so absurd, Duritz was able to feature Cox in his video with little fanfare (or not as much as there would have been in a post-TMZ world). With the segments divvied up to give both parties essentially the same amount of screen time, Cox is mostly shown in a dark, uber-depressing room that smacks of a prison cell as she sits on a bench next to a table and holds crumpled-up notes in her hand. The video also features a bevy of dates, including August 6th (incidentally, the same day that Hiroshima was bombed), indicating the temporal progress of the year, ergo the forceful and fierce passage of time that eventually portends all of our demises. This much is evoked via the scenes of Duritz and Cox featured throughout the video that soon become nothing more than Polaroid snapshots—the moments of their lives reduced to mere “recorded memories” (so it is that Duritz notes, “I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell my myself/To hold on to these moments as they pass”). The snow falling ambiently for most of the video also emphasizes the point of winter, the ultimate symbolism of “the end” of something. Whether an actual life, or the signal of a new beginning. However mundane or inauspicious it might be. 

    Cox’s “character” in the video gradually grapples with that reality. Slowly coming to accept Duritz’s (and most people grasping at straws for some sliver of hope) philosophy that “life is what you make of it”—or some shit. No matter how ugly it all might get. The important thing, they insist, is to maintain a positive outlook (e.g., “It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean/I guess I should”). Yet even Duritz, for as optimistic as he tries to remain throughout this melancholic-sounding song, lets a more than faint trace of “cynicism” trickle in with the line, “And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls.” Perhaps the only truly honest observation Duritz makes throughout the still beloved “New Year’s single.” 

    Which is why it’s so fleeting—barely detectable in the song for the undiscerning ear. Instead, all anyone can really hear is the hopeful tinge of, “It’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe/Maybe this year will be better than the last.” Even though, as any pragmatist knows, the lyrics, of course, should go, “It’s been a long December and there’s absolutely no reason to believe/That this year could possibly be better than the last.” The laws of devolution simply can’t make it so. And oh, how the devolution keeps progressing.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna’s “Take A Bow” Video As Harbinger of Technosexuality and Obsessing Over a Simulacrum of a Person

    Madonna’s “Take A Bow” Video As Harbinger of Technosexuality and Obsessing Over a Simulacrum of a Person

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    By the time Madonna’s Bedtime Stories album came out in 1994, the postmodern era was well into effect. Indeed, one might say Madonna single-handedly created its peak in the 1980s (Don DeLillo merely wrote in its style). Not just with her own career being birthed at the same time as MTV (where she became more known for her visuals than her music), but with her unapologetic commitment to “synergistic efforts” that were previously balked at by most musicians who felt their job simply ought to be making music. Madonna, in contrast, was the first truly “multimedia” icon. Even if that Pepsi commercial only did air twice in the United States. A truly profligate waste of five million dollars, which Madonna pocketed without looking back.

    In fact, “not looking back” was her modus operandi for a long time. And when the 90s arrived, she was determined to change her musical and aesthetic tack with the new decade. That meant a mélange of house and R&B “flavors,” which started to manifest on 1992’s Erotica before Madonna more noticeably softened her tone (e.g., no more talk of teaching us how to fuck) on Bedtime Stories. That softness being most marked on “Take A Bow,” the second single from the record (following “Secret”). Co-produced by Babyface, the track remained at number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks, and saturated the culture so much that it was played during the season one finale of Friends. To add to the instant classic nature of the song, Madonna filmed a Michael Haussman-directed video for it in Ronda, Spain. And, being Spain, M naturally thought to incorporate bullfighting. Along with a steamy real-life bullfighter named Emilio Muñoz (Madonna never being shy about parading her enthusiasm for Latin men…or women, for that matter).

    Although the internet became available for public use the year before, in 1993, it was still too “germinal” to consider in mainstream pop culture. That’s why Madonna and most others continued to suck firmly on the TV titty—wielding that as the beacon of modern life more than computers/an “online presence” just yet. Accordingly, in the “Take A Bow” video, Madonna taps into the trend-turned-way-of-life that is obsessing over a simulacrum of a person via television. Even though she might have had a love affair with The Bullfighter in actuality, their botched romance has rendered her into little better than an obsessive ex who scrolls through their erstwhile boyfriend’s social media profiles as we see her watching him on TV and caressing his Screen Face.

    Despite The Bullfighter breaking her heart, she can’t seem to let go of the prototype, as it were, that she fell in love with. The “edition” of him that lured her in the first place. And that’s the trap many fall prey to after a breakup: still romanticizing a relationship by remembering the honeymoon period and wondering where it all went wrong. Why it couldn’t stay as it was in the beginning. But with screens, whether attached to a TV or, now, phones, the simulacrum is able to provide the version of a person that one wants (mainly because the public images and videos that people choose to parade tend to show them at their “best”). Or rather, the version that they want to believe in, for projections can thrive long after being disillusioned in real life by the person in question. So it is that we see Madonna both depressed and aroused in a Ronda hotel room as she touches the screen with her ex on it as lovingly as she would to his actual cheek. Perhaps more lovingly, because he can’t talk back a.k.a. say anything that might break the illusion of his “perfection.”

    The rise of technosexuality in our current landscape was something Madonna foretold as well in this video, slipping under sheets in her lingerie with the TV. Where a pristine version of a person she can project all of her fantasies onto resides. If there is one single image from the twentieth century that embodies the coalescing of (wo)man with machine, it is this. For it is the indelible representation of there no longer being a real distinction between a person and an “apparatus,” with the former having made itself merely an extension of the latter. And since fetishizing the non-real version of people has only ramped up in the twenty-first century, it’s easier than ever to sexualize a simulacrum (see: OnlyFans). This then becomes a fine line between actually wanting to fuck a person versus the very machine they’re being viewed on.

    To that point, Madonna places her crotch near the screen where The Bullfighter goes about his bullfighting pageantry. She wants to fuck him again so badly, that the machine with his image on it becomes an adequate enough substitute. In this fashion, Madonna builds on the so-called sci-fi element of J. G. Ballard’s Crash, which also foretold of the human “fusing” with machinery to the point of seeing it as a viable sexual outlet (this tends to include vibrators, one would posit). To boot, she appears far more satisfied with the simulacrum than the real thing when Haussman finally does cut to a scene of them “consummating” in the flesh toward the end of the video. The tryst is violent and messy—something that would never happen with a screen. Nor would an-all-too-abrupt splooge, as we see The Bullfighter orgasming from Madonna’s perspective beneath him. This shot quickly transitions to him walking away from her as she cries against a wall. Her tangible experience, ruined by his callous, detached approach, was just so upsetting compared to the imagined form of it. For whatever reason (maybe just to feel something), The Bullfighter subsequently walks through a stream of broken glass in response. Pain is pleasure for some people, after all.

    Upon finishing his “glass walk,” the tables are turned on The Bullfighter as he adjusts his head to glance back at the TV where, presently, Madonna’s own image is on it. This reversal infers that it’s his turn, at last, to have no choice but to fetishize the simulacrum—because that was the last time she was ever going to give him any pussy (confirmed by the sequel to this video, “You’ll See”). So he, like her, caresses her Screen Face before the switch is made back to his Screen Face on TV, followed by Haussman panning out to reveal Madonna, once more, leaning against the wall in her room with his bullfighting image still playing on what appears to be a loop. Now, they can both be mere projections that each one can return to whenever they want as a source of pain-pleasure. Because that’s what it is to have access to a simulacrum of a person: constant self-torture thanks to the irresistible option to revisit their onscreen effigy.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “Mouth” As The Soundtrack to Being Infected While Out and About

    “Mouth” As The Soundtrack to Being Infected While Out and About

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    Among Bush’s often underrated oeuvre is a song from their 1996 album, Razorblade Suitcase. Although “Swallowed” was its lead single—garnering the most attention—“Mouth” would later gain traction after being released in 1997 on a Bush remix album called Deconstructed and being featured heavily in the trailer (and the film itself) for An American Werewolf in Paris that same year. The song’s particular suitability for the movie stemmed from, obviously, how one ends up as a werewolf—that is to say, through a bite-filled mauling.

    But beyond that, “Mouth” sounds endlessly well-suited to soundtrack a day out amongst the hordes. Though many continue to act as though the pandemic isn’t still “a thing” (and like a new one won’t come to roost)/it never even happened at all (much as those who endured the 1918 flu pandemic needed to party the next decade away in order to forget), the after-shock of coronavirus, paired with the sudden remembrance that it’s flu season, makes “Mouth” an all-too-relevant song. And, incidentally, it also shares album space with a track called “Cold Contagious.” So clearly, for whatever reason, “spread” was on the mind of Gavin Rossdale in 1996—perhaps it had to do with meeting Gwen Stefani the year before and worrying that their long-distance relationship would get him caught in the act of cheating by giving her an STD.

    With an accompanying video directed by John Hillcoat, the scene opens at ground zero of contagion: a diner. Specifically the now-defunct Jenny Rose Restaurant, located somewhere between Death Valley and Joshua Tree. To play up the tie-in to An American Werewolf in Paris, Julie Delpy, who portrays Sérafine Pigot in the movie, appears out of nowhere to extract Gavin from his languid musing over the menu (despite already having food and coffee). Do they know each other? Is this a stranger’s hookup? It’s all as nebulous as the decision-making behind the werewolf visual effects.

    Maybe, in taking him by the hand and getting him to drive her through the desert, the retroactive point is to accentuate how free one can feel when they’re not traumatized by recently enduring the effects of a pandemic. In other words, the late 90s were a blithe time. Even in the sense that AIDS had “calmed down” (at least in the eyes of the straights) and it was once again a seeming free-for-all. Mouths on mouths, bodies on bodies, whatever.

    Nonetheless, a sense of foreboding lurks throughout the mid-tempo “Mouth,” especially as Rossdale opens with the lyric, “You gave me this.” Something about it smacks of Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet screaming, “You put your disease in me!” That’s what we all do every day to one another, just by daring to go outside. To walk around, ultimately slack-jawed as we cough, touch our noses and then touch something else, talk loudly (in public and usually on the phone) for no good reason and generally radiate carbon dioxide. That’s all a mouth is, in the end. One big carbon dioxide/contagion-emitting hole. The human body a sack of emissions designed seemingly only to harm fellow flesh husks with its propensities for attracting and “giving back” disease. Particularly now that we’ve hit the official eight billion mark in bodies. So, indeed, “nothing hurts like your mouth…” running all over town and breathing whatever old- and new-fangled disease you’ve contracted and seen fit to spread.

    Other accusations related to infection are manifest in the lines, “Pollute my heart-drain/You have broken me/Broken me/All your mental armor drags me down.” Would that one had some physical armor to actually battle contagion, beyond a mask—for, as many vigilant mask-wearers have experienced, it hasn’t kept Miss Rona from sinking in regardless. Especially since mask-wearing isn’t enforceable and not everyone will do it. And, unfortunately, donning a hazmat suit is something that only Tyra Banks appears to be able to pull off.

    Just as “Comedown” from 1994’s Sixteen Stone would become synonymous with Fear, so “Mouth” would with An American Werewolf in Paris. And yet, it’s a song with more newfound resonance in the current moment. The only thing one can hear on repeat in their mind (once they’ve made the correlation) while confronting the public space—seeing all those maws ajar. Utterly uncaring and immune to what they’re taking in or giving out with that gob of theirs, so long as they get to where they’re going and they buy what they want to buy while doing it.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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