A collaboration between Charli XCX and Robyn and Charli XCX and Yung Lean, respectively, has seemed like a long time coming. That said, perhaps Charli XCX saw fit to kill two birds with one stone by offering a remix of “360” that features both artists on it. Charli’s nods to Robyn have been steadfast in recent years, showing her love (song allusion intended) most recently by sampling “Cobrastyle” (from Robyn’s 2005 self-titled album) for “Speed Drive” on the Barbie Soundtrack.
As for her connection to Yung Lean, it should be fairly obvious that the two share certain similar “Tumblrcore” sensibilities. Put these three together in the blender that is the “360” remix and the result is actually more disjointed than one would expect. Yet, somehow, it works. And maybe part of the discordant cohesion stems from both Robyn and Yung Lean being Swedes. After all, it’s no secret that solid gold pop/dance music just naturally courses through the veins of the Swedish. So no wonder Yung Lean flexes, “We put this shit together so carelessly.” While other musicians might not want to make that assertion based on how it might open their song up to more than just light criticism for being “sloppy,” here the braggadocio works in favor of the song’s overall “charmingly arrogant” aura.
Besides, if anyone can back up the right to be arrogant about their music, it’s Robyn. Which is exactly why she self-referentially touts, “Killin’ this shit since 1994/Got everybody in the club dancing on their own.” Charli, too, has been in the music game long enough to have earned some of her bratty hauteur, which commences in the very first line of the remix with, “They-they-they all wanna sound like me.” And yes, based on the recent shade thrown at Camila Cabello for effectively imitating Charli’s “hyperpop” sound for her C,XOXO “era,” it would seem the internet is well-aware of XCX’s influence and saturation into the mainstream that once kept her boxed out (that is, until she decided to do a parody of being mainstream with Crash). At the very least, though, Camila seems to know better than to release C,XOXO before Brat, with the former coming out three weeks after the latter.
Not that it would faze Charli either way, whose confidence level reaches another peak in “360” when she sings, “Me and Lean and Robyn, we don’t even have to practice/We got many hits, get you feeling nostalgic.” To be sure, Charli hits like “Boom Clap,” “I Love It, “Fancy” and “1999” (the most nostalgic of all) always get the crowds in a frenzy. Needless to say, if Robyn and/or Yung Lean ever did join her onstage for the version of “360,” it would cause all-out mayhem in the audience. Even more than if Addison Rae decided to cameo for the remix version of “Von Dutch.” Both remixes, by the way, are made to sound like altogether entirely different songs (with “360” remaining faithful only to the original backing music).
While remixes of the past might have only added in an extra verse from the new person appearing on it (e.g., the Left Eye version of “No Scrubs” [which should have been the “normal” version to begin with] or Ariana Grande’s ill-advised decision to include Mariah Carey on the remix for “yes, and?”), Charli has set a gold-standard precedent for making entirely new tracks through her remixes (hear also: “Welcome to My Island”). While others might be content to provide a few barely noticeable tweaks, Charli treats the remix with the same reverence that Madonna’s remixers usually do (including the likes of William Orbit, Victor Calderone, Tracy Young, Stuart Price, Junior Vasquez, Paul Oakenfold, etc.). And that is the mark of someone who truly cares about dance music.
Not that there was ever any doubt in the minds of Charli fans that she wasn’t hopelessly devoted to the genre. A genre she single-handedly helped reinvent at the dawn of the 2010s and continues to perfect as the 2020s forge ahead, filled with plenty of events that would make it otherwise difficult to even conceive of dancing without a bit of encouragement to do so from her music.
In Madonna’s seminal 1990 hit, “Vogue,” she talks about how Rita Hayworth “gave good face.” That’s at least eighty percent of the “job” description of being an it girl (or “internet girl,” the apparent updated version of that term). The other twenty percent seems to be a mixture of wearing over-the-top couture and being photographed at all the right parties. As a self-appointed party girl/internet obsession, Charli XCX knows all about combining the analog and digital elements of what it means to be “it.” And she pays homage to that at the beginning of her latest video, “360” (yet another single that will appear on Brat).
Directed by Aidan Zamiri, the scene opens on Charli walking down a hallway as she texts back and forth with fellow it girl Gabbriette, who chastises her for being (five hours) late to a place called Skyferrori’s (is that supposed to be a Sky Ferreira reference?) Trattoria. Traipsing into the restaurant, she’s met with the eyes of Rachel Sennott (who technically “collaborated” with Charli on Bottoms) and Chloe Cherry. It’s Rachel who tells her she can’t sing her song just yet, with Gabriette further explaining, “We have to fulfill the prophecy of finding a new, hot internet girl. That’s literally why we’re at dinner.” A little expository, but sure. Chloe Cherry then adds, “Or else our kind will cease to exist…forever.” Annoyed, Charli tries to speed up the process by suggesting, “What about…her?” as she points to the girl at the end of the table—who happens to be Julia Fox. Obviously, that’s a no go as it girls who are already it girls can’t be chosen. Charli then lands on the waitress (if that word is still permissible) and the others at the table aren’t opposed to it.
“What do you guys need me to do?” she asks gamely, even if nervously. Fox explains, “See, you actually need to have this, like, je ne sais quoi.” Charli affirms, “Yeah it’s, like, definitely a je ne sais quoi kind of situation.” In other words, no one wants to admit that it’s pure luck and, often, a little bit of nepo baby clout (as Paris Hilton knows from her late 90s/early 00s it girl days). Or, as Gabbriette describes it, “I would say it’s about being really hot in, like, a scary way.” Fox approves vehemently of that definition. With that “sorted,” Charli declares, “I’m gonna do my song now.” So it is that the A. G. Cook-produced notes begin and Charli delivers the manifesto, “I went my own way and I made it/I’m your favorite reference, baby/Call me Gabbriette, you’re so inspired/Ah, ah I’m tectonic, moves, I make ’em/Shock you like defibrillators/No style, I can’t relate.” Just as Sabrina Carpenter can’t relate to “desperation.” She, too, is something of an it girl at this moment, and her song, “espresso,” exudes the same kind of sociopathy that Charli and co. champion in “360.” Complete with the first proper visual from it outside of the “holding court” restaurant setting being Charli atop an elderly man on a gurney in a hospital.
Mounting him with her legs spread apart so that his midsection is between her thighs, other it girls soon gather around her (with Gabbriette blowing cigarette smoke right in his face) in between scenes of Charli in the gym jiggling about with a glass of red wine in hand as Sennott and Fox stand on either side of her (the former texting on her phone and the latter vaping while disinterestedly lifting a dumbbell).
In another cut back to the restaurant setting, Charli struts toward the table and gets on top of it so she can walk it like a runway. When she runs out of table, the waiters in the restaurant quickly scramble to provide her with more (a maneuver that smacks of this particular 1990 performance) so that she never has to worry about falling or looking foolish for not being able to continue her strut. Not that she ever would worry—because worry is a sentiment that is entirely out of the it girl’s vocabulary. She knows everything she wants will fall right into her lap not just because she’s “hot,” but because it always has before. For anything else to occur would signal some kind of cataclysm in the universe…at least in the it girl’s internet-speak-fueled mind. And when Charli wants to keep walking once the room itself ends, a waiter knocks out the wall for her so that she can. It’s just, like, the rules of what “little people” are expected to do for beautiful and rich ones.
The knocked-out wall leads into a room where an ordinary family sits on the couch as the likes of Richie Shazam (in a cone bra corset) and Chloe Cherry pose in the background while Charli keeps singing her song, declaring, “That city sewer slut’s the vibe/Internationally recognized/I set the tone, it’s my design/And it’s stuck in your mind/Legacy is undebated/You gon’ jump if A. G. made it/If you love it, if you hate it/I don’t fucking care what you think.” Ah, that old chestnut that only sounds authentic when Joan Jett says it via the chorus, “I don’t give a damn ‘bout my bad reputation.”
Charli continues to cement her own “bad reputation” as she stands before a pair of crashed cars (she is, after all, the creator of an album called Crash) in the middle of an L.A. street where who should eventually appear but none other than L.A.’s number one hater, Chloe Sevigny. A woman that some might call the original it girl if they’re not aware of Edie Sedgwick’s existence before hers (and yes, it’s almost surprising that Edie wasn’t AI-generated at some point within the context of this video—but maybe Charli decided to limit her poor taste to gyrating atop a hospitalized old man).
Charli and Chloe then strut down the road together as a random dumpster on fire shows up in the background. Joining their fellow it girls up ahead, the nine women stand together and throw various poses for a nonexistent camera as the fire keeps raging behind them. Perhaps an ultimate metaphor for the fact that, no matter what kind of chaos or tragedy is happening in the world, you can always count on an it girl’s vanity to totally ignore or disregard it. What’s eternally most important is how fierce she looks.
Charli XCX and Troye Sivan have announced a special co-headlining arena tour set for this autumn, and the duo will be coming to Orlando.
The aptly named Sweat Tour kicks off in Detroit in mid-September, before reaching Orlando in early October near the midpoint of this trek. The only other Florida show is in Miami, also in early October.
Charli XCX will undertake these dates in between her longer headlining tour behind newest album Brat, while Sivan will be showing off songs from Something to Give Each Other. The twosome have previously collaborated on singles “1999” and “2099.” XCX and Sivan intend for the tour to be a “testament to their commitment to inclusivity and diversity within the music industry.”
Charli XCX and Troye Sivan play the Addition Financial Arena on Sunday, Oct. 6. Ticketing information is TBA as of this writing. Shygirl is the touring opener.
After the Cubano-infused stylings of Camila Cabello’s third album, Familia, it seems the singer has decided to pivot to what is now being branded by Rolling Stone as “hyperpop,” complemented by a look that’s awash in what Paper magazine (whose current cover she appears on) calls “edgier, blonder, more lo-fi, yet hyper-femme.” The word of the moment to describe her look and sound, clearly, is hyper (though another phrase that could characterize it is simply: “Tumblr circa 2012” or even “Spring Breakers chic” [in truth, “I LUV IT” could have fit in easily on that soundtrack]).
Considering Cabello’s well-known propensity for anxiety and OCD, it’s fair to say that being, well, fraught isn’t exactly a “persona.” Nor is being a “Miami mami.” After all, Cabello moved to Miami with her mother when she was six years old. Having strayed away from it for a while in favor of L.A., Cabello’s return to the city to record the album undoubtedly had an influence on it (in addition to working with one of Rosalía’s go-to producers, El Guincho).
So, apparently, did the music itself have an influence on how she would evolve her look. Per Cabello, “Six months [into recording], we had a couple songs and [I realized], ‘Oh, this is a character.’ It became a persona that I was tapping into, which was me, but definitely a hyper-femme version of me.” There’s that word, hyper, again. And it would seem, in contrast to Lana Del Rey (among the musical inspirations for the album—case in point, lyrics like, “Kiss me hard” and “Seein’ stars, oh my god”), that Cabello doesn’t think “persona” is a dirty word, especially in the current pop culture landscape of everyone striving for “authenticity.” So it was that Cabello asked herself the questions of this “character,” “What are the color palettes of the world this character inhabits? What’s her hair? What’s photography like there?”
If the video for her Charli XCX-esque first single “I LUV IT” featuring Playboi Carti is any indication, the “photography” is straight out of any ordinary, batshit day in Florida. As for the Charli XCX similarities, complete with XCX’s big break arising out of a feature on Icona Pop’s 2012 hit, “I Love It,” Paper was also sure to point out that initial reactions to “I LUV IT” “drew immediate comparisons to Charli XCX… The lo-fi iPhone aesthetic, the cyborgian sonics and then a video by Charli mimicking Cabello’s while singing her similar-sounding song, ‘I Got It,’ fueled this dialogue. But Cabello reposted Charli’s video, showing it’s all love between them. ‘I love Charli and I love Charli’s music, so I think [comparing us is] a huge compliment. Charli loves me, so everybody can fuck off.’” (And besides, Cabello is sampling Gucci Mane’s 2009 single, “Lemonade,” with a dash of Rihanna’s “Cockiness [Love It]” here, not Charli XCX.)
In fact, the entire attitude of the song and video is “fuck off,” with equal parts “fuck it.” To help convey that is director Nicolás Méndez (also known as CANADA, the name under which he directed Rosalía and Travis Scott’s “TKN”), who opens on the image of a man holding a bow in his hand. Indeed, bow and arrow imagery has been trending for a while now, starting with FKA Twigs’ “meta angel” video from early 2022 and continuing into 2024 with Shakira and Cardi B’s “Puntería” video, during which the former is an archer taking aim at her centaur mark—even though the song itself is from Shakira’s perspective of being shot at. That’s the role Cabello is about to embody after Méndez cuts to an exterior shot of a cop car outside the house as the ultra Miami-fonted title card for “I LUV IT” appears onscreen. We then see a police officer hacking away at a tree with an ax before a quick cut to Cabello shoving a piece of cake in her mouth at her kitchen table (unless she’s broken into the place) and then spitting a mouth guard out in the next quickly-cut-to scene.
We’re soon rejoined with the man who had the bow, now in a hospital walking away from a vending machine and toward Cabello, seated in the waiting area with an arrow through her chest. To quote the Shakira lyrics (translated to English) of “Puntería,” “You have good aim/You know where to give me, so that I am surrendered, surrendered…/You throw darts at me, they go straight to the heart.” Cabello seems pretty blasé about that shot to the heart though, as she is in most of the other scenarios that befall her during what appears to be just another day in Florida. Whether this is wrestling with another woman, sitting calmly in her house while some dude in a motorcycle barrels through it, lying on top of a crashed car while someone takes a picture of the horror (presumably for their social media), running from a trio of drug-sniffing type dogs or turning out to be the reason why a cop is chopping down a tree (spoiler: she’s “caught” in it like a cat), all of these scenarios are “peak Florida,” in addition to matching the chaotic energy of the song.
And, of course, what would an ode to Florida be without a requisite convenience store sequence? This being where Playboi Carti makes his entrée to sing his verse on the track as Cabello delights in a Push-Pop in between bopping around blindfolded with some backup dancers (the choreo is decidedly tribal—we’re talking “invoke the spirits” shit). Perhaps a metaphor for how we’re all flying blind, particularly in matters of love. Or maybe it’s just another more literal inspiration from the type of “average” goings-on in the Sunshine State.
So is chillin’ in the hospital waiting room with an arrow in your chest, which is how Méndez chooses to conclude the video: with a “well, whatever” Cabello still vaguely hoping for some medical attention for her strange (in any other state) injury. And yes, perhaps being struck hard enough by love to feel anything anymore is very strange indeed in the present era. So no wonder Cabello sounds like she’s been injected with a jolt of adrenaline, Mia Wallace-style, when she chants frenetically, “I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it/I love it, I love it, I love it.” Though not many people can say that about Florida anymore.
Although Charli XCX’s first album, True Romance, wasn’t released until 2013, she has always exuded the sonic and visual aura of being a daughter of the 00s. And there was no more significant “mother” in that decade than Britney Spears, who kicked off the aughts with her iconic “Oops!…I Did It Again” video and album. By 2004, however, Spears seemed determined to one-up herself with the video for “Toxic,” arguably among her most well-known visuals after “…Baby One More Time,” “Oops!…I Did It Again” and “I’m A Slave 4 U.” In it, Spears channels Pan Am-era chic in a flight attendant uniform that one would have never seen in the “friendly” skies of the 00s, let alone now.
But even more than her 60s-inspired flight attendant ensemble, it was her literal nude look that stood out in the eyes of viewers. As Spears confirmed in an interview (something she seems to have thrown a peace sign up on altogether since the conservatorship ended) from 2016 with Jonathan Ross, it was simply crystals/mini diamonds (or “hand diamonds,” as she called them) glued onto her body and paired with a white G-string. And voilà, immortal look achieved.
With the video released at the beginning of 2004, it would eventually serve as a reminder of 00s “polish” and decadence in the years before the 2008 financial crisis. In the months just leading up to it, Spears would release the less polished (visual-wise) video for “Gimme More,” the lead single from 2007’s Blackout. After that, she would unleash the moody, clapback-at-the-critics song, “Piece of Me”—which would become such a signature that she named her Vegas residency in its honor. It is the theme of that particular song which Charli XCX seeks to repurpose on “Von Dutch” (a title in keeping with her 00s reverence). Accordingly, the Torso-directed video commences with XCX being stalked by paparazzi at the airport (Charles de Gaulle, to be exact—because Charli is just so Euro).
As she walks past the proverbial vultures with her aloofness and sunglasses as a shield, she then whips her shades off, along with her skirt (so she can sport just her underwear and tights underneath), and gets right into the first verse: “It’s okay to just admit that you’re jealous of me/Yeah I heard you talk about me, that’s the word on the street/You’re obsessin’ [that accusation lending the song un certain Mariah flair], just confess it/Put your hands up/It’s obvious I’m your number one.” (This also channeling, incidentally, a lyric Goldfrapp sings on 2005’s, what else, “Number 1”.)
From the start, it’s apparent that XCX is much less apologetic than Spears was on “Piece of Me” as she sang with more than a slightly sardonic tinge, “I’m Miss Bad Media Karma/Another day, another drama/Guess I can’t see no harm in workin’ and bein’ a mama.” Charli, rather than inserting semi-apologetic caveats in her lyrics, declares full-stop, “I’m just living that life Von Dutch, cult classic, but I still pop/I get money, you get mad because the bank’s shut/Yeah, I know your little secret, put your hands up/It’s so obvious I’m your number one.” In the spirit of another 00s piece of pop culture that has inspired of late, Mean Girls, there are many aspects of “Von Dutch” that mirror the content of Renée Rapp and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Not My Fault.” Wherein the former boasts, “It’s not my fault/You gotta pay what I get for free/It’s not my fault/You’re like, you’re like, you’re like in love with me.” According to Charli, nor is it her fault either. She’s “just livin’ that life, Von dutch, cult classic, but I still pop.”
Even when forced to mingle among the hoi polloi at the airport. Because, again, these are not the glamorous days of Britney’s “Toxic” video, during which she plays an international spy who also happens to be on a mission to poison her ex-boyfriend. For Charli, it’s less about the destination and more about the journey as she treats the entire airport and, subsequently, the airplane like her runway. Or, more to the point, as any “TikToker” would if CDG had agreed to shut down the terminal for them so they could dance and mug for the camera to their heart’s content without judgment (not that such a worry has ever stopped an “influencer” from annoying people in the public space before). Not to mention providing an empty plane to “bop around” on before making one’s way out onto the wing to do a jig there as well. And, as though to highlight the differences between 2004 Britney on an airplane and 2024 Charli on one, the latter takes the drink cart she’s pushing and violently shoves it down on the floor without a second thought. A stark contrast to Spears sexily pushing her own champagne-filled cart down the aisle on her airplane to “serve with a smile” that hides her ulterior motives.
But back to the TikTok video flavor, funnily enough, XCX seems to shade that ilk with the line, “Do that littlе dance, without it, you’d be namelеss.” Something in the tone of the lyrics also giving Amy Winehouse on “Fuck Me Pumps” when she jibes, “Don’t be mad at me, ‘cause you’re pushing thirty/And your old tricks no longer work” (how ahead of her time she was on Gen Z-level ageism…along with Lily Allen on “22”). This all further speaking to how XCX is ready to drench herself in the 00s…much as the rest of the pop culture-obsessed set has done of late. But XCX is additionally bringing more than a dash of her “Tumblr sleaze” into the equation, hence breaking the fourth wall by slamming her head against the camera to mimic the effect of beating the shit out of someone—whoever her collective nemesis is, in this case.
She then grabs onto an automatic floor-cleaning machine and holds on for a bit before jumping the turnstile at a boarding gate like it’s merely a subway stop. On the empty plane (an Airbus A380), XCX continues her visceral, “anti-‘Toxic’” performance, pursued by the invisible antagonist she keeps fighting back with bratty (her next album is titled Brat, after all) panache. Or perhaps “anti” isn’t the word so much as “antithesis of.” Because there is nothing rehearsed-feeling or, as mentioned, polished about this the way there was in “Toxic.” This, to reemphasize, echoing the fact that all sense of glamor and being able to put up a veneer of elegance and sophistication has dissipated in our post-Empire world. Indeed, XCX is effectively putting a spotlight on the motif of how fucking shitty it is to travel now compared to 2004 (easier and less dehumanizing that year than now, despite the world coming fresh off 9/11).
Elsewhere in the lyrics of the song, XCX takes a page from Olivia Rodrigo branding her ex as a “fame fucker” on “vampire” (since fame, after all, is supposedly accessible to everyone now). Thus, Charli jabs at her haters, “Why you lying? You won’t fuck unless he’s famous.” It’s a long way from Britney touting, “I’m Mrs. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous (you want a piece of me)/I’m Mrs. Oh My God That Britney’s Shameless (you want a piece of me).” Where Spears was forced to give up those pieces of herself to the public mostly against her will, Charli is of an era wherein everyone is willing and ready to whore it all out for the sake of fame (and hopefully, the added and often correlative bonus of money). Doing it for the hallowed “benefit” of being able to say you’re “famous”—or rather, “viral.” That word so evocative of a disease…which is precisely what fame has become. A bug that everyone wants to catch like corona at a party in 2020 Tuscaloosa. Because if you’re not trying to get famous while the world burns around you, you might not have a chance to enjoy the perks before it’s burned entirely. Thanks, in part, to jumbo jets like the one so prominently featured in XCX’s video (and yes, Charli is no stranger to promoting fossil fuels in her songs [including “Vroom Vroom” and “Speed Drive”] and visuals [e.g., “2999”]).
It’s hard to put much “Toxic”-level varnish on this bleak human condition of the next generation. Maybe that’s why, by the end, XCX is as triumphant as she is run ragged, coasting along the conveyor belt of the baggage claim with the rest of the damaged, overly jostled goods.
In 2011, CSS released their third album, La Liberación. Still finding it difficult to recreate the “virality” of 2005’s “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex,” CSS didn’t make it easier for themselves to do it again with this record. After all, they chose to release just one official single from: “Hits Me Like A Rock” featuring Bobby Gillespie. And yet, after the video—filled with what would now be called “TikTok dancing”—came out, CSS released another visual accompaniment for a song from La Liberación called “City Grrrl” featuring SSION. In the same way that Charli XCX’s new single, “In The City,” pays homage to how a sprawling metropolis lends the kind of anonymity necessary to feel totally free, CSS’ “City Grrrl” took it one step further by speaking to how a city (specifically, a city like New York), after enough time spent there, can make you so numb that “nothing hurts.”
Many see this as an advantage, while others posit that the idea of eventually losing all sense of humanity as a result of living in a city (again, mainly New York) simply isn’t worth it. However, for the oppressed and repressed collection of misfits that tends to (or once tended to) gravitate toward those “bright lights,” pain has been the norm in some way for their entire lives, so feeling nothing sounds pretty good in contrast. The thing is, New York is so chock full of normies now thanks to how much money it takes to live there. It’s hardly a place where “being different” is easier to conceal anymore. Not among the Rag & Bone-wearing ilk. Or even the Uniqlo types. For homogeneity has become so unavoidable in society that it’s seeped into the city landscape. A milieu that people were (and still are) so convinced stood out as a bastion of uniqueness. Though, from the get-go, cities were designed to have their own “inverse” homogeneity to the suburban alternatives that are often mocked and ridiculed by city dwellers who presume their lifestyle is inherently better. Particularly those, like Charli XCX, who grew up in such environments, frequenting the clubs and raves of London and its outer reaches as she made a name for herself (beyond just making the user name of Charli XCX on MSN Messenger).
In the early days of her recording career, Charli’s lyrics and tone possessed echoes of fellow Brits Lily Allen and Kate Nash, particularly on a song titled “Art Bitch” (side note: CSS also has a song called the same on their debut album). A nod to the sort of girl who would inevitably flee to the city to turn her art into financial gold (because that’s what art is all about now, right?). So it is that Charli sings, “You use a needle and a thread to sew up your dreams/Of going to France or New York or wherever it is/You’re gonna get there one day.” This is the same archetype CSS’ lead singer, Lovefoxxx, embodies in the video for “City Grrrl.” In fact, the premise for it comes off like a combination of Madonna blowing into New York for the first time meets her eponymous character in Desperately Seeking Susan riding back into town from Atlantic City. Lovefoxxx starts the video in a similar fashion, opening on a Coach USA bus with the destination “NEW YORK” emblazoned on the sign above the windshield. From there, Lovefoxxx pulls another Susan maneuver by proceeding to conduct her hygiene affairs in the public bathroom of the bus station, dyeing her hair pink with Manic Panic and changing her ensemble to reflect her inner “punk rock” edge on the outside. Now that she feels liberated enough in the city to do so.
The idea that you can be whoever you want to be, finally see yourself as you always dreamed you could be, is also the crux of Charli’s “In The City.” Which additionally offers a requisite gay feature (like “City Grrl” with SSION) via Sam Smith. Because what would any song showing love for the big city be without mentioning or alluding to the gays that populate it? In “City Grrrl,” Lovefoxxx calls it out directly by singing, “When I was a little girl/I wanted to be a citizen of the world/Being busy with my job and my gay friends/Laughing and drinking with my one-night stands.” For Charli, having Smith on the song to lend his vocals to a verse about meeting an accepting lover seems to be sufficient, with Smith declaring, “I knew the night that I met you/Underneath the New York City lights/Baby, no matter what I do/There’s an angel standin’ by my side.” Though one is surely likelier to find a devil at their side “in the city” instead. Especially during the less sanitized times of 2011, when “City Grrrl” came out.
In fact, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that Charli’s city ode has a sound very similar to another 2011 track: Rihanna’s “We Found Love.” It’s got that same EDM infusion—one that also harkens back to Charli’s earlier musical sound before it veered more sharply into pop. This is thanks to co-production by Charli herself, A. G. Cook, George Daniel (a.k.a. the drummer for The 1975 and Charli’s boyfriend), ILYA and Omer Fedi. And, just as “We Found Love” was described, “In The City” is also “the rare song that manages to be sad and joyous all at once.” To that end, “In The City” transports the listener back to the early 2010s of Rihanna’s pre-Fenty heyday. Charli even invokes use of the word “diamonds” by saying, “All the lights are diamonds in the sky,” as though to deliberately remind us of Rihanna belting out, “We’re like diamonds in the sky.” And why not conjure up this not-so-distant period by mimicking its distinct sonic trends? After all, it was a simpler time not just in the twenty-first century, but in New York as well. Arguably the last blip in its history before every corner was taken over by a corporate entity.
With “In The City,” Charli appears to be part of the massive cabal that keeps perpetuating the myth that this is how New York still is. Even if its generic title can also be applied to other megalopolises like London, Istanbul, Tokyo and Los Angeles. But, of course, with Smith directly name-checking New York, it’s clear that’s the town they want people to associate the song with. Regardless of it no longer being the place where one can assure, “I found what I was lookin’ for.” Unless what you’re looking for happens to be a ramped-up obsession with money, status and a whole slew of other things that have nothing to do with being the kind of “art bitch” Charli once talked about or that Lovefoxxx once portrayed as a “City Grrrl” of yore. Where saying, “Don’t live your life, girl/Unless it’s just like a movie” has now become, “Live your life like any little banality set against a basic urban backdrop could go viral on TikTok.”
Being that the queer film canon remains shockingly scant after all this time, it goes without saying that the even more hyper-specific genre of satirical queer film is limited, in essence, to 1999’s But I’m A Cheerleader. Twenty-four years later, things haven’t gotten much more “ribald” or “perverse,” if we’re to go by what Bottoms is offering. Which is something to the effect of Fight Club meets Mean Girls with a dash of Heathers (that’s how the pitch would go, presumably). Compared to the latter movie solely because it, too, is set in high school and has a snarky, over-the-top (read: representative of reality, yet we must call it “over the top” to delude ourselves into thinking reality isn’t that grim) perspective. A.k.a. what people bill as a satire. This, of course, means caricatures of stereotypes. A stereotype, obviously, already being something of a caricature without needing to further amplify it. Unless it’s to make a point about some larger truth. Which Bottoms, in the end, fails to do.
In contrast, But I’m A Cheerleader makes its point from the very outset of the movie, with a title sequence that plays April March’s “Chick Habit” (long before Quentin Tarantino ever decided to use it) as quintessentially hot cheerleaders jump up and down in a manner befitting the male gaze. Except that, this time, it’s being seen through the female gaze of Jamie Babbit’s lens. And the images of those cheerleaders bobbing up and down will come back moments later, when Megan Bloomfield (Natasha Lyonne) needs to imagine them in order to seem even vaguely interested in the tongue-thrashing kisses of her football player boyfriend, Jared (Brandt Wille). When she finally makes it home for dinner, the plates prepared on the table tellingly all have meat on them, except for one, an empty space next to the peas and mashed potatoes where Megan’s mom will plop down her “vegetarian option.” Her father then engages in saying a very pointed prayer about giving people the strength to accept their “natural” roles in life. Feeling exposed by that statement, Megan does her best to sleep the lie of her life off in her room that night as a poster of Melissa Etheridge watches over her.
And so, within the first five minutes, But I’m A Cheerleader we’re given far more satire through visual cues than what we get at the beginning of Bottoms, directed by Emma Seligman, who co-wrote the script with her Shiva Baby star, Rachel Sennott. Going from a college-age girl to a high school girl for this role. But that can all be viewed as part of the satire (like Greta Gerwig casting a “too old” Ryan Gosling for the part of Ken, citing inspiration from Grease’s casting choices for high school students). Funnily enough, PJ (Sennott) seems to throw shade at that switch by saying, “We’re not gonna be sexy little high schoolers forever. Soon we’re gonna be old hags in college.” This said to her lifelong best friend, Josie (Ayo Edebiri, twenty-seven to Sennott’s twenty-eight), who is far less confident about being “hot” enough (according to PJ) to talk to the girls they’ve been crushing on for years. For Josie, that slow-burn pining is for a cheerleader (because, yes, the But I’m A Cheerleader connection) named Isabel (Hannah Rose Liu, no relation to Lucy, though still a nepo baby by way of being daughter to the founders of The Knot). For PJ, her more sexually-charged, less “in love” attraction is to another cheerleader named, what else, Brittany (Kaia Gerber, nepo baby numéro deux).
Rather than commencing with anything visually, the first few minutes are pure dialogue, starting with PJ saying, “Tonight is the fucking night, okay? We’ve looked like shit for years, and we are developing.” Their back and forth continues on the way to the school carnival PJ is forcing them to go to, the one that kicks off the school year, but, more to the point, serves as a way to glorify the football team through quaint notions of “school spirit.” These quaint notions are also present for a reason in But I’m A Cheerleader, thanks to Megan’s status as, duh, a cheerleader. As though hiding behind that ultimate emblem of “all-American-ness” will throw people off the scent of her true identity. Which should mark at least one notable change between 1999 and 2023: theoretically greater acceptance of queer people in high schools (just not Floridian ones). Which is why, when Josie says, “This school has such a gay problem,” PJ replies, “Okay, no. No one hates us for being gay. Everyone hates us for being gay, untalented and ugly.” In other words, being gay has never been “chicer,” common even, if you know how to wield it to your advantage.
And yet, since PJ and Josie haven’t been able to make their gayness “work” for them, they decide to capitalize on a fortuitous coalescing of events: 1) the assumption that they went to juvenile hall over the summer after PJ jokingly confirms a fellow reject’s guess about why Josie has a broken arm, 2) Isabel running away from Jeff in the middle of the carnival and seeking refuge in Josie’s car before the latter slowly starts the car and drives toward him, just barely grazing his knee, 3) Jeff milking this for all its worth (even though nothing happened) by showing up to school the next day on crutches and 4) the announcement that a football player from the Vikings’ rival team, the Huntington Golden Ferrets, attacked a girl to quench some of their bloodlust. All factors conspiring to make PJ’s idea to start a fight club in order to attract their scared fellow female students and therefore possibly lose their virginity to one of them (being a satire, whether or not any of these girls are actually lesbians seems to hold no importance for PJ and Josie—especially PJ, who perhaps rightfully assumes that everyone is gay). Yes, this is the entire far-fetched crux of the movie. Nonetheless, as it said, stranger things have happened.
And since “weird shit” is more accepted by the mainstream than it was in 1999, it bears noting that Lionsgate Films, known at that time for distributing more “indie” fare instead of low-budget horror or high-grossing franchise movies (e.g., Twilight and The Hunger Games), was the company willing to pick up But I’m A Cheerleader. In the present, things seem to have gotten slightly friendlier toward queers in that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (more specifically, its revived Orion Pictures imprint) chose to distribute Bottoms. Then again, that studio has been queer-friendly since at least the days of Some Like It Hot. Thus, what Bottoms posits about being a lesbian in high school in the twenty-first century is that it’s so normalized now that homo girls are perhaps saddled with the worse fate of actually having to make themselves interesting and cool beyond “just” their sexuality.
Enter the fight club, sponsored by PJ and Josie’s horrendously uneducated English (?) teacher, Mr. G (Marshawn Lynch, a former football running back himself). Who doesn’t show up until after the first meeting, where PJ takes the inaugural punch from Josie to prove they’re “legit.” Knocked to the ground, she rises up with a bloody face and an expression that mimics the sentiment behind, “One time she punched me. It was awesome.” It doesn’t take long for word about the club to travel around, and, just as PJ planned, Isabel and Brittany start to show up. Before they know it, the bonds of sisterhood are being forged—complete with “sharing trauma” time as they all sit in a circle and express themselves emotionally after already doing so physically.
In But I’m A Cheerleader, that form of sharing comes in the “re-orientation” meetings, the first of which prompts Megan to finally admit she’s a lesbian. After all, the film is divided into the five steps of the “recovery” program at True Directions, the first being: “Admitting You’re A Homosexual.” Megan doesn’t feel all that great after the admission, looked upon by Graham Eaton (Clea DuVall), another lesbian she shares a room with, as delusional for thinking that she can be “fixed” now that she knows. For this isn’t Graham’s first time at the rodeo, having been harshly judged by her family for years, and currently threatened with being disowned and disinherited (the ultimate power play). Hence, the jadedness…and the freedom with which she eats sushi (done for the sake of the line: “She’s just upset because the fish on her plate is the only kind she can eat”).
Additionally, the hyper-saturated color palette and overall “are we in the 1950s?” vibe of the movie is part of its genius. And what amplifies its ability to expose heteronormativity for its absurdity (particularly during the scenes of “Step 2: Rediscovering Your Gender Identity”). Bottoms, instead, already too easily benefits from the Gen Z assumption that being gay is “no big.” Never seeming to stop and look back at what all the homos who came before had to endure for them to be in this place of “levity.” Which is why the idea that one could “make light” of homophobia in the late 90s is automatically more powerful than any satirical slant Bottoms could ever hope to offer. With existing further in the pop culture timeline so often being a bane rather than a boon, at least where innovation is concerned.
And it seems like Seligman knows, on some level, that Brian Wayne Peterson’s script is the standard for satirizing what it means to be queer in a world “built for” the straights. Ergo, a subtle nod to But I’m A Cheerleader that comes in the form of a diner called But I’m A Diner, where Josie goes on her first “date” with Isabel. Who is, again, a cheerleader. One who eventually shows us that she swings her pom-poms both ways. Indeed, in the same way that But I’m A Cheerleader ends with Megan making a grand gesture to Graham, so, too, does Bottoms end with Josie (and PJ) engaging in the grand gesture of beating up the Huntington football team as a way say they’re sorry for lying about going to juvie and starting a fight club solely for the hope of getting some snatch (which, of course, makes them no better than men). And while this might be more elaborate than Megan’s simple cheer at Graham’s “I’m Straight Now” graduation ceremony, it doesn’t change the fact that But I’m A Cheerleader remains the crème de la crème of queer satire, right down to RuPaul as an “ex-gay”/True Directions employee wearing a “Straight Is Great” t-shirt.
This, in part, is because But I’m A Cheerleader had (and has) the advantage of being of its time. Therefore, coming across as more avant-garde and powerful than Bottoms could ever hope to. By the same token, were Bottoms not released in the present, it wouldn’t have enjoyed the undeniable value of queer ally Charli XCX scoring the entire soundtrack, in addition to adding some of her own already-in-existence tracks, like “party 4 u” from How I’m Feeling Now. That said, the But I’m A Cheerleader Soundtrack is nothing to balk at, featuring such dance floor anthems as Saint Etienne’s “We’re in the City” and Miisa’s “All or Nothing.” And so, while Bottoms is a welcome addition to the lacking and challenging genre of gay and lesbian satire, it still can’t quite hold a candle to the masterwork of the category. Coming in as a close tie with 2004’s Saved!, itself riffing on the premise of But I’m A Cheerleader via the gay boyfriend who’s also sent to a “conversion therapy” camp plotline. Whoever releases the next effort, however, will now have to at least top Bottoms.
Becoming something of a “soundtrack queen” (to rival Lana Del Rey), the chart success of “Speed Drive” from Barbie: The Album has prompted Charli XCX to make a music video for it. And, although Charli has had her fair share of anti-environmental music videos (see also: “2099”), “Speed Drive” might be her most no-fucks-given-about-Gaia one yet. Particularly at a time when any signs of flagrant abuse of Mother Earth have become more political than ever before. Nonetheless, what can anybody really expect from a song that, like Olivia Rodrigo’s “bad idea right?,” favors a bratty 00s-era feel to it? The 00s being one of the best times to exist for anyone who loved a gas-guzzling vehicle (whether Hummers or Bentleys).
And, talking of the 00s, no one was queen of the “sweet ride” like Regina George (Rachel McAdams) in Mean Girls. With her 2002 Lexus SC 430, Regina couldn’t have given less of a fuck about emitting fossil fuels (ergo, popular girls should be deemed losers for promoting rampant fossil fuel usage). Same as Barbie wouldn’t (and doesn’t) in her pink Corvette. The very one we see being driven by Devon Lee Carlson (who also gets name-checked in the song) as the video, co-directed by XCX and Ramez Silyan, opens on her and Charli speeding down the backroads overlooked by Los Angeles’ Fourth Street Bridge.
If the overall aesthetic seems familiar, complete with “industrial L.A. backdrop,” it’s because Charli has managed to continue her Crash era from early 2022 into the present. After all, as she’s admitted herself, “I’ve always really liked singing about cars. For me, there is this intrinsic link between driving and music and feeling like you’re a star when you’re in a car.” But, for as “brightly burning” as one might feel in that “star-y” moment they get from what Missy Elliott would describe as, “Top down, loud sound/See my peeps,” it’s not going to be even half as brightly burning as this Earth amid going up into flames thanks to unremitting CO2 emissions. Which makes one not merely “wonder” (so much as despise) why Charli (and many pop stars/other types of famous people) are so content to keep plugging the notion of how driving is “freedom” when, in fact, it will be the death of everyone. And while, sure, some say death is the ultimate liberation, there are others still who would prefer to last as long as possible without the effects of air pollution/climate change taking years off their lives. This being precisely what continued car usage (and the glamorization of car usage) will do.
XCX might have talked about the “intrinsic link” between driving and music, but she glossed right past the intrinsic link between driving and capitalism. As Metric says in the chorus of “Handshakes,” “Buy this car to drive to work/Drive to work to pay for this car.” The vicious cycle that arises when a shoddy economic system creates a need that isn’t actually a need, but a frivolous, detrimental want caused by a made-up life purpose (i.e., working a job you hate [or at least resent] so as to be paid). And yet, because of the expert conditioning we’re all given from day one thanks to advertising and, correlatively, the celebrity-industrial complex, we tell ourselves that selfish desires are needs. Including the desire to superfluously drive around in our cars doing donuts and slamming the brakes arbitrarily after stepping on the gas and letting out another massive, senseless CO2 fart into the world. Which is what both Carlson and Charli seem to enjoy doing with their status as: rich and influential.
Before we can get the full, uninterrupted effect of Charli letting her gasses loose, she steps out of the front seat in a white onesie (that seems the best word for it) complemented by a pink and white feather boa. As she starts to get into her “I’m a hot girl, pop girl, rich girl/I’m a bitch girl” type of dance, the world of the music video is shattered by the meta sound of her “Vroom Vroom” ringtone. Indeed, this entire portion is supposed to be meta, what with Sam Smith also being present on Barbie: The Album. Answering her oh so specifically zoomed in on Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5, the screen is opened to reveal Smith demanding, “Did you have a chance to listen to the new mix, babe? What’d you think?” She tells Smith, “I’m actually on the set of a music video right now.” Smith replies, “Okay, okay, sorry. I just, we gotta submit it so we can get it out.” Promising to call them afterward, she snaps the phone closed and cuts right back to the gear shift of the pink Corvette as Carlson hits the gas, showing us the “thrill” of the needle on the odometer rising while she does donuts around a dancing Charli. This in between close-ups on the car’s version of fuzzy dice hanging on the rearview mirror: an Android mini collectible. Because what is this video if not an aggrandizement of capitalistic synergy (mostly pertaining to Samsung)?
While XCX happily mugs for the camera, Carlson’s driving skills cause a huge blast of smoke to trail behind her in the Corvette’s wake. This is appropriately timed to coincide with XCX cockily singing, “Got the top down, tires on fire (on fire).” Followed by a classic “I’m an asshole but there’s nothing wrong with that” defense as Charli flexes, “Who are you? I’m livin’ my life/See you lookin’ with that side eye/Wow, you’re so jealous ’cause I’m one of a kind/What you think about me, I don’t care.” Really? Even if one tends to think Charli is a one-woman promotion parade for using and touting all manner of vehicles that contribute to our collective quietus? It seems like something one should care about, reputation-wise. But, as she’s made clear, she’s too “hot, ridin’ through the streets” and “on a different frequency”—at least from the environmentally-minded who would prefer to stop seeing the deification (and sexualization, à la J. G. Ballard’s Crash) of cars. Those metal monsters who will spell human extinction if AI doesn’t first.
To add insult to injury, rubber tires are set ablaze for the purpose of the video, emitting more smoke into the air so that the aerosols can contribute to affecting climate change as well. Even before this moment, it was long ago apparent that Charli is strictly among the camp that views environmental-friendliness not only as a hindrance to “economic growth,” but also, evidently, to her “art.” And as the credits to the video show the “tag” of Charli standing in the middle of the road while a freight train slowly crawls past her and a flaming wheel rolls by, to boot, she confirms that no one actually gives a shit about mitigating environmental damage as much as possible, whenever possible. Not when it makes them look so “hot” to do otherwise. Alas, everyone will be Satan-level hot on a more literal level soon enough.
With a movie as instantaneously revered as Barbie, it’s only natural to expect an accompanying soundtrack that might do it justice. And sure, the Barbie Soundtrack, billed as Barbie: The Album, is filled with its share of sonic “moments,” but there’s nothing that ultimately seems to tie it all together for a greater sense of seamless cohesion. What’s more, the three songs that stand out the most, Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night,” Charli XCX’s “Speed Drive” and Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?,” only make the other songs sound “throwaway” in comparison (granted, “Speed Drive” has gotten plenty of hate from those who don’t see the brilliance of a woman who compares Britney and will.i.am’s work together to Lennon and McCartney’s).
Even Lizzo, who is, for whatever reason, usually counted on for a “hit,” kicks things off with a less than auspicious offering in the form of “Pink.” A track that works much more effectively when one is hearing it played against the scenes at the beginning of the movie, wherein Lizzo reworks some of the lyrics depending on the altered scenario from the previous day—when it was all staring contentedly into a glassless mirror and pretend-drinking from a cup. Not to mention giant blowout parties with planned choreography and a bespoke song. That latter being Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night”—the most “Mark Ronson-y” number of the lot. And yes, it bears noting that Ronson, who collaborated with Andrew Wyatt, lived “in Barbie Land for over a year,” as he metaphorically phrases it. Trying to ingratiate himself in “the sugar high of Barbie, but also the crash.” This being part of the missive from screenwriters Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach that appears alongside Ronson’s in the soundtrack’s liner notes. But when you learn that the “Adam and Eve” songs of the record (a.k.a. the ones that Ronson initially made for it) were “Dance the Night” and “I’m Just Ken,” it tracks that such a divergent jumping-off point would lead to some major sonic schizophrenia.
The hodgepodge vibe makes all the more sense when Ronson goes on in his note to freely admit of the process, “…my main job here was to sit with Greta, brainstorm our dream list of artists and hone it down to what scene we wanted it for.” In other words, they would take whoever accepted from their “dream list” without any thought about whether that would ultimately make for a “meshing” soundtrack. But, as Mattel has shown with its marketing blitzkrieg to synergize with the movie, it’s not about what necessarily “works,” so much as appealing to as many “Barbies” as possible. The more variation there is on the soundtrack, the more potential for its songs to climb different charts. It’s all in the name of bad, dirty capitalism. But at least Barbie the movie plays with that a little more knowingly than its soundtrack, so blatantly designed to be everything to everyone (kind of like a woman).
Needless to say, there are better ways to embody a sugar high/crash trajectory that doesn’t include 1) Sam Smith spitting misogynistic lyrics as “a character” (though, per Ronson, a discussion of The Feminine Mystique with Gerwig inspired the chorus) and 2) the non sequitur appearance of Karol G’s “WATATI,” which, although the beat slaps, features lyrics that don’t really sync with the message of the movie. For Barbie, in this context, hardly gives off the signal that says, “Papi, let’s go to the club to have a good time/A lot of smoke, Aguardiente to get dizzy.” No, instead, every Barbie—Stereotypical or not—is more concerned with other, more meaningful endeavors in Barbie Land, none of which pertain to seeking out Ken for a good time, so much as having him around as an accessory.
And perhaps that’s what’s most surprising of all about Barbie: The Album—how little it lyrically ties into a film about smashing the patriarchy. Which infects Barbie Land after Tame Impala’s “Journey to the Real World” takes them through multiple landscapes until finally reaching Venice Beach. On her first pink convertible leg of the journey, however, Barbie opts for singing along to Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine.” This making the cut for the Best Weekend Ever edition of the soundtrack…except it’s performed by Brandi and Catherine Carlile.
Following Tame Impala on the “normal” edition though is the generic sound of Dominic Fike’s “Hey Blondie.” A “number” that comes across as though either Ronson was listening to too many Starbucks-sold compilation albums or Gerwig’s mumblecore Sacramento influence infected the mood for this particular track. Either way, the muted tones of Fike only end up making the listener wish Blondie was singing instead of this dude singing something called “Hey Blondie.” Again trying to “tap in” to the Ken persona, chauvinism rears its plastic head as Fike drones, “Hey, blondie, there’s a million eyes on you/Do you ever get curious?/Hey, blondie, there’s a million minds on you/Do you ever get furious?…/Hey, blondie, oh, hey, blondie/Hey, blondie, could you maybe just slide towards me?/Don’t want anything serious.” It might actually be the least listenable offering of Barbie: The Album. Maybe that’s why they up the “star quotient” again by placing HAIM’s song, “Home,” after it.
Considering how much of an influence The Wizard of Oz was on Barbie (along with many other classic films Gerwig has been happy to advise people on), HAIM’s “Home” instantly connects to the old chestnut, “There’s no place like home.” Something Barbie realizes rather quickly out there in the “Kendom” known as Real World’s system of patriarchy. Even though “Home” is another one of the more standout tracks on the record, it barely registers when actually viewing Barbie. Instead overpowered by the pop-y, synthetic glitz of “ditties” like Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice’s “Barbie World” (a.k.a. the ripoff of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” that proves: ain’t nothin’ like the real thing). Produced by Rostam and Danielle Haim, the song is tinged with electro beats that immediately draw comparisons to the 2012-era vibe Taylor Swift was pulling with Midnights. And when the HAIM sisters croon in unison, “I’m going home/Take me home, just take me home/Take me home,” one can really feel Barbie’s pain in not quite knowing where that is anymore after her foray into the Real World.
As though to drive that looming sadness, um, home, Ronson places the gloomy, existential “What Was I Made For?” in the wake of HAIM. A shining diamond among most of the other froth, it does serve a useful enough purpose in sonically revealing the cracks in Barbie’s veneer (that crash after the sugar rush assignment at work again). Unfortunately, the mood is totally killed/shifted abruptly again by the next song, brought to you by The Kid LAROI, himself known for an undercuttingly misogynistic song called “Without You.” Which is certainly the polar opposite of his sentiments on “Forever & Again.” And yet, rather than “serving devotion and romance,” it’s giving creepy stalker who wants to keep “his girl’s” blood in a vial necklace (no Billy Bob shade intended). This being manifest in lyrics like, “When it all falls down, and no one is around/‘Til my breath runs out, six feet underground/I’ma be there, this will never end/I’ll always be there, forever and again” and “‘Til my blood runs cold, I won’t let you go.” Except that all Barbie wants is to be let the fuck go.
The devoted male tone persists on Khalid’s (who has also joined Eilish on a project before in the form of 2018’s “lovely”) “Silver Platter.” A song that wants to be in the spirit of late 90s “You know I love you girl” artists like Brian McKnight…by way of Ken. Because, yes, unfortunately the rule on this record seems to be that any male artist with a song on it has to be speaking from the perspective of Ken. Case in point, Khalid begging, “Oh, oh/Give me a chance/To prove that I can/Give you the world/If I was your man, yeah.” Its unrequited love aura is in keeping with the spirit of Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” (which could still never hold a candle to Gosling singing “You Always Hurt the Ones You Love” in Blue Valentine). And yes, Gosling clearly wants to remind people about the triple threat status that got him the gig on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club in the first place, showcasing his acting, dancing and singing talents once again for the role of Ken.
Nonetheless, PinkPantheress gives Ken the shaft by mentioning some guy named Johnny on “Angel” (as in “Johnny Angel”). And it’s Johnny she’s yearning for when she laments, “Johnny, my baby, did it always have to end this way?/‘Cause one day/One day, my baby just went away/My angel (my angel)/You’re what haunts me now that you’re away.” The song itself seems as though it wants to represent the overall wide-ranging gamut of genres on the album by sounding like an A. G. Cook-produced, Irish strings-heavy wet dream (side note: it’s actually produced by BloodPop®, Count Baldor and PinkPantheress). Its sweet trilling vocals then lead jarringly into GAYLE’s “butterflies,” a “punk-y” cover of Crazy Town’s “Butterfly”—the song no one wanted to be revived. And save for the fleeting lines, “People feel better when they put you in a box/But the plastic’s gonna melt if you’re the one to make it hot,” it’s difficult to understand how this song fits in at all with the rest. Which brings us to Corporate Success 101: Appeal to Everyone.
Tellingly, there are few songs on the soundtrack that make it past three minutes, with each one perfectly packaged for easy-to-consume TikTok glory. As for the “eclecticism,” its aforementioned purposes are to tick as many “chart-topping” boxes as possible. With Ava Max’s “Choose Your Fighter,” the soundtrack achieves that potential anew as pop reenters the chat with upbeat rhythms produced by Cirkut. Max then gets on the inclusivity horn with lyrics that include, “I know this world can be a little confusing/ No walk in the park/But I can help you solve the riddle/You’re perfect as you are.” This, by the way, is something Barbie realizes when she sees an old woman sitting at a bus stop (who was rumored to be none other that the real Barbie, Barbara Handler…until fans were somewhat disappointed to learn it’s actually costume designer Ann Roth). Max continues, “If you wanna break out of the box [more tired Barbie innuendos]/Wanna call all of the shots/If you wanna be sweet or be soft/Then, go off/If you wanna go six inch or flat [a reference to the blue pill, red pill choice Barbie gets from Weird Barbie [Kate McKinnon])/Wanna wear hot pink or black/Don’t let nobody tell you you can’t/‘Cause you can.” Unless you live in one of the many nations where women are daily oppressed.
She then bursts into the chorus, “You can bе a lover or a fighter, whatevеr you desire/Life is like a runway and you’re the designer/Wings of a butterfly [nice nod to GAYLE], eyes of a tiger/Whatever you want, baby, choose your fighter.” So we’re mixing video game metaphors in with doll ones now, too? Yes. Because it’s all about synergy. Which translates to sales—for all things Mattel.
After a very odd sonic safari, we finally reach the end of the rainbow (because The Wizard of Oz and also rainbows are eclectic, get it?). And it concludes with the ultra chirpy “Barbie Dreams,” which might rival “It’s A Small World” for its relentlessly annoying cheer. Sung by FIFTY FIFTY and Kaliii, it doesn’t feel like the greatest choice to close out the album. Indeed, “What Was I Made For?” would have been the correct decision for the denouement. But, if you’ve been listening to the album this long, you’re probably already well-aware that the “best decisions” weren’t always a factor in terms of “placements.” Yet it’s a challenge to have good placements when most of the songs don’t really fit together to begin with.
As for those wondering why Matchbox 20’s “Push” isn’t on the soundtrack, one will just have to settle for Ryan Gosling covering it on the Best Weekend Ever edition. Because it would be far too big of a lie to call it the Best Soundtrack Ever edition. In truth, Birds of Prey, another movie in which Margot Robbie plays an iconic character, does a superior job of effortlessly melding all the tones and themes of the movie into the soundtrack. From “Boss Bitch” to “Sway With Me,” Birds of Prey hits all the right notes on cohesive soundtracking.
But maybe what could have tied Barbie: The Album together is what’s really missing from the soundtrack: the pure bubblegum-ness of Kesha, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. The latter two (along with Charli XCX) actually appeared in some form or other on the Promising Young Woman Soundtrack. Itself a sort of Real World Barbie homage. Though Emerald Fennell didn’t know it at the time. Nor could she have known that she would also play the discontinued pregnant Midge doll in the film. Which probably made her too busy to weigh in (no pun intended) on the soundtrack’s direction. Though it might have helped in hindsight… For while Barbie might have revived cinema (at least for the summer), it hasn’t quite delivered on a resuscitation of the soundtrack.
Like most things that the hoi polloi are expected to endure/“deal with,” celebrities and the otherwise wealthy are not. For someone of Taylor Swift’s caliber (financially speaking), that certainly applies tenfold. And if that wasn’t already made apparent from the public release of her carbon footprint that reported her as emitting 8,293.54 tonnes of carbon a year thanks to private jet-setting alone, then maybe her latest example of “It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me” will make it undeniably clear. And that is: her blasé attitude about trash. More specifically, disposing of it in a manner that would be expected of a “plebe.”
But before we get to that, let us remember that Swift perhaps ultimately skirted a full-tilt backlash against the private jet controversy by claiming that the majority of the flights taken were a result of loaning out her jet. As though that somehow made her inculpable just because her bony ass allegedly wasn’t in the seat. What’s more, the report of Swift’s numerous flights came out at the same time as records of Kylie Jenner’s twenty-minute flights were released. Flights that could have been a slightly longer drive between Riverside and L.A. Counties. Jenner confirmed her own outrageous behavior by posting an image she thought was going to “serve” in July of 2022—featuring her in “Hollywood embrace” pose with her equally atrocious baby daddy, Travis Scott, as the two stood in between their respective private jets, captioned with the braggadocious question, “You wanna take mine or yours?”
With Jenner being instantly lambasted as a climate criminal (where’s the lie?), Swift’s crown as the reigning queen of private jet usage ultimately got lost in the shuffle of broad-spectrum outrage over private plane rides (with Britney Spears perhaps being the only one to get a “pass” as a result of all she’s been through). And any thoughts of Swift as someone “criminal” eventually “petered out” once she released another album, and America was reminded again of just how much they love their sweetheart (grotesque little CO2 emitter or not). Even if, with Midnights, it seemed Taylor was actually trolling people a bit with a line (from the climate change-y “Snow on the Beach” no less) like, “And my flight was awful/Thanks for asking.” Of course, that’s hard to believe when considering the lavish accommodations of a private jet she calls “The Number 13.” A number she has long considered to be lucky, as a matter of fact—referencing it in songs and videos galore and, as mentioned, opting to brandish it as the moniker of her personal plane, to boot. So yeah, if it ever crashed, that surely might change her views on the digit bearing something like luck, rendering her just another average person with a case of triskaidekaphobia.
But getting to her latest case of environmentally-unfriendly behavior, Swift has come under fire (mainly by the New York Sanitation Department) for her less than exemplary “disposal” methods. To that end, ironically enough, Swift also boasts on Midnights (during “Karma”), “I keep my side of the street clean/You wouldn’t know what I mean.” Evidently, she’s the one who doesn’t even know what she means, relying on the tried-and-true “just make it go away with money” method that most celebrities are inclined to. After all, what’s the point of being a celebrity if you can’t enjoy such “perks” in exchange for the violation of your privacy? Such perks being to pay thousands of dollars in fines to avoid actually keeping your side of the street clean—all while your privacy is invaded by way of habits being revealed through the exposure of your trash. Something that media outlets are only too happy to report on (including, but not limited to, the presence of liquor bottles and cigarettes butts…how Olsen twins circa the 00s-esque).
Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem to bother Swift that much. Or at least not enough to clean up a.k.a. hire someone else to do the job. For, as of July 2023, Swift has been ticketed thirty-two times by the New York Sanitation Department and fined roughly three thousand dollars (which amounts to three cents for a person of Swift’s echelon) for her inability 1) dispose of her trash correctly, 2) failing to keep the front area of her building clean and 3) generally parading a dirty sidewalk year-round—regardless of being on tour or not. Considering Swift essentially “owns” the block she inhabits on Franklin Street in Tribeca, she’s the only one responsible for “keeping this place clean,” to quote Prince’s dad in Purple Rain.
Naturally, Swifties were quick to come to the defense of their beloved “mother,” assuring, “It’s probably the fans waiting for her and smoking while they’re bored.” Whether that’s true or not, it doesn’t change the reality that Swift is the one responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of the block she’s made her own private island on an island. What’s more, who’s to say that she doesn’t smoke now and again? For, despite her “squeaky clean” image—complete with the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan aesthetic—Swift has broken away from it in the years since she went from country to pop star, going on to—gasp!—swear in her lyrics and openly drink in public/on camera (her affinity for wine being well-known by now). Indeed, her love of the drink is just about the only thing that’s made her a “baddie,” while her foil, Lana Del Rey, instead relies on vaping and smoking since she gave up drinking long ago after her teenage bout with alcoholism. In short, regardless of her fans’ disbelief that “pure” Taylor could bear such trash herself, the report stating that “there are cigarette packs, stacks of newspapers, liquor bottles, cardboard boxes and ashtrays scattered on the sidewalk” actually does jive with Swift’s lifestyle, as well as the company she keeps. Being so convinced she’s a “New York bohemian” and all.
Those who aren’t defending her and trying to say it’s not her fault (including Swift herself, who seems to be fighting the charges on “principle” alone—because, again, 3K is nothing to her) are instead commending the “bad bitch” contents of her waste. Namely, Charli XCX, who retweeted one of the headlines about Swift’s trash with the caption, “My kinda girl.” And yet, increasingly, Swift has proven herself to be no one’s kind of girl. At least not in terms of displaying the level of consideration required of somebody who wants to truly set an example for others about not being so reckless with the climate’s well-being just because you “can be”/claim you “have to be” (“for work”). Alas, money is a celebrity’s multifaceted superpower as much as any corporate shill at the top of the company food chain. A “superpower” that serves as the driving force behind why the environment continues to be pillaged and violated in such vast and ceaseless ways. Then again, perhaps Swift should be commended for ultimately helping to “end” New York sooner.
Growing up as a girl, I played with all sorts of dolls: American Girl, Bratz, Polly Pocket, and of course, Barbies. I had the Dream House, the Dream Car, the color changing mermaid, and don’t forget about Ken. But as I aged, Barbie became a bit more problematic.
Suddenly, we grew up and realized that Barbie wasn’t representing diversity (by any means) very well. She was dimensionally impossible, but she grew up as our role model! How could we spend our lives aspiring for blonde-haired, cinched-waisted, pink-loving Barbie if the girl selling the dream was unattainable?
And then there were the controversial Barbies…1965 Slumber Party Barbie had a scale set to 110 pounds and a dieting book titled “How To Lose Weight” with the advice “Don’t Eat!” Not our role model promoting eating disorder culture!
1965 Slumber Party Barbie
Daily Mail
Mattel was failing to realize that by making Barbie a doctor, lawyer, homeowner, extraordinaire, she truly was our role model as little girls. We were looking at these dolls potentially seeing what our future could look like. And if it meant being 110 pounds to have the Dream Car, that sends the opposite message.
But there is no one I have more faith in than Greta Gerwig to do the injustices of Barbie justice. We have just under one month until Gerwig’s Barbie movie releases into theaters…on the same day as Christopher Nolan’s polar opposite Oppenheimer, which has started its own collection of memes for a double-header day.
Barbie has already stolen the hearts of social media with perhaps the best marketing we’ve seen for a movie in a long time (barring the accidental chaos marketing of Don’t Worry Darling). We’ve gotten picturesque stills of BarbieLand, the Architectural Digest tour of the Dream House, hilarious trailers, and of course the iconic movie posters. The main message of the posters? Barbie (Margot Robbie) is everything, and he’s just Ken (Ryan Gosling).
From the trailer we can tell that Barbie lives in her pink world with other Barbies and Kens, like Dua Lipa being Mermaid Barbie. But one day when Barbie throws her party (complete with synchronized dance and bespoke song), she lets a thought out: “Do you guys ever think about dying?” Party halts.
Now that she’s contempating her mortality, things for Barbie become less than perfect: her heels touch the ground (gag) and she falls off her roof (gasp)..So she’s given a choice: return to her world (presented as a high heel) or go to the Real World and figure out what life’s really about (presented as a worn out Birkenstock). Unfortunately for Barbie, she has to choose the latter.
In BarbieLand, she explains, “ Basically everything men do in your world, women do in ours.” As for the Kens? “I honestly don’t know.” If you can tell the theme of this film so far, it’s that women are running the show.
But what Greta Gerwig gets right with Barbie so far is that BarbieLand is impractical. In the Architectural Digest tour, Margot Robbie shows us how the pool is fake because there are no elements in Barbie’s world. She showers without water, has a fridge filled with decal food, and a lot, she admits with a laugh, is “not super practical, but nothing is for Barbie.”
The success of the movie already is proving to be major. With Ryan Gosling’s fierce dedication to being Ken, you find it hard not to root for this movie in the box office. He’s given us quotes like “If you really cared about Ken, you would know that nobody cared about Ken” and coined the term “Ken-ergy.”
On Jimmy Fallon, Gosling likened Ken to an un-cool accessory, saying that nobody really ever played with a Ken doll. “ I was surprised how…some people were clutching their pearls about my Ken, as though they ever thought about Ken for a second. They never played with Ken! Nobody ever plays with Ken.”
And we’ve already seen the blazing hot pink merchandise that has scattered stores. You can buy Barbie-inspired satin pillowcases, Barbie glassware, Barbie cookware. Our lives are suddenly immersed in our picturesque Barbie DreamWorld, but this time with a grown-up twist.
We’re no longer emulating the Barbie look, per-se…but the Barbie Dream. It’s about female empowerment and uplifting others, becoming successful in your own way, and loving the color pink always. It’s more of the Barbie mindset than the Barbie body.
With a star-studded cast consisting of Will Ferrell, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Emma Mackey, Kate McKinnon, and more…and an equally studded soundtrack with features from Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice, Dua Lipa, Ava Max, Charli XCX, Khalid, Lizzo, etc. This movie radiates power.
As a lover of all things pink, I’m here for the Barbie collabs. Here are my faves to get you ready for the movie of the summer:
For a while there, Lana Del Rey was the undisputed Soundtrack Queen. Whether composing original songs or offering up cover versions, Del Rey’s voice has been present on an eclectic mix of films ranging from The Great Gatsby (with the original composition “Young and Beautiful”) to Big Eyes (with the original compositions “Big Eyes” and “I Can Fly”) to The King (with a previously unreleased track from her pre-fame days called “Elvis”) to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (with a cover of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch”), the list of Del Rey’s soundtrack contributions goes on and on. But lately, there’s been a fierce contender in the realm of soundtrack contributions, and it’s none other than Charli XCX.
Although, in the past, XCX was more known for providing previously released songs for soundtracks (including “Boom Clap” for The Fault in Our Stars, “Break the Rules” for Hot Pursuit, “SuperLove” for How to Be Single, “Boys” for Promising Young Woman and “Good Ones” for I Want You Back), lately, she’s been inspired to create plenty of original content for some of the most exciting movies to come out in the last year. In 2022, her original composition for A24’s Bodies Bodies Bodies yielded “Hot Girl (Bodies Bodies Bodies)”—the type of song that was made for soundtracking the likes of Regina George’s existence. Indeed, XCX’s overt aughts-inspired sensibilities (both sonically and aesthetically) have been a key force in making her stand apart for soundtrack fare. Especially for films with 00s cinematography palettes. This includes not only Promising Young Woman, but now, Barbie. The most blockbustery movie to date that XCX has been a part of. Joined by other Barbiecore types like Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj/Ice Spice, Karol G and Pink Pantheress, Charli’s contribution in the form of “Speed Drive” stands apart not just for its sound and more sped-up tempo (after all, you can’t have a song featuring the word “speed” in it without it being fast, n’est-ce pas?), but also for actually painting the portrait of “Barbie life” in a way that none of the other songs released thus far do. Not even “Barbie World,” which is more of an extension of the Minaj and Ice Spice personas than Barbie’s. What’s more, it relies on the core “thesis” of Aqua’s 1997 hit, “Barbie Girl,” as Lene Nystrøm sings in the background, “I’m a Barbie girl in the Barbie world/Life in plastic, it’s fantastic/You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere/Imagination, life is your creation.”
XCX’s portrait of “Barbie World,” on the other hand, focuses not just on how “hot” Barbie is, but also on what a good and loyal friend she happens to be. Because, obviously, if you’re that fine, you have to be nice, too—that is, if you don’t want people to despise you. And Charli assures listeners that Barbie is just that (even if she herself was a self-admitted “Barbie decapitator” as a child) as she sings, “She’s my best friend in the whole world/On the mood board, she’s the inspo/And she’s dressed in really cute clothes/Kawaii like we’re in Tokyo/Devon Lee smile, teeth a white row/Got a classic, real deep, Van Gogh/She got loyalty, she says, ‘I love you, girl’/I love her more.” As for the name-checking of various unlikely luminaries of arts and letters (save for Devon Lee), XCX felt obliged to congratulate herself by noting, “Literally can’t believe I name checked Van Gogh, Voltaire, Devon Lee Carlson and Barbie all in one song. That’s genius [said in a Paris Hilton ‘That’s hot’ tone, one assumes]. AND I simultaneously sampled Robyn’s cover of Teddybears’ ‘Cobra Style’ and interpolated ‘Hey Micky’ [will try to ignore that it’s spelled ‘Mickey’]?! I’m a fucking mathematician.” Or at least a hit pop song formula mathematician. And by the way, “Hey Mickey” itself is also a “sample” (but more like all-out remake)…of Racey’s 1979 song, “Kitty.”
To be sure, XCX has been on her sampling tip more than ever with her Crash era (which is technically over now), particularly by way of wielding Robin S’ “Show Me Love” (before Beyoncé) on “Used to Know Me” and September’s “Cry For You” on “Beg For You.” So it is that with her vast knowledge of the pop/dance music lexicon, XCX serves up her own one-of-a-kind bop by interpolating all these elements from pop culture past as though grinding them in a blender and letting the result that comes out be “Speed Drive.”
As for those who might have picked up on Charli’s “fetish,” as it were, for cars (hear/see also: “I Love It,” “Vroom Vroom,” Crash” and the entire concept behind the Crash album) continuing in this single, she was happy to tell Rolling Stone, “I’ve always really liked singing about cars. For me, there is this intrinsic link between driving and music and feeling like you’re a star when you’re in a car.” Maybe someone should tell Pearl (Mia Goth) that. With this said, Charli was very deliberate about her decision to write a song for the film’s chase scene (the one Charli posted of Barbie [Margot Robbie] running out of the Mattel building). Her love of all things “fast” and “flash” seemingly traces all the way back to her first “live performance” at a talent show held on a cruise ship. The a capella song performed? “Barbie Girl,” naturally. Because yes, Charli is a millennial girl before a Barbie girl…much to Gen Z’s dismay.
In terms of the track’s tone, Charli wanted it to “feel quite bratty” and pertain to “being hot.” Which is pretty much the essence of all her songs, particularly the last one she custom-made for a film, “Hot Girl (Bodies Bodies Bodies).” Indeed, one might say that, like Olivia Rodrigo commenting on how “vampire” is a natural progression from her work on Sour, so, too, is “Speed Drive” a natural progression from “Hot Girl (Bodies Bodies Bodies)”—yet another Charli number made for a specific movie. Which, again, brings us back to how the British hitmaker is “coming for” Lana’s crown with regard to “soundtrack supremacy.”
Clocking in at just one minute and fifty-seven seconds, “Speed Drive” also more than meets the unspoken “TikTok requirements” for most songs of late, making it even more primed for “hit potential.” And so, even though XCX repeats the phrase “red lights” throughout the song, as well as for the outro, it’s apparent that there’s nothing but green ones for the places (and films) XCX will be welcomed into after further cementing herself as the ultimate Pop Star (/Soundtrack) Barbie.
Does anyone remember Disney Channel’s Disneymania albums?
During the golden era of Disney Channel Original content, the channel would release a compilation of their hottest stars singing their hottest songs. The Disneymania series ran for 8 years, between 2002 to 2010, and put out seven albums.
This was the heyday of Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and many more. With covers and originals alike, these compilation albums go down in history for their pure bizarreness — and also for putting out some certified bangers.
That same feeling — a mix of wonder, whimsy, and pure joy — is what I’m expecting from the Barbie movie soundtrack, which announced its features today.
If you thought the live-action Barbie movie couldn’t get any more iconic after revealing its cast of Barbies and Kens, its musician line-up rivals that of some festivals this summer.
Compiled by legendary producer Mark Ronson, there are some expected guests and a few surprises. The lineup includes Charli XCX, Dua Lipa, Ice Spice, Lizzo, PinkPantheress, Tame Impala, Haim, Nicki Minaj (of course the queen of the Barbz would be on the Barbie soundtrack), Khalid, and more.
The biggest surprise? Ryan Gosling. That’s right. Our starring Ken Doll apparently has his own song on the soundtrack. And you better believe that’s the song I’m tuning into FIRST.
The movie of the summer is almost upon us folks. And it’s bringing with it, the songs of the summer.
Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and written/directed by Greta Gerwig, will go down in camp history — right alongside films like the live-action Scooby-Doo series and the Disneymania albums.
The newest trailer promises fun, laughs, and a dose of existentialism. Every peek we get of Barbie makes us more and more eager for July 21st to hurry up and get here.
While everyone had assumed that 1) Putin would never dare to actually invade Ukraine and that 2) if he did, it would never go on this long, they were all mistaken on both counts. As of March 27th, it is three-hundred and ninety-seven days into the invasion, and talk of nuclear war only continues to mount. Especially as Putin speaks of storing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, a maneuver that has been deemed a way to take said country as a “nuclear hostage” to the whims of the dictator swinging his “missile” around as leverage. By stationing missiles there, not only is Belarus a hostage, but the rest of the world becomes a prisoner to the irascibility of a man who wants to be able to constantly have the threat of “the button” on his side. And yet, when so many men in the past, including Putin contemporaries Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, have made this threat only as a means to “flex,” it becomes a case of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”—not that anyone has a problem with that in this scenario. It’s just that, the more a threat like this is made, the more idle it becomes. For one has to be willing to be insane enough to know that in pressing the button, they’re effectively kamikazeing themselves.
Although everyone loves to condemn a baby boomer, it has to be said that no one knows better than said generation what it means to live under the anxieties of ceaseless nuclear threat. Ergo, the pervasiveness of music centered on the topic in the boomer heyday. Whether Sheldon Allman’s “Crawl Out Through the Fallout” and “Radioactive Mama,” Ian Campbell’s “The Sun Is Burning” (also covered by Simon & Garfunkel), The Fugs’ “Kill For Peace,” Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” or Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Wooden Ships,” there was no shortage of grandiose numbers or “little ditties” about the subject matter. Some used music to make light of the situation as best they could. This included Allman, who sings on “Radioactive Mama,” “Well, when we get together, clear away the crowd/There won’t nothing left except a mushroom-shaped cloud.” Allman also adds, “Your kisses do things to me in oh so many ways/I feel them going through me, all those gamma, gamma rays.” Because if we can’t joke about things like this, then honestly, how are we supposed to get through it?
The thing is, being out of the boomer era and on to a new one where everything is a potential source of offense, it would be unfathomable for songs like Allman’s to be released today. Including “Crawl Out Through the Fallout,” wherein he sardonically urges, “Crawl out through the fallout, baby/To my loving arms/Through the rain of Strontium-90” and then notes, for good tongue-in-cheek measure, “I’ll love you all your life/Although that may not be too long,” as well as, “Crawl out through the fallout back to me/‘Cause you’ll be the only girl in the world.” And no, this certainly isn’t what Rihanna had in mind when she said, “Want you to make me feel like I’m the only girl in the world.” Indeed, by the time the 2010s rolled around, nuclear war had become a far less chic topic in music, having reached a crescendo in the 1980s with singles such as Blondie’s “Atomic,” Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House,” Rush’s “Between the Wheels” and Ultravox’s “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes.”
With the 80s seeing the greatest spike in Cold War tensions of the twentieth century, things calmed down (or at least pretended to) in the decades beyond. Perhaps so much so that musicians forgot altogether how terrifying it was for people to live through the perpetual pall of nuclear war’s dark shadow. Hence, while Charli XCX and MARINA use the words “nuclear” and “radioactive” to describe a relationship, they do so with the level of cavalier apathy so often credited to a millennial. At the same time, it was as though they both somehow had their finger on the pulse of what was to come in the next decade, with MARINA’s “Radioactive” appearing on 2012’s Electra Heart and Charli’s “Nuclear Seasons” appearing on 2013’s True Romance. Regardless of the years that each album came out, both singles, eerily enough, were initially released in 2011. What’s more, by putting the songs out during this moment in time, they also had the advantage of doing so when it wasn’t such a “hotbed” issue to wield such terms as metaphors. Which both of them do. For Charli, the “nuclear season” she refers to is a relationship that’s about to blow up as she announces, “We in the nuclear season/In the shelter I’ll survive this though.” Because a fallout shelter remains, evidently, a timeless symbol in our fucked-up world. MARINA, then Marina and the Diamonds, also knew how to brandish the trope in her first single from Electra Heart, singing, “When you’re around me, I’m radioactive/My blood is burning, radioactive/I’m turning radioactive/My blood is radioactive/My heart is nuclear/Love is all that I fear.” Roughly ten years on, however, the thing one ought to fear most is the total lack of potential for love in the world. For there should be no concern on MARINA’s part about love even being an option in this loveless, AI hellscape.
So sure, if baby boomers thought it was bad to grow up being shown the “Duck and Cover” video in elementary school, they can take comfort in knowing that the rest of us are probably worse off for having nuclear war used as love metaphors rather than a legitimate source of concern. In said 1951 informational video from the Federal Civil Defense Administration, Bert the Turtle shows kids “what we all must learn to do.” Which is crawl into our “shells” and hide. The carapace that most white children were expected to have being a fallout shelter. Thus, the narrator assuring the white students watching, “Be sure to get into the house fast, where your parents have fixed a safe place for you to go.”
For those NYC Black kids who were lucky enough, maybe their building had a community fallout shelter in the basement that’s since been converted into a shitty laundry room. Otherwise, it was probably tough titty. For we can’t pretend it’s not part of the racially-prejudiced dictator’s aim to wipe out the marginalized. Which is exactly what would have happened in the 50s and early 60s if a bomb had actually detonated. Because only the white folks were investing in bomb shelters. After all, the financial disparity between white and Black Americans at that time was an even more considerable factor. Not to mention the racially assumptive policies of civil defense that deliberately chose to ignore that people of color did not have the same resources as the “ideal” of the day: the suburban, white, middle-class nuclear (ironic, yes) family.
So maybe it is nice to have Charli and MARINA “equalize” the bomb by making it a love metaphor (and yes, a toxic one). One that redefines what the narrator in “Duck and Cover” says: “The bomb can explode any time of year, day or night.” Yes, the love bomb sure can. Elsewhere, our narrator promises, “Older people will help us, as they always do.” A big presumption that obviously didn’t take into account how selfish the modern adult would become. The narrator makes certain to include the caveat, “But there might not be any grown-ups around when the bomb explodes.”
“Grown-up” (an illusory term) present or not, the idea that ducking and covering was really going to spare anyone from nuclear fallout was both precious and self-deluding—and likely a huge government conspiracy designed to placate the masses. Which is why they could write off nuclear attack as being just another “little danger” to potentially be prepared for as viewers of the video are soothed, “We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous. Since it may be used against us, we must get ready for it. Just as we are ready for many other dangers that are around us all the time.” No one thought to point out that these dangers (e.g., fires, earthquakes) were not needlessly designed by the government.
And so, even now, we all just keep hoping for the best in terms of how “prepared” we are. That these dictators are merely pathetic man-boys crying wolf, but would never actually greenlight the mushroom cloud. Plus, if no one is around anymore to oppress, where’s the fun in that to a dictator?
For those who didn’t think Caroline Polachek’s bop, “Welcome to My Island,” could get any better, Charli XCX has arrived to give her own take on it. One delivered in the “persona” of a decidedly creamy smooth pop icon goddess (as Madonna likes to call herself). In this regard, XCX continues to adopt the same braggadocious tone we’ve come to know and love on Crash, translating it into a “remix” that feels like a dripping-in-decadence song unto itself. Indeed, Polachek’s faint presence in the background of her own single is overshadowed by XCX with far more overtness than Taylor Swift doing the same to Lana Del Rey during “Snow on the Beach.” But that’s to be expected when Polachek trusts in XCX’s brilliance to remake a song based on their past collaborations together (including “New Shapes,” which also featured Christine and the Queens). And the brilliance XCX provides here is no exception to the rule.
As someone who has transformed parodying pop stardom to the point where she can perhaps no longer blur the line between the parody and the real, the George Daniel and Charli XCX remix of “Welcome to My Island” fits right in with XCX’s simultaneous mockery and embracement of excess. In short, all the trappings of stardom and its according wealth. Among such trappings being island getaways at the drop of a custom-made hat. After all, there’s a reason so many celebrities buy private islands—it’s the ultimate milieu where no rules need apply to them (not that they really do elsewhere either). And yes, Richard Branson, who Charli name checks in the song with, “I guess I’m on my Richard Branson wave/No virgin, but I knew just how to behave,” is among the many “eccentric” (read: difficult because they can be) celebrities to own an island.
What’s more, when Charli says she knows just how to behave, she means she knows just how to misbehave, regaling us with her double entendre-filled description, “You can drive me down to Florida and fuck me for days/Back at the start, think you knew that I was dangerous/I’ve done a couple bad things if you catch my drift/I told him, ‘Baby, you can pull up on the landing strip’/And if you do it right, welcome to my island, bitch.”
It’s that last line that XCX has remade with the blunt addition of the word “bitch” that has rendered this version of “Welcome to My Island” arguably more iconic than Polachek’s original (which isn’t an easy feat considering how amazing it is already). And there’s no denying a touch of the Britney influence in “coming up with” that one-word addendum. XCX being a fan of Spears (like most of us), it’s certain that “Gimme More” has played a part in her pop music inspiration, perhaps finally manifesting at its most obvious with the straightforward declaration, “Welcome to my island, bitch.” For if Britney could make a similarly simple announcement so memorable by adding “bitch” (i.e., “It’s Britney, bitch”), then surely Charli could, too. And so she has, with an anthem that touts the glamor and indulgence of what being on an island connotes to those who don’t actually have to live on one full-time. For, as most who endure that fate know, it hardly feels like a 24/7 vacation, so much as a 24/7 nightmare.
More than just the lyrical depictions, however, it is the sonic landscape—courtesy of Jim-E Stack, Dan Nigro, Danny L Harle, Caroline Polachek and George Daniel—that transports us into an environment so carefree and bacchanalian that it’s almost (almost) as good as actually being in, say, Ibiza (where this song should probably be playing on a loop throughout the summer). And for the landlocked plebes who will never make it to such exotic locations evoked by “Welcome to My Island,” the track alone will have to suffice, ingratiating itself among the Lavish Getaway Canon with other “rare breed” singles such as “La Isla Bonita.” And as for John Donne, who said, “No man is an island,” well, that’s probably just because he had never met a millionaire or billionaire with his own to prove otherwise.
2016 was T-Pain’s Twitch channel’s inaugural year, and it’s also the first time Pain remembers getting trolled. “At the time, my music career was kind of on a downward spiral,” he says during our Zoom call this Monday. “People were coming into my chat and telling me stuff like, ‘You’re only streaming because you don’t have any more music money.’ It wasn’t true, but it kind of hit home because I was thinking that same shit.”
T-Pain is now the CEO of Nappy Boy Gaming, a passionate piece of his 2006-founded media empire Nappy Boy Entertainment. He runs and selects the members of its stream team, which includes BigCheese and Granny. When NBG started, he wasn’t used to getting trolled. But he does have experience with backlash—you might remember some of it from when you knew him best, when he was the guy on the radio singing with Auto-Tune.
Born Faheem Najm in Tallahassee, Florida (his artist name means “Tallahassee Pain,” because he struggled while living there), T-Pain started making music as soon as his 10-year-old hands would let him. He was only 20 when his debut single “I’m Sprung,” certified platinum in 2006, came out. That song makes Pain’s voice glossy with extreme pitch-correction, and later hits like 2007’s “Bartender” and “Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” feature the same Auto-Tuned vocal cascades.
He was always committed to the art of it. He used to sample games like Streets of Rage 2 and GoldenEye007 (he reminisces about working with the former back in “oh my God, 1998, this was way back,” he says, laughing). In using Auto-Tune, he never sounds robotic (“Kids today wouldn’t understand what it’s like to sing into a fan and try to sound like T-Pain,” says a YouTube comment with over 20 thousand upvotes), he sounds like T-Pain, pleasantly metallic, the sound you get from clinking together a couple of $400,000 diamond necklaces. It became a covetable sound, reproduced by other 2000’s club rulers like the Black Eyed Peasand Kesha, and even still by huge rappers and alt-pop stars, like Travis Scott, Lil Yachty, and Charli XCX.
But, in the beginning, Pain’s peers were unwilling to give him credit. Usher, at one point, told him that he fucked music up, and Jay-Z bitterly called for “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)” with his 2009 song (“this shit violent / This is death of Auto-Tune, moment of silence”). The collective backlash led to a depressive period “that left [T-Pain] unmotivated to make any more music,” a New Yorker profile from 2014 says, but the fog lifted around that time, which happens to coincide with when Pain was first exposed to Twitch streaming at a PlayStation event in 2013.
He became attached to “this feeling that I wasn’t alone,” and realized streaming was a social, gratifying alternative to gaming alone in his room, or being stuck on a plane or stage without another human being to connect with.
He tells me he “took the reins into [his] hands” in 2016, starting his own channel and eventually forming his own stream team because he felt like it.
“I saw Markiplier watching BigCheese,” T-Pain says, “and I immediately got this feeling that I need to create something where I can use my name and my platform to get this guy seen. I need to get more eyes on this guy. I was like, ‘I need to create a gaming organization.’”
“It was kind of on a whim,” he admits, but he sticks with it partially because he likes being on his stream team, too, and protecting the sense of wonder that video games give him.
It was difficult initially. It turned out that internet commenters inherited Jay-Z’s objections to T-Pain’s career.
“The negativity sticks out so much,” he says about receiving his first round of hate comments. “I was screaming in my house, and I was getting mad at my wife for nothing because these fucking assholes on Twitter talking shit. Telling everybody, ‘don’t talk to me today, this one guy on Twitch said I was a fucking has-been.’”
But he learned, as everyone online must learn, that the anonymous losers in your comments section can’t be trusted.
“This is when I was getting 200 viewers, like, that was my top, that was big for me. When a lot of those viewers were saying ‘you’re on the stream because you don’t have money anymore,’ […] I started feeling like that. […] But I realized that those were just terrible people.”
Once he came to conclusion that “fuck those guys. Nevermind. Back to our regularly scheduled program,” like he says, he committed to streaming and nourishing that wonder. He cites TimTheTatman, Moistcritikal (“that’s the fucking homie”), and virtual YouTuber CodeMiko (“there’s a whole $10,000 system sitting in my game room doing nothing because I found out [motion capture] was more instructions than I thought it was”) as streamers he’s a fan of. It’s obvious that he loves streaming as a discipline.
You can also tell from decades of interviews, podcast appearances, and music—I noticed it, too, during our call—that T-Pain loves laughing. He slips into booming ha ha ha!’s as cheerily as you wiggle off a sweater when you’re warm, which could be why he found so much success on Twitch, where he now has close to 900 thousand followers. He is palpably nice.
Tabloids and DeuxMoi have mostly trained us out of believing celebrities can be so nice, no strings attached, but T-Pain exudes undeniable charisma. He has so many interesting stories to tell, and I’m happy to sit and let time pass as I listen.
Like, in 2021, he told his viewers about meeting Prince’s bass player. He called him on the phone so that T-Pain and Prince could introduce themselves, but Prince instead shouted “where the fuck you been at, man, we’ve been trying to jam for an hour!” as soon as he picked up.
The bass player “said ‘hey man, I’m sorry about that, but, man, I got T-Pain right here.’ Prince said, ‘I don’t want to talk to no motherfucking T-Pain,’” T-Pain recalls, cackling so hard he needs to rip his headphones off for a second. It starts a chain reaction—everyone in the room is cracking up, and so is everyone watching at home. “I was like, ‘bro, it’s fine!’”
He talks to viewers like we’re all at the bar together; he doesn’t operate with the untouchability of someone who influenced two decades of popular music, though he’s willing to demystify that world for everyone. He does it a lot—he just streamed for six hours the other day, scrolling through YouTube and analyzing his music while chat asked him innocent questions, children talking to their teacher. “What’s your favorite music video?”
He’s willing to entertain in infinite ways, giving subscriber insider looks at how he makes music, playing Battlefield 1, Fortnite, racing games with a steering wheel controller, Call of Duty…whatever he can get his hands on, really. The NBG team is similarly eclectic, playing Red Dead Redemptionin full grandma drag or, like Cardboard Cowboy, showing viewers hours of custom animations before finally deciding to play The Last of Us.
That impulse T-Pain had once, to support and amplify creators he admires, has proven to be long lasting. It continues to guide Nappy Boy Gaming. When it comes to adding new streamers to NBG’s roster, “I still look for people who would otherwise not be seen,” he says.
T-Pain likes streamers who seem like pure fun. Good people. “I scour Twitch, and I watch people, and if I stumble upon you and see you may need some help, or you got low views, and I feel like you deserve more…there you go. That’s how you get signed to Nappy Boy Gaming.”
“You don’t have to be really good at games [to get signed to NBG],” he continues. “You just got to be a good person that likes to make people laugh and lift people up. Just don’t be a dick.”
T-Pain has a genuine joy for streaming, but there are materials to be gained from it, too. He told famous jackassSteve-O on his podcast last year that he makes a lot of money on Twitch, and actually, “I’m making more money off of video games than I’ve made in the last four years,” he said. But he’s not sticking to Nappy Boy Gaming—continuously adding streamers to his roster, chatting for hours with subscribers—solely because he needs the money. Not to brag, but he’s good.
“This isn’t, like, my main thing. I have other ways of making money. It’s fine,” he says, though, if he did dedicate all his time to streaming, it would work out to something like $60,000 per hour, he claims, and that doesn’t hurt. But what might matter more to T-Pain is that NBG is helping him fulfill a long quest for overdue legitimization. He says that the NBG accomplishment he’s most proud of is getting recognized by the games industry at large.
“We just did an activation last night with Ubisoft. Just having Ubisoft not say, ‘We got T-Pain to play our game,’ they said, ‘We got Nappy Boy Gaming to play our game,’ you know, to be recognized as an organization and not just having people be like, ‘We’re cool now, we got a rapper to play our shit,’ […] is the crowning achievement,” he says. “It’s not just somebody that we think is famous. It’s not just a celebrity endorsement. It’s Nappy Boy Gaming. That’s the crowning achievement for me, just having that thing be separate.”
Gaming has helped T-Pain, once spitefully shouldered out by his industry, reach an unconventional, but still triumphant, apex. That, in addition to using the fame he kindled anyway for a good cause, is enough for him.
“When I ultimately leave this earth, I want people to be able to say, ‘That was fun. That was a good goddamn dude, he helped a lot of people,” he says, his comfortable laugh rolling out again like spilled marbles.
“That’s really all I want. I don’t really have any other achievements, or anything like that, that I want. I want the people that I helped to feel the way that I feel.”
It’s not Haute Couture Fashion Week without a Valentino show. And it’s not a Valentino show without an absolutely stacked front row.
The house hosted its Spring 2023 haute couture debut below Paris’ iconic Pont Alexandre III along the Seine on Jan. 25. While gigantic ribbon bows, delicate feathers and sequins galore turned the runway into a sight worth waiting for, the A-listers made the presentation that much better.
Anne Hathaway arrived in a mini leopard-printed dress with matching tights, while Charli XCX wore a cropped black top with high-waisted trousers. Dove Cameron stunned in an elegant red ensemble, as Beatrice Gannò of “The White Lotus” repped the brand in an all-over logo print. BTS’ Suga made his first-ever appearance at a Valentino show as a brand ambassador in a monochromatic brown suit over a creamy camel blouse from the Unboxing Valentino collection. Doja Cat turned up the glam, of course, in an oversized rosette blazer — her third stop of the day, after appearances at Viktor & Rolf and Jean-Paul Gaultier.
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Scroll ahead to see the best-dressed celebrities at the Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023 show.
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Anne Hathaway at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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BTS’ Suga at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Beatrice Gannò at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Sabrina Impacciatore at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Doja Cat at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Kylie Minogue at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Charli XCX at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Dove Cameron at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Ashley Park at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Sofia Carson at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Sam Smith at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Chriselle Lim at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Rosie Huntington-Whiteley at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
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Amina Muaddi at Valentino Haute Couture Spring 2023.
It is with an apprehensive and tired sigh that I announce: the 2023 Grammy nominations are out.
The Grammy Awards are music’s most exhilarating and disheartening night of the year. Year after year, we’re all forced to sit through hours of pomp and ceremony. At the end of it, stars are disappointed by losses and audiences are disappointed by the boring spectacle the show has become.
There was a time when The Grammys felt relevant and important. I believe that era ended in 2013 when Macklemore beat out Kendrick Lamar for Best Rap Album. Now, we’re questioning how much authority the Grammy Awards actually hold. Major stars like Drake, The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, and more have stopped submitting their tracks for consideration. And even more musicians have spoken out about being unfairly categorized or snubbed.
This is especially true of Black Artists. While Jay Z and Beyonce now hold the record for most Grammy nominations of all time, their list of wins deserves to be higher. Sure, their trophy cabinet is already heavy with awards. Let’s not forget that their daughter, Blue Ivy, has a Grammy of her own — but the annual event often comes with major snubs. For example, Beyonce’s never won Album of the Year. Despite the fact that Lemonade exists … much to think about.
In fact, only 11 Black artists have ever won Album of the Year. Since 2000, there have been only four Black winners: Outkast in 2004 for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below; Ray Charles, posthumously in 2005; Herbie Hancock in 2008 for a Joni Michael cover album; and, most recently, Jon Batiste in 2022.
On Tue, November 15th the 2023 nominations were announced. Once again, they’ve prompted equal parts celebration and confusion. It’s a fool’s errand to try to guess what the Grammy voters are thinking. And this year is no exception. The disappointment starts early.
But here are the biggest snubs and surprises of the season:
Snub: Taylor Swift’s Red (Taylor’s Version)
Yesterday, Taylor Swift fans were fighting a war with Ticketmaster, virtually fighting and clawing for tickets to her upcoming The Eras Tour. And it’s a good thing they were distracted because Taylor’s Red (Taylor’s Version) was notably missing from nominations for the Album of the Year.
Swift is one of four artists to win Album of the Year three times — along with Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Frank Sinatra — but since she was shut out of album categories this season, this year will not be one of them. While the original recording of Red was nominated for AOY, the latest version was not. The 30-song tracklist consists of new songs — some of which were given nods like song of the year for “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” and best country song for “I Bet You Think About Me. But even if Red (Taylor’s Version) wasn’t considered Album-of-the-Year-worthy, it deserves a shot at Best Country Album.
Her most recent offering, Midnights, doesn’t qualify for this year’s Grammys, but we better see it in 2024. Next target on Taylor’s next revenge album: The Grammy voters.
Surprise: Jack Harlow
It seems the Grammys have fallen victim to the Jack Harlow trap, an affliction that usually befalls college girls in their Nike Air Force Ones. Harlow recieved a nomination for his sophomore album Come Home the Kids Miss You for Best Rap Album. And his single “First Class” — which samples Fergie’s “Glamorous,” went TikTok viral landed a nom for Best Melodic Rap Performance. Honestly, this is simply humiliating. It only proves that the Grammys still know nothing about rap music. And they’re starting to prioritize streaming, charts, and — heaven help us — TikTok in their considerations.
Surprise: Gayle
Another TikTok surprise was Gayle’s nod for “abcdfu” — nominated for Song of the Year. If the TikTok star’s already wondering how to follow up that viral hit, the bar has been raised. So, I bet you a buck, we’ll be seeing a lot of TikTok songs among future Grammy Award noms. Choose your TikTok sounds wisely.
Snub: Megan Thee Stallion
Megan is not just one of our favorite rappers, she’s one of the best. Indisputably. The only people who don’t understand that are Academy voting members. They awarded Megan Best New Artist in 2021 … but since then they haven’t found her albums worthy of nomination. Her striking debut only received one nomination in 2022. And despite the acclaim for her sophomore album, Megan was ignored this year. Traumazine was poignant and electric, and deserves better.
Snub: The R&B girlies
Other neglected Black female artists include Summer Walker and Tems. Summer Walker is now on her second album, but it seems the Grammys haven’t heard. They’ve never even whispered her name, despite her established place as an R&B mainstay.
Tems is one of the most fantastic artists to emerge over the past few years. We all expected her to earn a Best New Artist nom at the very least. She wrote Rihanna’s smash-hit for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. And worked with artists like Drake, Future, and Beyonce on chart-topping tracks. So what does it take?
Snub: Charli XCX and Florence and the Machine
Other industry mainstays include Charli XCX and Florence and the Machine, and Mitski. All are veterans of the indie/alternative scenes, and all released career-defining projects this year.
Charli is one of the hottest names in the industry, not just as a performer but also as a writer. Yet, the Grammys love to ignore her — despite her “considerable impact on the music landscape” and her own genre-bending, soaring work. She was nominated for Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” in 2016 but since then, silence.
Florence is an indie darling, and her most recent album is a stunner — which is saying a lot. Yet, this indie-alt triumph got scarcely any love from the Grammys. Astounding.
Snub: Where are the Indie girls at?
A number of our favorite indie/alt albums of the year were nowhere to be found in the nominations list. Artists like Maggie Rogers and Lizzie McAlpine dominated the indie scene but when it came to the nominations? Crickets.
Another major snub? Mitskian — an indie-alt favorite foreverrr. But after touring with Harry Styles, she certainly “achieved a ‘breakthrough’ into public consciousness and impacted the musical landscape” this year reaching a thrilling new fanbase. So she should be a shoo-in for the Best New Artist category. Justice for Mitski.
Snub: Blackpink
Arguably the most famous girl group performing right now, Blackpink deserved some kind of recognition. C’mon. They’re selling out global stadiums and they can’t even get a stinkin Grammy nomination? Someone introduce the Grammy voters to KPOP, stat.
Surprise: Viola Davis
This Grammy season, the actress is on the precipice of an EGOT. She’s nominated for Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording for her memoir, Finding Me. Hopefully, we’ll have something to celebrate come the 65th Grammy Awards.
