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  • The Unsung Hero Behind Disneyland As We Know It: Dave Bradley

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    For as difficult as it would be for Angelenos of the present to imagine a world where the Beverly Center didn’t exist at the corner of Beverly and La Cienega, it was even more unfathomable for the Angelenos who lived in L.A. between the years of 1943 and 1974 to imagine a world without Beverly Park. Because, for thirty-one years, the “Kiddieland” (as those types of parks were once generically called) dominated that intersection, capturing the hearts and imaginations of children all over the county. And eventually, thanks to its influence on Walt Disney, the hearts and imaginations of children all over the globe.

    That Beverly Park arrived around the end of World War II was not a coincidence. And perhaps more than many other towns in the U.S., Los Angeles felt the dark pall cast over the nation by the war. Starting with its close (or close enough) Pacific proximity to Pearl Harbor, the “instigating incident” that finally prompted Franklin D. Roosevelt to enter the war officially. Or the fact that Hollywood celebrities getting involved in promoting the “war effort” (e.g., the Hollywood Canteen) were just a stone’s throw away from the mere mortals of the city.

    And while Hollywood might have done its best to keep things “light” (relatively speaking), there was no denying that the yearning for a return to normalcy (the phrase many learned again so well during and after the Covid pandemic) was in the air. This being a key aspect as to why there was such an uptick in the building of amusement parks after the war. In other words, it was time to have fun again and stop thinking about death, doom and destruction all the time (even if bomb shelters were about to become all the rage). Plus, the baby boom was bound to furnish an amusement park boom, too—offering a place where parents could take their children to unleash all that excess energy.

    Beverly Park was just one such place, emerging from the rural-looking fairgrounds (plus a baseball field) then owned by a company called Arden’s Milk. Located next to Ponyland, a property owned by Leo and Viva Murphy, it seemed like a perfect spot for the Frock & Meyer (as in Elden Frock and William Meyer) Amusement Company to establish another Kiddieland after the one they had built near Watts in 1941. But just two years after their second park was built in ’43, Meyer sold it to Dave Bradley after Frock died of a heart attack.

    The sale was kismet for Bradley, who had been considering a life in amusement parks ever since traveling around the country with saxophonist Freddy Martin and his band (Bradley served as the manager), with many performances done outdoors in venues like fairs and parks. Getting a feel for that type of setting, it appeared to activate the dormant fascination within Bradley that had begun ever since seeing those rides at the Venice Pier when he himself was just a child. Besides that, he had long had an itch to put his skills in the fields of entertainment and mechanics to good use. And what more highly specific way to do that than operating an amusement park?

    However, even the most talented people need a partner in crime, which is where Bradley’s wife, Bernice, came in. In fact, she actually left her job to help him run Beverly Park. No small ask considering she had a rare gig (particularly for a woman in that era): leading the story research department at Disney Studios. Therefore, it was her link to Walt Disney that ended up “aligning” these two men together. After hearing about why Bernice left the job, Walt started going to the park regularly in the late 1940s, as research for what would become Disneyland started to ramp up. And Disney would grill the kids at Beverly Park as much as he did Bradley, asking them what kind of rides they liked and what else they would want to see at an amusement park. Bradley’s counsel, in addition to making the park like a second office to Walt (Disney Studios was right nearby), was indispensable to the eventual final product that would become Disneyland.

    So indispensable, in fact, that Walt even hired him as a consultant, sending Bradley off to Europe to gather more intel on various theme parks, taking plenty of photos for reference along the way. It was also Bradley who suggested two key theme park innovations that would become staples of all theme parks going forward: 1) that there be a “Main Street” of the park and 2) that themed photo opportunities were offered to patrons.

    While some might insist that Disney exploited Bradley or “ripped off” his idea entirely, it can’t be emphasized enough that Bradley was a willing and eager participant in helping the animation mogul birth a new breed of theme park. A theme park that, to this day, remains in a competitive class all its own. As for its blueprint, provided by Bradley, it can be said that inspiration is a cycle. One inspiration begets another, and so and so forth. That much was made clear by the fact that Bradley himself was inspired by the rough-hewn version of an “amusement park” at Venice Pier when he was child.

    In 1974, shortly after the 1973 oil crisis that plagued L.A. in particular (see: Licorice Pizza), the Beverly Oil Company announced to Bradley that they were raising the price of the lease. Bradley, both unable to afford the higher price and lacking the same enthusiasm for the park as he once had, did not renew. And it marked the end of an era in L.A.

    But while the Beverly Center might have Beverly Park beat in terms of amount of time in existence, it’s the latter that will remain forever in the hearts of people not just in Los Angeles, but all over the world. For Beverly Park is what forged the foundation of Disneyland (though, to be honest, not everyone is grateful for that).

    Featured image credit: Jay Jennings, author of BEVERLY PARK: L.A.’s Kiddieland, 1943-74

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • With Just One Scene, Platonic’s Season 2 Finale Emphasizes That “Men and Women Can’t Be Friends” in the Most Cliché Way

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    For those who had been anticipating some grand denouement based on the buildup to the finale of Platonic’s second season, they were likely disappointed by the somewhat lackluster delivery/“wrapping up in a neat bow” of things. Because, for all that “slow-burn tension” with regard to Sylvia (Rose Byrne) and her husband, Charlie (Luke Macfarlane), it landed with all the rushedness of a premature ejaculator.

    The tease of some inevitable separation or divorce between Sylvia and Charlie all started when Will Zysman (Seth Rogen), Sylvia’s long-time bestie (hence, the name of the show), encouraged Charlie to quit his job in episode five, “Jeopardy.” Titled as such not only because Charlie fulfills a lifelong dream of appearing on said show, but because, all of the sudden his reputation is in jeopardy as a result of how disastrous his ability to “be” in front of a live audience is (not to mention his entire sense of sanity also being in jeopardy).

    Soon after the taping, Charlie goes out with Will for a drink, during which the latter ruminates on how he wishes he could be solid like Charlie. To this, Charlie replies, “I’m ‘solid’ because I have to be. I have a wife and three kids to support. I, I don’t have a choice… And you know what? I think I thought that after I was on Jeopardy!, everything would be different in my life.” He then adds, “[My life] has been exactly the same for a very, very long time. Sometimes I feel…boxed in. I guess I just wish I could blow shit up.” Will then gives him a pep talk that includes the advice, “So fucking quit dude. Blow it all up, start a new chapter.”

    Charlie, surprisingly, takes the advice to heart. His sudden attack of “brashness” also hitting when he leads Will unknowingly to the house of the Head of Business Affairs at King World Media in an unhinged bid to plead with him not to air the episode of Jeopardy! that he was on so as to spare him the embarrassment. Determined to break in with no ostensible plan other than that, Charlie realizes the huge mistake he’s made after already crossing the threshold of entering (ergo, breaking). Injuring his foot in the process of then making his escape (while a gaggle of teenage youths look on with mild, slack-jawed interest) before something truly terrible happens, it’s now completely apparent that he’s having some kind of crack-up. A midlife crisis would be too easy of a phrase to use for it. No, for Charlie, it’s the realization that he’s been suffocated by a blanket of sameness all these years.

    While Sylvia, in contrast, has been given the luxury of being much more “loose” and “la-di-da.” Or so she herself would also like to believe. But it’s in the episode following “Jeopardy,” “Road Trip,” that Sylvia is forced to reckon with her own “basicness” with regard to the shackles of her domestic life. It all starts when Will forces his way on the so-called road trip Sylvia is taking, which starts out as driving her daughter, Frances (Sophie Leonard), to Palm Desert for a debate tournament. But when Will secures a seat, followed by Sylvia’s other best friend, Katie Fields (Carla Gallo), when she calls Sylvia in tears over finding out that her first ex-husband’s new wife is pregnant, it does turn into a “whole thing” with road trip cachet. Much to Frances’ irritation more than Sylvia’s.

    And, at first, Will and Katie don’t exactly gel, until he starts warming to the rather generic tenets of her Breaking the Glass Ceiling podcast (as poorly made as it is)—“part of the Boss Mama Industries Network.” Then, by the time they all stop at a tavern (namely, Red’s Tavern) that Will insists on going to along the way (after already dropping off Frances), it starts to become clear that Sylvia is turning into the third wheel. Especially after she tells them, “My life is a little bit different to both of yours.”

    When they express offense and outrage over her comment, she doubles down, “My life is stable and predictable.” Will balks, “Are you kidding me right now? You fucking think you’re better than us?” Katie chimes in, “You’re just as fucked up as we are.” Sylvia continues to claim no, and that everything about her life and Charlie—recent “light breakdown” and all—is fine. Katie then counters, “Also, we are the two most interesting people in your life.” Apparently, as the two most interesting people, they feel it’s their responsibility to fully “team up” by the end of the episode, insisting that Sylvia goes home to Charlie during his overt emotional time of need (having just hallucinated someone was humming the Jeopardy! theme song in the bathroom at work and then leaving early as a result).

    Reluctantly, Sylvia agrees, already afraid of what’s coming with Charlie after she talked to him on the phone to try and get his help with some shysters at a mechanic shop. Realizing the full weight of his existential crisis, she laments to Will and Katie, “He’s always been the rock” and “I need him to be the rock.”

    But for those who thought the tension was actually meant to be between Sylvia and Charlie this season, the truth is, as usual, it’s between Sylvia and Will, whose fraught dynamic anchors the series. And it’s because Sylvia blames Will for “breaking” Charlie (as she puts in the finale), in addition to his sudden pivot toward spending more time with Katie (who evidently “just gets it” because she’s divorced and freaky too), that they start to experience another rift as the season draws to a close. This prompting Will to lean more and more on Katie, especially after Sylvia kicks him out of her guest house/would-be office in the penultimate episode of season two, “Boundaries.” He then starts to “crash” at Katie’s, promising her it’s only “temporary” (as he promised Sylvia).

    But by the next episode (the finale), she’s already grown sick of his presence in her house, telling Sylvia outside their kids’ school, “He’s been living with me for weeks. I don’t know how this guy became my problem. I barely know him… [oh, now she barely knows him, even though they’ve been acting like besties for a minute]. I get why you dumped him on me. The only trouble is, now I don’t know how to get rid of him.” Sylvia confirms, “He is impossible to get rid of.” Even though that certainly wasn’t the case in season one, when it started out with the two of them having not spoken for years because Sylvia didn’t much care for Will’s now ex-wife. Katie gets a devious look on her face all of the sudden and says, “Well, there is one thing I don’t think you tried.” There’s then an immediate cut to Katie and Will together in bed after having had sex. Once again proving what Vickie Miner in Reality Bites declared: “Sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship.” Or at least the quickest way to make everything too awkward to continue living with that person anymore. So it is that Katie gets him to leave with the power of a few thrusts.

    Consequently, Will gets sent back to his “one true north,” Sylvia—only she isn’t so willing to “take him back,” as it were. In fact, her giving in to helping him move all the beer equipment he left in her backyard leads to a big argument that prompts the old Friends chestnut, “We need to take a break.” Interestingly enough, Friends, too, proved that platonic relationships between men and women were always either 1) prone to giving way to the romantic or 2) more trouble than they were worth—especially if one friend had romantic feelings for another that weren’t reciprocated (ultimately, Joey and Rachel).

    Naturally, the “break” between them doesn’t hold, with Sylvia giving in to overhearing Will’s pained reaction to a noncompete letter he gets from his former fiancée Jenna’s (Rachel Rosenbloom) company, Johnny 66, informing him he can’t open up Shitty Little Bar, even though he’s just weeks away from doing it—from at last opening his own place. And yes, Jenna is one of many people in the series who end up being vexed by Sylvia and Will’s closeness, this having been an early part of what was going to doom the relationship in season two.

    In the meantime, Charlie continues to “find himself” through the book he’s writing about Brett Coyote (though he only ends up finding himself right back in the corporate sector after self-publishing it). In point of fact, calling the episode, “Brett Coyote’s Last Stand” made it seem as though this finale would be about Charlie finally losing all patience for Sylvia and her general disinterest in him or his life, instead constantly mired in Will’s latest dramas and issues. Making most of Sylvia’s energy go into helping and catering to him, rather than her own husband.

    So while Harry Burns said in When Harry Met Sally, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way,” for Will and Sylvia, just as it was in season one, that still hasn’t technically become a factor. And yet, there’s no doubt that, with their plans to become even more intertwined by going into business together, their friendship will only wreak more havoc on everyone around them, Charlie and Katie included. So yes, maybe Sylvia actually should take a page from Katie’s book and sleep with Will if she really wants to “get rid of him” for good. After all, such a method is a cliché for a reason: it usually works.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Taylor Swift Increasingly Loses Touch with “The Commoner” on The Life of a Showgirl

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    Although Taylor Swift has been famous for most of her life, one of the biggest keys to her success has always been “relatability.” Or at least the illusion of it. This has been done, more often than not, with lovelorn lyrics about being some “dowdy” girl who can’t ever quite get the guy/find love (most famously on “You Belong With Me”). With her twelfth album, The Life of a Showgirl, Swift loses some of that already dwindling “everywoman” cachet for the sake of a concept that’s centered on, essentially, living in a gilded cage. But it isn’t just the “poor me, I’m so rich” aura that makes The Life of a Showgirl frequently eye-rolling, it’s also the bathetic displays toward, unmistakably, Travis Kelce—whose podcast, New Heights, she appeared on to announce the album in the first place. Never mind that said podcast is aimed at discussing sports, not pop music.

    And yet, such “flouting of the rules” has been going on a lot during the “crossover potential” of Taylor and Travis’ (or “Traylor,” if you must) relationship. One that has even prompted the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, to gush about how she’s responsible for bringing in a younger audience to the games/generally drumming up interest in the sport ever since she started dating the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback.

    The very quarterback she does her best to wield within a Shakespearean context with The Life of a Showgirl’s first track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” with an effect that could very well have Shakespeare turning in his grave as Swift rewrites, you guessed it, the fate of Ophelia, by making it a “happy ending” for the erstwhile suicidal wreck. And who else should save her but the Hamlet stand-in of the song, “Prince” Travis? A man that Swift has the gall to sing of, “Late one night, you dug me out of my grave and/Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia/Keep it one hundrеd on the land, the sea, thе sky/Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes/Don’t care where the hell you been, ‘cause now you’re mine.”

    Cornball songwriting aside, “The Fate of Ophelia” is an insult to hallowed literature itself in that Swift would dare to touch Shakespearean scripture for the sake “Hollywoodizing” the ending—this further manifest in the lyrics, “No longer drowning and deceived/All because you came for me.” Mixing metaphors a bit, Taylor also talks of being rescued from a tower (hardly the first time she’s used that image in a song, with The Tortured Poets Department also mentioning it on “The Albatross” and “Cassandra”), in addition to the water in which Ophelia drowned. So clearly, she’s confusing Big O with Rapunzel, but no matter, Swift simply has a penchant for referencing other famous women.

    As she does on the second track, “Elizabeth Taylor.” And no, it’s not the first time Swift has mentioned this “fellow Taylor” in a song. She also name-checked the icon during 2017’s “…Ready For It?” (“He can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor”), co-produced by Max Martin, Shellback and Ali Payami. It’s the former two that Swift reteams with for the entirety of The Life of a Showgirl, further distinguishing it from Reputation, which incorporated other producers apart from Martin and Shellback into the mix, including Jack Antonoff. The reteaming of Swift with just Martin and Shellback is, in fact, a primary gimmick of this album, and perhaps a subtle way to make amends for never getting around to Reputation (Taylor’s Version) after engaging fans in one of the biggest trolls in recent music history.

    Perhaps one of the peak examples on the record of “losing touch” with “the commoner,” Swift does her best to embody Elizabeth T. when she sings, “That view of Portofino was on my mind when you called me at the Plaza Athénée [said in a very non-French way]/Ooh, oftentimes it doesn’t feel so glamorous to be me/All the right guys/Promised they’d stay/Under bright lights/They withered away/But you bloom.” For a start, most of the football fans on “Team Travis” in this relationship would have no idea what the fuck she’s talking about, their limited sense of geography extending, at best, to what lies just beyond Kansas. What’s more, most Midwesterners are well over the constant favoritism given to New York and Los Angeles, yet Swift appears to have her own limited sense of geography when she says, “Be my NY whеn Hollywood hates me.” This statement feeling less like a nod to E. Taylor and more like one to Marilyn Monroe, who famously fled Hollywood for New York after getting into a contract dispute with Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox, at the end of 1954. No matter, Swift, like Lindsay Lohan before her, can be attracted to both legends’ stories—their tragic tales and love lives, intermixed with glitz and glamor.

    And, as if to highlight the cliches of “how lonely it is at the top,” Swift adds, “Hey, what could you possibly get for the girl who has everything and nothing all at once?” In many regards, this track is a “sequel,” of sorts,” to the question posed on 2019’s “The Archer”: “Who could ever leave me, darling?/But who could stay?” The answer, for the moment, is Kelce, who at least knows something about the pressure behind a sentiment like, “You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby.” If that’s the case, Swift might be in trouble with a song like “Opalite,” which trots out the same old color-related tropes she’s already overused in the past (though probably not nearly as much as Lana Del Rey mentions “blue”). In this case, the “onyx night” represents the darkness before the arrival of Kelce into her life, who provides the “opalite sky” in the wake of “the lightning strikes”—presumably a metaphor for Swift’s previous botched relationships and media scrutiny.

    Commencing the song with the verse, “I had a bad habit/Of missing lovers past/My brother used to call it/‘Eating out of the trash,’ it’s never gonna last/I thought my house was haunted/I used to live with ghosts/And all the perfect couples/Said, ‘When you know, you know and when you don’t, you don’t,’” it’s evident Swift is alluding to Jack Antonoff, Margaret Qualley and Lana Del Rey. The latter of whom wrote a song about Antonoff and Qualley’s relationship called, what else, “Margaret,” during which she sings, “When you know, you know” of the kind of true love that Antonoff found with Qualley. Later in the song, however, she does Swift one better by saying, “‘Cause when you know, you know/And when you’re old, you’re old/Like Hollywood and me.” Swift, of course, isn’t quite ready to refer to herself in such a way. For being an “aging showgirl,” as The Last Showgirl recently reminded, doesn’t generally bode well for one’s career.

    Even though Swift has made amply certain that she has plenty of other parachutes, as it were, should she need a graceful “out” from pop stardom. For she has her hands in numerous pies (many of which people probably won’t know about for years), as she’s keen to circuitously boast about via the mafioso theme of “Father Figure,” which dares to sample from George Michael, a big risk for anyone, but especially Swift. This because, when compared to the great pop musicians that came before her, particularly in the 80s, the ways in which Swift falls short become even more glaringly obvious. In other words, she has never “ate” the way that, say, Madonna, Prince, George Michael, Grace Jones or David Bowie have.

    Regardless, Swift does what she can with the interpolation of Michael’s 1987 hit (and, let’s just say that it works better than the interpolation of Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” on “Look What You Made Me Do”), wielding it to throw shade at all of the male executives who thought they could manipulate and control her over the years. Indeed, in a sense, it acts as The Life of a Showgirl’s “The Man,” with Swift getting into the persona of a big dick-swinging executive (or mafia boss) herself, with many speculating that Scott Borchetta is the source of inspiration. After all, he signed her as his first artist on his then new label, Big Machine Records, when she was just fourteen years old. So it is that Swift sardonically flexes, as though channeling Borchetta, “When I found you, you were young, wayward, lost in the cold/Pulled up to you in the Jag, turned your rags into gold/The winding road leads to the chateau/‘You remind me of a younger me’/I saw potential.”

    The chorus then goes for the jugular with, “I’ll be your father figure/I drink that brown liquor/I can make deals with the devil because my dick’s bigger/This love is pure profit/Just step into my office.” The mafia motif is also peppered in throughout (as if The Godfather needs any more play in terms of fortifying a grotesque Italian stereotype), with Swift asserting, “Leave it with me/I protect the family” and “I got the place surrounded/You’ll be sleeping with the fishes before you know you’re drowning.” Elsewhere, another light Del Rey nod is made with, “Mistake my kindness for weakness and find your card canceled” (on 2019’s “Mariners Apartment Complex,” Del Rey sings, “They mistook my kindness for weakness”). As for another “unintentional” nod, it bears noting that Michael’s “Father Figure” has been having a moment this past year, with Harris Dickinson as Samuel offering a kinky dance in a hotel room to said track in Babygirl while Nicole Kidman as Romy watches before joining in (side note: Swift was sure to mention that she wrote this song before this movie came out).

    A title like “Father Figure” leads naturally into “Eldest Daughter” (which, yes, Swift is, with only one younger brother, Austin). A track that, incidentally, has a lot in common with Lorde’s “Favourite Daughter” from Virgin. Except that, unlike the catchiness of “Favourite Daughter,” which is something of a millennial anthem in terms of how said generation was conditioned to always achieve and strive for more, “Eldest Daughter” is a cheesy ballad that few Gen Z listeners could handle. After all, Swift is a millennial through and through (in case “as the 50 Cent song played…” didn’t also give it away on “Ruin the Friendship”) in part because of being fearless when it comes to being cringe. So it is that she addresses the current chicness of being callous and aloof in the first verse, “Everybody’s so punk on the internet/Everyone’s unbothered ‘til they’re not/Every joke’s just trolling and memes/Sad as it seems, apathy is hot/Everybody’s cutthroat in the comments/Every single hot take is cold as ice.” Apart from referencing some of her lyrics in “You Need to Calm Down” (e.g., “You are somebody that I don’t know/But you’re taking shots at me like it’s Patrón/And I’m just like, ‘Damn, it’s seven a.m.’/Say it in the street, that’s a knockout/But you say it in a tweet, that’s a copout”), the “hot take” line also seems to allude to that time she felt obliged to tell Damon Albarn off.

    The incident occurred in early 2022, when a written interview between The Los Angeles Times and Albarn went as follows:

    LAT: “She may not be to your taste, but Taylor Swift is an excellent songwriter.

    DA: “She doesn’t write her own songs.”

    LAT: “Of course she does. Co-writes some of them.”

    DA: “That doesn’t count. I know what co-writing is. Co-writing is very different to writing. I’m not hating on anybody, I’m just saying there’s a big difference between a songwriter and a songwriter who co-writes. Doesn’t mean that the outcome can’t be really great.”

    Swift was very quick to respond via Twitter, slamming Albarn about his “hot take” with the reply: “I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this. I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.” But, to be fair, Albarn isn’t wrong. Swift does co-write most of her songs, with The Life of a Showgirl being no exception in that Martin and Shellback are her fellow collaborators. But it’s apparent that she is in total control of all themes, as unrelatable as they are. Granted, Swift pulls what Olivia Rodrigo and Addison Rae did with “vampire” and “Fame Is a Gun” respectively in that she insists everyone can relate to having a “public life” now thanks to the advent of the online persona. This being her inspiration behind “Eldest Daughter,” of which she commented,

    “[It’s] about kind of the roles that we play in our public life, because nowadays everyone has a public life. You have a life that you portray to other people or what you portray on social media, and then you have the you that everyone gets to know who has earned the right to be closest to you. And it’s really hard to be sincere publicly because that’s not really what our culture rewards. People reward you for being like tough and unbothered and like too busy to care. And you may be that about some things, but everyone has things that matter to them and people that matter to them.”

    For Swift, it’s always been apparent that being “the best” is what matters to her. This in addition to finding and securing her Prince Charming. It’s a variation on the latter theme that occurs in “Ruin the Friendship.” Yet another track that proves she’s sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel for “relatable material” in that she once again feels obliged to speak as though she’s still in high school. To be sure, Swift appears mentally stuck in that “era” in many ways, often writing from the perspective of an ostracized and/or lovestruck teenager (as she also does on TTPD’s “So High School”). And while that might have been her “core audience” once upon a time, many have been forced to leave such “childish things” behind.

    Nonetheless, Swift takes listeners back to a moment in time when she was friends with someone in high school (reportedly Jeff Lang, a man that died in his early twenties) who she had more than “just friendly” feelings for. Filled with regret over having never made a move, especially since that person later died (“When I left school, I lost track of you/Abigail called me with the bad news/Goodbye, and we’ll never know why”—apart from the “why” being, you know, drugs), Swift advocates for “ruining the friendship.” Or, more to the point, ruining a male/female friendship by breaking the “cardinal rule” and turning it romantic. For, as Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo) from Reality Bites once said, “Sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship.” Looking back on her cautiousness now, however, Swift would have been only too willing to ruin it. Though probably not with sex. In fact, she is more inclined to mention a “kiss.” That’s the “sex act” she’s most willing to get on board with as she sings, “My advice is to always ruin the friendship/Better that than regret it for all time/Should’ve kissed you anyway.” Perhaps Joey Potter and Pacey Witter would tend to agree. Though Dawson Leery, not so much.

    Apart from discussing being “the best,” finding “Prince Charming” and dissecting “love lost,” Swift’s indisputable other favorite songwriting topic is her haters. Of which, of course, she has many. Though not nearly as many as she does lovers—that is, of her work. Even so, for Swift, it’s as Gaga (loosely quoting Madonna with, “If there are a hundred people in a room and ninety-nine say they liked it, I only remember the one person who didn’t”) once said: “There can be a hundred people in a room and ninety-nine don’t believe in you, but all it takes is one and it just changes your whole life.” For Swift, that person who “changes her whole life” by not believing in her is usually her hater (hear also: “Bad Blood,” one of her biggest hits inspired by none other than erstwhile “enemy” Katy Perry). If the “Easter eggs” of “Actually Romantic” are anything to go by, the latest hater that Swift is “taking down by taking to task” is Charli XCX. The shade is in the song title alone, which features “romantic” in it the way Charli’s “Everything is romantic” does. One of the many beloved songs that appeared on Brat last year. Along with “Sympathy is a knife,” which was speculated to be about Swift when Charli mentioned, among other things, “Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show/Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick.”

    If Charli was, in fact, referring to Swift, she definitely got her wish about Matty Healy and Swift breaking up quick. As for the boyfriend Charli refers to, George Daniel, he’s since become her husband. A fellow “365 party girl,” though probably not nearly at Charli’s level. Something Swift shades when she opens the track with, “I heard you call me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave/High-fived my ex [Matty Healy] and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me/Wrote me a song [“Everything is romantic”] sayin’ it makes you sick to see my face/Some people might be offended.” Swift, though, not so much. Or so she claims in the chorus, “But it’s actually sweet/All the time you’ve spent on me/It’s honestly wild/All the effort you’ve put in/It’s actually romantic/I really gotta hand it to you/No man has ever loved me like you do.” In effect, Swift speaks on the fine line between love and hate, and how Charli (or any other chanteuse, really) might technically be showing her the former by fixating on her so much. So it is that Swift keeps ribbing, “Hadn’t thought of you in a long time [this channeling Lover’s “I Forgot That You Existed”]/But you keep sending me funny valentines [the song, one supposes?]/And I know you think it comes off vicious/But it’s precious, adorable/Like a toy chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse/That’s how much it hurts.”

    Of course, Swift is lying to herself when she says it doesn’t hurt, otherwise she wouldn’t have written a song about it, digging the (unsympathetic) knife in as much as she can with other lyrics like, “How many times has your boyfriend said/‘Why are we always talkin’ ‘bout her?’” And yes, XCX does mention talking about “her” in “Sympathy is a knife” when she says, “George says I’m just paranoid/Says he just don’t see it, he’s so naïve.”

    What George—and just about everyone else—might see, however, is that The Life of a Showgirl is less about a girl who “puts on a show” and more about a girl who is obsessed with her boyfriend in the same way that she has been with every boyfriend before (as each album has evidenced). And when that meme of one of Taylor and Travis’ first dates came out with the caption, “Taylor taking her new album for a walk,” it was entirely accurate. For while the intent behind it was to emphasize that Swift always explores her breakups on her records (with Red and TTPD being a primary example), it turns out that the meme was right in a different way, because Kelce is the crux of her new album far more than being a performer is.

    “Wi$h Li$t” (which bears a similarity to Midnights’ “Glitch” in terms of Swift’s intonation and the sound of the track itself) is just such a beacon of that. During it, Swift details the different kinds of wishes that people have for themselves, many of them materially-oriented (e.g., “They want that yacht life, under chopper blades/They want those bright lights and Balenci shades/And a fat ass with a baby face [this somehow sounding like a jibe being made at one of Swift’s longtime nemeses, Kim Kardashian]).” Swift, on the other hand, claims, “I just want you/Have a couple kids, got the whole block lookin’ like you/We tell the world to leave us the fuck alone, and they do, wow/Got me dreamin’ ‘bout a driveway with a basketball hoop/Boss up, settle down, got a wish list.” A wish list, evidently, that not only one-ups Swift’s usual cringe factor, but also proves XCX “or whoever” right in calling her Boring Barbie.

    Try as she might to mitigate that nickname with the song that follows, “Wood.” An innuendo-laden ditty that makes all previous songs on The Life of a Showgirl come across as far less uncomfortable. And it’s not just because this marks the first time that Swift tries her hand at something like being “raunchy” (“Girls, I don’t need to catch the bouquet/To know a hard rock is on the way”), but because, well, she’s quite bad at it. Though, at the very least, she spared listeners from not being euphemistic (“The curse on me was broken by your magic wand”—oof). Because to hear her try her hand at something as sexually explicit as “WAP” would be so much worse.

    Nay, it might even get her “CANCELLED!” (spelled the British way, perhaps a residual side effect of being with Alwyn). A phenomenon that Swift insists she’s no stranger to, telling Time in 2023 that she was “canceled within an inch of my life and sanity” because of the “fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar.” Histrionic recounting aside, Swift was so affected by the backlash of that leaked phone call she didn’t bother releasing an album in 2016, let alone commenting on the election that year, even when her input would have been potentially invaluable, what with her influence on mass culture, right down to voting predilections. And, although she was never really at risk of “being put out to pasture” because of the incident, Swift commented that the experience made her have a new empathy for others who went through the same thing after her. As she stated via Amazon Track by Track, “I don’t naturally just cast people aside just because other people decide they don’t like them. I make my own decisions about people based on how they treat me within my life and their actions. And so, this is a song about all those themes.” Of course, such a comment leads one to wonder what her “hot take” on Woody Allen might be (especially since her bestie, Selena Gomez, once worked with him on the atrocious A Rainy Day in New York). And if there are others who have been “canceled” that she might side with sans publicly having the courage to say so.

    For the time being, however, she’ll have to leave listeners guessing on which canceled celebrities she’s still friends with (certainly not Blake Lively) by way of the generic chorus, “Good thing I like my friends cancelled/I like ‘em cloaked in Gucci [so much designer brand name-checking on this record] and in scandal/Like my whiskey sour/And poison thorny flowers/Welcome to my underworld [yes, it feels very deliberately Reputation]/It’ll break your heart/At least you know exactly who your friends are/They’re the ones with matching scars.”

    As are those who have been called “terms of endearment” in a condescending manner before. In this regard, “Honey,” the second to last song on the record (and not to be confused with Mariah’s iconic single of the same name), is probably the most “relatable” song on The Life of a Showgirl. Mainly because Swift, once again, taps into her rage against the patriarchy by recalling the times when people would call her “honey” or “sweetheart” in a derogatory sort of way. But, ever since she met her “Prince Charming,” the word has taken on a more positive connotation, prompting her to urge, “You can call me ‘honey’ if you want/Because I’m the one you want/I’m the one you want/You give it different meaning/‘Cause you mean it when you talk/Sweetie, it’s yours, kicking in doors, take it to the floor, gimme more/Buy the paint in the color of your eyes/And graffiti my whole damn life.”

    Unfortunately, that’s not even as saccharine as it gets on “Honey,” with Swift also singing, “Honey, I’m home, we could play house/We can bed down, pick me up, who’s the baddest in the land? What’s the plan?/You could be my forever-night stand/Honey.” This bearing certain correlations to Swift’s well-documented “nesting phase” on “Lover,” during which she also saw fit to make listeners nearly retch with the lines, “We could leave the Christmas lights up ‘til January/And this is our place, we make the rules [a.k.a. “playing house”],” along with, “All’s well that ends well to end up with you/Swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover.” These lyrics now no longer applying to Joe Alwyn, but to Kelce. Easily repurposed “in a pinch.” Not just in general, but when such sentiments are refunneled into other songs with similar “gushings” aimed at Kelce, with this particular one serving as something like the “Sweet Nothing” (one of many Midnights tracks directed at Alwyn) of the album.

    And for the grand, “show-stopping” finale, Swift pivots away from romantic love in favor of the love she has for performance (though, needless to say, her expression of this love comes nowhere near what JADE achieves on “Angel of My Dreams”—and, honestly, to gain insight into the life of a real-ass showgirl, it’s That’s Showbiz Baby for the win). Thus, she concludes with the eponymous “The Life of a Showgirl” featuring Sabrina Carpenter. And yes, tapping Carpenter to collaborate has a “full-circle” meaning in that Carpenter was one of the opening acts during The Eras Tour. In the time since, obviously, Carpenter has blown up to a level that might very nearly match Swift’s in due time—in fact, she now almost has as many albums, with Man’s Best Friend marking her seventh one (and arguably more listenable as “pop perfection” than The Life of a Showgirl).

    While the album is primarily a love letter to Kelce (whereas TTPD was a vinegar valentine to Matty Healy), there’s a telling line in “The Life of a Showgirl” wherein Swift declares herself to be “married to the hustle” (even if through a “character”). All while warning others aspiring to the life of a showgirl, through the lens of this famous broad named “Kitty,” “Hеy, thank you for the lovely bouquet/You’re sweeter than a peach/But you don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe/And you’re never, ever gonna/Wait, the more you play, the more that you pay/You’re softer than a kitten, so/You don’t know the life of a showgirl, babe/And you’re never gonna wanna.” But naturally, in both Swift and Carpenter’s case, they definitely wanna. And probably will “till the end of time” (as a more reluctant showgirl, Lana Del Rey, would put it). But while Carpenter is in an “era” that allows for more creative inspiration to flow, Swift seems to be indicating that her own “muse” is in the midst of some kind of “last gasp.” At least when it comes to being relatable to anyone other than tradwives.

    To that end, like the also Max Martin-infused Reputation before it, The Life of a Showgirl arrives at a time when things have never been more politically fraught. And yet, Swift has chosen to release one of her “fluffiest” records yet. For never has “glitz and glam” been more of an “in poor taste” sell than it is now (which is why Doja Cat had to feign going back to the 80s with Vie in order to do it). Further indicating that Swift seems to be more out of touch with reality/the common person than ever before.

    At the bare minimum, though, she seems to understand that she needed to keep this record breezy (read: short). Way more pared down than The Tortured Poets Department. This perhaps being a testament both to the critical feedback she encountered about that album’s length and the fact that, ultimately, she knows that froth isn’t something that can be explored too in-depth without really annoying people. And yes, if The Life of a Showgirl, as “superfluous” as it is, is an indication of where Swift is at now, it doesn’t bode well for where she’s going to be “artistically” once she’s actually married. If she gets divorced, however, well, that’s another story…

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • An Album for the Patrick Bateman Bros: Doja Cat Is An 80s Lady on Vie

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    After releasing the deliberately polarizing Scarlet in 2023 (followed by a reissue called Scarlet 2 Claude in 2024), Doja Cat seems to have done yet another swing back in the opposite direction. One that is aimed more toward the very genre she claimed she was running as far and fast away from as she could back in 2023, when she tweeted, “Planet Her and Hot Pink were cash-grabs and y’all fell for it.” Further describing the content on those records as “mediocre pop.” At the time, a great many fans were upset by the comment, while others insisted it was all somehow part of her Scarlet persona. And maybe it was, considering Doja would, as of this year, describe that album as a “massive fart” that just needed to be released. A way to express her anger and rage over a few things, including not being “taken seriously” as an artist. So it was that she explained in an interview with The New York Times, “Not to diminish it, but it was a bit of like, I just need to get this out—it was a massive fart for me. I thought fixing that would entail making music that was more visceral or more emotional or maybe more angry or more sad. And I enjoyed performing it onstage, but it didn’t get me all the way there. So I want to return back to what I know.”

    And return she has. Not just to the pure pop that Hot Pink and Planet Her embodied, but also even farther back than that, all the way to the 80s (though Doja herself was born in 1995). Because, sure, it’s been “a while” since someone wielded that shtick, with the most recent notable example being Dua Lipa’s 2020 album, Future Nostalgia, drenched in the same 80s-centric stylings on Vie, which marks Doja Cat’s fifth record in seven years (with 2018’s Amala being her debut). But Doja takes it more than just a few steps further than Lipa in terms of centering the album’s entire universe in the 80s. Because it’s not just a sound, it’s a world, with Doja committed to staying in character while inhabiting that world. This, of course, extends to her visual accompaniments—whether it’s the music videos she’s released thus far (see: “Jealous Type” and “Gorgeous”)—or the album variants that feature her on the cover in various 80s getups (particularly the Quality Time vinyl edition). All of this proving the accuracy of what she told Michelle Miller of CBS Sunday Morning: “I’m always wanting to, like, create a character, like, create some sort of narrative and theme and world. World-building.”

    To establish that world immediately on Vie, Doja begins with “Cards,” which, for about the first fifteen seconds, sounds like it could be something from a Blood Orange album (it’s the saxophone). But then, with its production from Y2K, Gavin Bennett and Jack Antonoff (who worked on nine of the fifteen tracks, and who makes music that usually sounds 80s-esque anyway), the song bursts forth in some very Janet Jackson circa Control type of glory. This as Doja opens with the chorus, “A little more back and forth/A little more catch and throw, baby/The more we can clear this smoke/A little further I’ll go/Maybe in time, we’ll know/Maybe I’ll fall in love, baby/Maybe we’ll win some hearts/Gotta just play your cards.” The up-tempo pace of the track instantly establishes the exuberant tone that Doja is going for, in addition to ruminating on her love of romance—intermixed with sex, of course. This intoxicating combination evident in the lines, “If you play fair, stranger/It’s all you could eat while I lay there, stranger” (that word, stranger, also being the title of track six on Vie). At the same time, Doja exhibits the shyness of a girl looking for true love when she says, “I’m enough to wait for/Move too quick and you off the roster.”

    As the saxophone plays us out of “Cards,” Doja’s warning fittingly transitions into “Jealous Type.” For it’s apparent that once she (or her “character”) does open her heart to someone, she’s not liable to let them “muck about” with others so readily. Once again starting the song with the chorus (which will be a common occurrence on Vie), Doja soon asks the question, “Could be torn between two roads that I just can’t decide/Which one is leading me to hell or paradise?” This meaning that Doja can’t quite decide between remaining “dulcet” or going full AK-47 in terms of expressing her feelings of jealousy. Something she does manage to convey regardless in the second verse, rapping, “And if she really was a friend like you said she was/I would’ve been locked in, but I called your bluff/No girl enjoys trying to tough it out for a party boy/Everyone wants you and you love all the noise.” In a sense, it’s almost like she’s channeling Evelyn Richards in American Psycho (whose name is changed to Evelyn Williams [played by Reese Witherspoon] in the film version), who has some similar sentiments toward Patrick Bateman.

    And yes, needless to say, this is probably exactly the type of album that, had it actually been released in the 1980s, Bateman would have been sure to pontificate about in one of the chapters. Granted, Bateman couldn’t cover every piece of 80s pop culture, including Knight Rider, which is not one of the things he finds worthy of mentioning at any point in American Psycho. Doja Cat, however, seems to figure that, since Vie is an “80s album,” the Knight Rider theme is a natural fit for “AAAHH MEN!,” even though Busta Rhymes already locked down that sample in 1997 with “Turn It Up (Remix)/Fire It Up.” What’s more, it seems that Antonoff enjoys working on tracks wherein female singers make a play on words using “men” and “amen” (hear also: “Manchild”).

    Of course, Doja has more of a legitimate reason to wield the Knight Rider theme than Busta in that she raps, “And if had more common sense/Then I would grab my ride and dip.” She also adds to that sentiment, “And I have too much tolerance/You ugly and fine as shit.” That latter dichotomous line referring to how a man can be aesthetically foyn, but still repulsive “on the inside,” thanks to his “personality” (or lack thereof). Even so, Doja seems always willing to take a chance on romance. Even with the knowledge that romance so often gives way to reality, ergo a loss of the rose-colored glasses that can then lead to so much tension and fighting. Thus, a need for “Couples Therapy,” which happens to be track four on Vie.

    It’s this sweeping, lush song that particularly conjures Doja telling Jimmy Fallon, “I’m very inspired by Janet. I’m very inspired by Michael and Prince.” And yet, there’s even brief auditory glimpses of Aaliyah (specifically, “Rock the Boat”) as Doja narrates the problems of some other couple, rather than speaking about herself or her own relationship. This bringing to mind the distinction of her writing process that she made to Miller on CBS Sunday Morning, noting, “When I’m writing, I’m writing about situations in general. I’m not really, um, always pulling from my personal life” and “I love to talk about love. I love to talk about, um, you know, relationships and dynamics and things like that.” Carrie Bradshaw would tend to agree.

    Interestingly, “Couples Therapy” starts out with Doja talking about a relationship from the third person perspective before switching to the first: “She just wants him to be involved/He just wants her to finally notice/They just need one more push to cope/Can we both detangle our souls?/This argument’s been in the oven/We can’t always be in control.” This, in fact, channels Madonna’s 1989 “divorce track” from Like A Prayer, “Till Death Do Us Part,” on which she sings with the same perspective shift, “Our luck is running out of time/You’re not in love with me anymore/I wish that it would change but it won’t/‘Cause you don’t love me no more/He takes a drink, she goes inside/He starts to scream, the vases fly/He wishes that she wouldn’t cry/He’s not in love with her anymore.” Yes, maybe Madonna and Sean just needed couples therapy—though it wasn’t as “chic” in the 80s to seek that kind of help. Just ask The Roses.

    But, at least after becoming newly divorced and/or single again, a person can feel like their former “Gorgeous” self. This being the second single from Vie after “Jealous Type.” And yes, with this particular track, Doja is sure to cover a different kind of romance: the kind that somebody has with themselves a.k.a. self-love. So it is that Doja remarked of “Gorgeous”: “[It’s] not about being in a relationship with someone else, it’s about how you relate to yourself and how you feel about yourself. And that was something that I really wanted to kind of convey in this song.” Which she definitely does (“I mean I only got myself to appeal to [I do]),” along with the feeling that this should be playing during one of Gia Carangi’s photoshoots (the lyric, “She wanna be chic when it’s inspired by heroin” being especially resonant). Or during one of Bateman’s murder sprees. Either way, it’s among the most 80s songs of Vie, which really means something (this along with the fact that Charli XCX’s newly-minted husband, George Daniel, is one of the co-writers and co-producers). In fact, it’s almost like Doja took a page out of The Weeknd’s playbook for this entire record, for he’s been dipping into that 80s sound well for a while, especially since 2020’s After Hours.

    And it would track that Doja could have been inspired as much by The Weeknd as any pop artist from “back in the day,” for she’s no “Stranger” to collaborating with him, having done so on a remix of his 2020 song “In Your Eyes” and in 2021 for “You Right” from Planet Her. Who knows, maybe she even has him partially in mind when she opens “Stranger” with, “We could be strange/At least we’re not the same.” Later, she’ll add, “And I believe the weirdest ones survive.” This echoes one of Madonna’s recent aphorisms on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, during which she declared, “Not fitting in is what saves you.” Granted, Doja speaks on some pretty normie couple behavior when she says, “Call me over to watch some White Lotus.” This perhaps serving to remind listeners that she did make a song with one of season three’s cast members, LISA—namely, “Born Again,” which also features RAYE. Not to mention her fairly basique nod to Kill Bill for the “Stranger” video. But, in any case, it’s a sweet song, and one that relishes the joys of finding one’s fellow “weirdo” in life.

    With that in mind, Doja seems only too pleased to make her fellow weirdo “All Mine” on the following track, which features a prominent nod to Grace Jones, both in sound, tone and, well, the opening sample of dialogue. Dialogue that comes from Conan the Destroyer, with Princess Jehnna (Olivia d’Abo) asking Zula (Jones), “How do you attract a man? What I mean is, suppose you set your heart on somebody. What would you do to get him?” to which Zula instantly replies, with the same “savagery” as a man, “Grab him, and take him.” Or what a certain Orange Creature, especially during his 80s heyday, would rephrase as “grab ‘em by the dick.” That Conan the Destroyer was released in 1984 only intensifies Doja’s commitment to the “world building” of Vie, which exists solely in the 80s (complete with her public appearances in promotion of the album, during which she’s dressed in attire befitting said era). Save, of course, for the lyrical content itself.

    In the spirit of Zula’s advisement, Doja croons in tune with the mid-tempo track, “I ain’t waiting around, yeah/I’ll be taking him out, yeah/‘Cause I’m only about him/Wanting what we want/Claiming what we claim/Make you say my name/And I’m all yours/It can’t bе my fault/This street goes both ways/Let a giver takе/You’re all mine, boy.” In this sense, Doja channels a time when women were only really just coming into their own as independent people capable not only of being seen as a man’s “equal” (which really isn’t hard to do considering how subpar most men are), but being able to “claim” in the same way—or so one would have liked to believe—without incurring as much judgment as they would have in the past. And in the 80s, it was not so “past” at all, considering the fact that most women couldn’t even open their own bank accounts in the U.S. until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. Considering that Doja is very much the type of woman who needs to have her own bag, the 80s are probably about as far back in time as she would be willing to go (not to mention the fact that a Black woman further back than the 80s didn’t have much in the way of rights either).

    To be sure, it wouldn’t have been half as easy for a woman to simply command, “Take Me Dancing,” as both Doja and SZA do on the song of the same name. Teaming up yet again after the stratospheric success of “Kiss Me More” (which even broke Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine” record for the “longest-running all-female Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100”), SZA commences the track with the repetition of the demand, “Baby, take me dancing tonight.”

    Once she makes her desires known, Doja then comes in with the chorus, “You’re so raw, boy, and you’re so romantic/When you fuck me right and then you take me dancing/It gets lonely out here in this big old mansion/In these hills cooped up, boy, can you take me dancing?” Clearly speaking from the perspective of someone who lives in L.A. (with Doja herself being a native), it’s almost as if Doja is intending to channel Norma Desmond if she were living in the 80s instead of the 50s.

    While not as lyrically varied as “Kiss Me More,” “Take Me Dancing” is just as “boppable,” and surely worthy of a music video that finds Doja and SZA hitting the clubs of Los Angeles through an 80s lens (which must surely be less derivative than the very Britney concept they “came up with” for the “Kiss Me More” video). Maybe even one with a Maxxxine-inspired slant.

    On “Lipstain,” Doja actually says she doesn’t wanna dance. Well, that is, metaphorically speaking, beginning the song with the declaration, “I don’t wanna dance around it/Talkin’ ‘bout our love is easy.” So easy that it even makes her “speak in tongues”—a.k.a. French (e.g., “Tu es ma vie et mon tout/Et tout le monde le sait” and “Laisse-moi embrasser ton cou”). And why shouldn’t she? Considering that Vie is named in honor of the French word for “life,” of which Doja remarked to CBS Sunday Morning, “That means life and I feel like you can’t have life without love.” “Vie” not only means “life” in French, as in, “tu es ma vie,” but it also derives from the Roman numeral V, and Doja wanting to reference this being her fifth record. One that shows a side of her that perhaps wasn’t as noticeable before. The romantic side (after all, that doesn’t come across in such previous lyrics as, “If she ain’t got a butt/Nah, fuck it, get into it, yuh”). Which is why Doja was prompted to explain of the consistent theme, “This album is very much about love in a way that reflects how I want it to be in the future—my hope, my hopefulness. What I hope it could be. Because I remember there was a time when people were talking about wanting to be with each other, and it seems to have gotten a bit more vapid and just sort of like, not real… Not loving, not romantic.”

    But it is “romantic,” in its retro way, to want to “mark your man” (as Peggy Olson would call it) with a bit of lipstick on his collar…and elsewhere. Or, as Doja calls it, a “lipstain.” This said when she sings, “Kiss you on the neck on purpose/So they know my favorite lipstain.” The “they” being other women that might try to “holla.” A fear that prompts Doja to note, “We gotta mark our territory for them dogs, girl.” That’s certainly how Britney felt on “Perfume” when she used the eponymous beauty product to talk about marking her own territory via the lyrics, “And while I wait, I put on my perfume/Yeah, I want it all over you/I’m gonna mark my territory.” For Doja, though, lipstick will suffice.

    And, talking of Britney, Doja very much gives off 00s-era Britney energy on the lyrics for “Silly! Fun!” (a song that matches the playful exclamations in its title) when she sings (while oozing pure exuberance), “Wouldn’t it be fun if we went to a party?/Wouldn’t it be fun to fall deep for somebody?/I know it could be a blast to just pop out a baby/And we’re so very silly getting married in Vegas.” Spears did all of those things and then some in the 00s, but Doja wants to “make it 80s” with her musical spin on such a narrative (one that she calls her homage to lovebombing). And yes, “Silly! Fun!” definitely offers the kind of jubilance-inducement one would expect of such a title, practically begging its listeners to snort cocaine to this soundtrack. It also echoes the theme of “Stranger,” reiterating the idea that Doja has found someone to match her freak, so to speak (and to quote a Tinashe song rather than a Doja one)—and that she’s all the better/happier for it. As made further apparent when she gushes, “You’re my person, this my first time, I’m in love/Those men were practice in my past.”

    On “Acts of Service,” this talk of finding “my person” continues immediately, with Doja asking the question, “Would it mean that I found my person/When the language is acts of service?” The “language” she’s referring to obviously being “love language,” of which there are five categories: acts of service, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts and physical touch (all five have Vie vinyl variants named in their honor). And so, if Doja can find that “special someone” who speaks her language, in addition to embodying some of the other ones, then, “Please, this is an achievement.”

    The slow tempo and “boudoir-ready” sound, co-produced by Fallen, Stavros and Kurtis McKenzie, is yet another example of the Janet Jackson inspiration on the album. Though, of course, the rapped portions of the song are all strictly Doja, especially when she says, “Yeah, said I/I just deleted Raya/That must mean that I’m your provider/That just mean I’ma be your rider.” Something about this verse feeling like a nod to the Joseph Quinn drama that happened earlier this year, with some outlets reporting that Quinn was “caught” on the dating app for “posh” people (a.k.a. celebrities [or even just “influencers”]) while still “with” Doja (much like David Harbour when he was married to Lily Allen). Either way, it’s a pointed remark. Perhaps the kind that would later prompt Doja to “Make It Up” to her love with an apology. This song having the kind of sound that makes one think of Prince taking a bubble bath (or maybe even think of Vivian Ward [Julia Roberts] taking a bubble bath while listening to Prince).

    To that point, Doja asks her lover in the second verse, “Can I run your shower?/Can I fill the tub?” So it is that Doja obviously wants to keep the acts of service love language going. And, in a certain sense, “Make It Up” also has shades (no pun intended) of Ariana Grande’s “make up,” a song from thank u, next about, what else, make up sex as Grande urges, “And I love it when we make up/Go ‘head, ruin my makeup” (so yeah, it’s sort of like 50 Cent rhyming “nympho” with “nympho”). In a similar fashion, complete with using the repetition of the same word, Doja sings, “If we make love/Would I make it up to you?” In other words, would it make this person, er, come around “One More Time.”

    While Daft Punk might already have a signature song called this, Doja throws her own hat into the “One More Time” ring. Even though she, too, mostly just repeats that phrase for the chorus. Even so, the song explores the struggle of being vulnerable, especially as it pertains to allowing oneself to fall in love. Awash in the sound of “80s electric guitar,” Doja remarks, “It’s never easy/We’re willingly uncomfortable/I want you to teach me/We’re both feeling unlovable/We gotta learn to unlearn it/It’s gotta hurt if we’re burning/When we get closer, I curse it/Breaking the cycle, I know I deserve it.” In other words, she deserves to be “Happy.”

    The Marvin Gaye-esque opening of said song, the penultimate track on Vie, inevitably leads to Doja speaking more rudimentary French (as she did on “Lipstain”), incorporating the repetition of the command, “Brise/Mon coeur/Encore/Ce soir” (meaning, “Break/My heart/Again/Tonight”), in between asking, “Are you happy?/Who would get mad at you/Doing what you wanna do?” A query that sounds, in its way, like MARINA asking, “Are you satisfied/With an average life?” (on a side note: MARINA also has a song called “Happy” on Froot). But the answer to that question is, patently, Doja, who expresses being plenty mad when she says, “TLC, I saw, I creeped/She’s in our bed, I bought the sheets.” This pop culture reference not being 80s at all, but peak 90s. Alas, Doja can’t keep it entirely “of the time” she’s emulating, putting her own contemporary spin on the lyrics while borrowing mostly from the sound of the Decade of Excess. Which she, like many others, wants to “Come Back.”

    For this grand finale, Doja selected Antonoff as the sole producer of the song (the only other one on Vie that he produced on his own being “AAAHH Men!”). And for this big responsibility, Antonoff seemed to riff off Doja’s tone of voice to fully exude an all-out Wilson Phillips sound. To be sure, “Come Back” has a very inspirational sound in the spirit of said band (particularly their best-known hit, “Hold On”). But just because it sounds that way doesn’t mean Doja is saying things intended in that spirit. For when she sings the chorus, “Changin’ the way that you act to me/Can’t switch the tone while I’m ‘bout to leave/I worked it down till the atrophy/You missed the mark and her majesty/Beggin’ me, ‘Baby, come back to me,’” it’s evident that Doja has reached her threshold on giving love—or at least this particular love—a chance.

    In this regard, “Come Back” is like Doja’s version of “Goodbye”—the Sabrina Carpenter track that concludes Man’s Best Friend (and yes, Antonoff co-wrote and co-produced that song, too). For, like Carpenter, Doja is sending a big kiss-off message to the person who thought that she would always be around/come running at the drop of hat. In both songs, each woman emphasizes that this man’s sudden desire to “come back” to the relationship and (potentially) “be better” is a classic case of too little, too late. Which is exactly why Doja pronounces, “It turned you on when I told you off/I’m pleased I ain’t the bitch you was hopin’ for/If we keep this up, and you hold my doors/And you take my bag, and you hold me more/I don’t think that would make up for the hope I lost.”

    Much like the collective hope that was lost during the Decade of Excess itself, with Ronald Reagan ramping up the concept of neoliberalism (with his counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, also doing the same “across the pond”) through Reaganomics. A so-called philosophy/set of policies that served only to further dash the dreams and livelihood of the average American. Turning the U.S. into an even greater cultural wasteland that wouldn’t deign to fund the arts in general, let alone music education. Even so, compared to now, there’s no denying the 80s had a lot more luster. A far greater sense of hope and aspiration.

    To boot, in the spirit of songs from “that time,” Doja even dares to challenge her usual audience by making tracks that last well over three minutes in most cases. Which is a tall ask of a generation that’s grown accustomed to mostly only having the focus for a song that’s about two minutes, if that. So perhaps her goal really is to fully transport listeners back to that time, and remind them that while time travel might not be possible (as was “promised” in Back to the Future), the “DeLorean” that people will have to settle for in 2025 is Vie.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna’s Interview for On Purpose with Jay Shetty: A Reminder That She Considers Herself the Queen of Kabbalah Before the Queen of Pop

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    If Madonna has been consistent about one thing since 1996 (though, to outsiders, it’s more like 1998, when Ray of Light came out), it’s her commitment and devotion to Kabbalah. Through all the “reinventions” and various physical “adjustments,” she has continued to incorporate the “teachings” into the majority of her work. Especially her music. And, of course, in her interviews. In her latest, the one billed as not only her “first podcast interview,” but also her “first interview in nine years” (which, of course, doesn’t really track when taking into account all the promotion she did for Madame X six years ago in 2019), she continues to do the same. And yes, one can understand why Madonna being on a podcast is momentous, considering such things are a bit too “low-budget,” so to speak, for her usual tastes. At the same time, one of Madonna’s greatest skills as an entertainer has always been to find a way to disseminate her “highfalutin” ideas while still managing to appeal to the “lowest common denominator” (see: “Vogue”).

    This time around, Madonna is attempting to once again get people on board with Kabbalah, just as she was able to with the majority of celebrities in the early 2000s (e.g., Britney Spears and Demi Moore). Indeed, whereas many who glommed onto the “Kabbalah Centre trend,” complete with the “red bracelets” a.k.a. scarlet thread intended to ward off the evil eye (which, to be fair, many celebrities do have a hard time avoiding), left it behind by the end of the 00s, Madonna never abandoned it, diving in deeper as everyone else seemed to gradually pull away.

    Granted, the 00s saw one of the pinnacles of Madonna’s support for the philosophy cemented in the form of her 2005 documentary, I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, directed by one of her go-tos for music videos (including “Ray of Light”), Jonas Åkerlund. It is in this documentary that a large bulk of what Madonna mentions is also conveyed to Shetty during his On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast. This includes the notion of how forgiving someone who “fucked you over” is one of the most revolutionary teachings of the Zohar, “a kind of decoding of the Torah or the Old Testament.” In fact, it’s one of the elements of Kabbalah that Madonna most underscores whenever she talks about it, this time around using her recently deceased brother, Christopher Ciccone, as an example of someone who fucked her over (see: his “tell-all” memoir, Life with My Sister Madonna) and who she chose to forgive (though, conveniently, when he was already about to die).

    While other celebrities would settle for being paid by MasterClass to teach something, Madonna has opted to participate in a “pay what you can” operation, via Kabbalah.com, called “The Mystical Studies of the Zohar with Madonna and Eitan Yardeni.” It was the latter who also featured prominently in the abovementioned I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, and shows up once again toward the second half of the podcast. This further cementing the idea that he is Madonna’s proverbial guru.

    During the trailer for the class, it’s only fitting that a deep cut, “Has to Be,” from the Ray of Light album should play as Madonna talks about her first notable experience with “the muse” or “manifestation,” as they’re calling it. Once again trotting out the first time she ever wrote a song—while living in, only too appropriately, an abandoned synagogue—Madonna recalls how, afterward, she kept wondering, “Where did that come from?” Trying to tell viewers that she never had any intention of becoming a singer, and yet, somehow, the music and lyrics for her first song, “Tell the Truth,” just “poured out” of her, so to speak. Though, to tell the truth, they were lyrics partially extrapolated from her journal.

    What’s more, anyone who knows the story of pre-fame Madonna is aware that she did have the ambition to be a singer once she realized it meant she would be front and center, rather than any form of “backup,” as would have been the case if she had continued pursuing the original avenue of being a dancer or, after that, the drummer in a band called The Breakfast Club. A band that she finagled her way into as a result of her relationship with Dan Gilroy, who had started the group with his brother, Ed, a man far less, let’s say, “charmed” by Madonna than Dan. Especially as time wore on and Madonna made it more than fairly apparent she wanted to take over as The Breakfast Club’s lead singer (in the end, she went off and started her own band called Emmy and the Emmys).

    Alas, these are “uglier” details on Madonna’s road to fame that she would prefer to leave out of her “Mystical Studies of the Zohar” class, instead presenting her rise to prominence as more of an example of the divine rather than what Norman Mailer once called an example of her having the “cast-iron balls of the paisans in generations before her.” To that point, Madonna does bring up being Italian (because Lady Gaga isn’t the only umpteenth-generation pop star who can make that claim) in the interview with Shetty, citing it as one of the reasons she always had difficulty remaining calm (in addition to being a Leo). Therefore, yet another one of the reasons why Kabbalah has been so helpful to her in that it’s effectively “stamped out” the inherent choleric nature of being una donna italiana. And yet, what Madonna still can’t stamp out is the Catholicism that has remained far more inherent to her work than Kabbalah. Even now.

    Regardless, Madonna is all about incorporating a mélange of the different things she unearths in her studies as a student of life. So it is that Catholicism and Kabbalah have intertwined for her in many ways. Even in I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, during which Madonna is at her most markedly Kabbalah-centric on record (until the Jay Shetty interview came along), not only “subliminally” incorporating images and chants related to Jewish mysticism, but also offering such pearls of wisdom as, “If you want to read things literally, you read the Old Testament and if you want to understand the hidden meanings of the Torah, you read the Zohar.” Considering she was studying the Zohar at that point in time, in 2004 (when the Re-Invention Tour was in full swing), it is fair to say she could (and is now going to) effectively teach a class on the subject.

    Indeed, her entire purpose in coming on Shetty’s podcast was to reemphasize that she sees her purpose in life as being to share the wisdom she’s gleaned, in addition to her understanding of “the light” (as she keeps calling it, and also did in I’m Going to Tell You a Secret). This also being how she, at times, refers to God. Or what “God” is. During some of the interspersed footage and images in the trailer for her Kabbalah Master Class, the same footage of a POV shot that makes it look as though one is staring at the sky above, shining a bright light (a.k.a. the sun) through the trees is repurposed from I’m Going to Tell You a Secret. Which, again, was Madonna’s original master class on the philosophy. It is also during the documentary that she mentions, long before this podcast, that Kabbalah has changed her for the better, made her an inherently less selfish person. A person who now asks, “What was I thinking before I was thinking?” (and yes, she mentions to Shetty that this is something she still says often in reference to who she was before discovering “the teachings”).

    In I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, even her own father, Silvio “Tony” Ciccone, weighs in on the shift that has been palpable in Madonna ever since she had her first child and “got into” Kabbalah at the same time. Interviewed after going to see her show in Chicago (the closest city to their native Michigan where the tour was stopping) with his wife, Joan (RIP), Tony noted, “What I saw of last night’s performance was a more positive outreaching of her to the public. Her concern for the world, for people—to me, that’s maturity.” The couple is also shown watching Madonna during her performance of “Mother and Father,” during which her Catholicness flares up by way of the screens that showcase Jesus and Mary behind her. Something Tony is only too happy to see, regardless of what it “means” from Madonna’s perspective or whether or not she’s trying to “say” something else with these images. For Tony, Jesus and Mary being displayed without Madonna doing something blasphemous with or to their images—as she might have in the past (and still does when one least expects it)—is all he needs to see.

    He also mentions that even he hasn’t been immune to Madonna trying to spread “her” Kabbalah gospel, remarking that she gave him a book, but that, “To me, there’s nothing in Kabbalah that’s not in scripture… In the end, you know, we all believe in one God. I think most people do.” Ah, would that such a pretty thought were true—otherwise, there might not be half as many wars.

    I’m Going to Tell You a Secret is also the first time Madonna really tried to make her art serve as a “Trojan horse” for Kabbalah, or rather, a “tool” for those watching, commenting at one point (namely, in the segment after Michael Moore is interviewed), “I’ve always thought that my job was to wake people up. But it’s not enough just to wake people up. You’ve got to wake people up and give them a direction. You’ve got to wake people up and give them tools about how to deal with life. You’ve got to wake people up and give them solutions. Otherwise they’re gonna fall back asleep again.”

    Perhaps Madonna has seen people falling asleep again too many times in the past decade since the Orange Creature became the president, hence her seemingly sudden decision to pursue a “project” that never would have been on anyone’s bingo card up until now: teaching Kabbalah master classes (though at least M continues to set herself apart by not being paid by MasterClass itself to teach something like “marketing and self-promotion in pop stardom”).

    In the trailer for said class, there’s all kinds of hilarity ensuing. Including, first and foremost, that Madonna’s boy toy of the moment, Akeem Morris, is randomly sitting there for no apparent reason other than to look pretty while Madonna offers sound bites such as, “It’s, like, everything happens for a reason” (a cliche that Cher Horowitz would surely deem “way existential”) and “I don’t wanna do a residency in Vegas” (this said in the section about “False Gods”). During each divided scene, there are captions that mention the eight lessons that will be covered (should you choose to sign up): “Study the Art of Manifestation,” “Study Freedom,” “Study Reincarnation,” “Study False Gods,” “Study Chasing After What Doesn’t Belong to You” (during which a scene of Madonna revealing her pursuits of a married man [Antonio Banderas?] provides a bit of zest), “Study Desire,” “Study Forgiveness” and “Study Love.” It is during “Study Forgiveness” that, as previously mentioned, Madonna wields her recently deceased brother as fodder for how she’s managed to forgive someone who did her wrong. And surely, Christopher would be as delighted about this as seeing Madonna allow their visit to their mother’s grave be filmed for Truth or Dare.

    In this and a few other regards, it’s not difficult to be cynical about what Madonna is once more attempting: to convince people that Kabbalah is “the way, the truth, the life (or, in this instance, the light)” (if one will pardon the Christian parlance). Having long ago gone from the “Material Girl” to the “Ethereal Girl,” as it has already been said. And while that might remain a hard pill for many to swallow, Madonna is at least trying to use her pop star abilities as a force of good, a force of positive change. Which is more than can be said for, say, Sabrina Carpenter, who’s still emulating the sexually-charged portion of Madonna’s career (and not even with half as much shock value). Give this new crop of pop stars a bit more time, however, and they, too, will be offering pay-what-you-can master classes on spirituality. Just another way in which Madonna has blazed a path for them all.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Advertising, 80s Style: Look “Gorgeous” With Doja Cat-Endorsed Makeup

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    It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Doja Cat’s “Gorgeous” far outshines Taylor Swift’s on the “serving cunt” front (especially since, as anyone with taste knows, Taylor has never actually “ate”). As such, an equally as cunty music video needed to be made as a worthy companion to the song itself. Enter director Bardia Zeinali, who keeps elevating his career one music video at a time (having just directed yet another for Sabrina Carpenter [following “Please Please Please”]—namely, her second single from Man’s Best Friend, “Tears”). “Gorgeous” is now amongst those elevations, with Zeinali tapping into some quintessential postmodern aesthetics for the very “80s makeup commercial”-inspired video (to the point where it’s very much the kind of thing that even Patrick Bateman could jack off to, whether literally or metaphorically).

    Initially starting with a slowly spinning shot of Doja Cat in an ultra-tailored bright pink skirt suit, accessorized with a black pillbox hat, sheer black stockings and black “fuck me pumps” while bent over as she touches her ankle, the slow burn musical introduction gives way to Doja singing the first part of the chorus, “If they wasn’t grillin’ before/They gon’ be really mad when we hit the floor/It’s a crime to be gorgeous.” This said after a black title card introduces the “brand” that is Gorgeous throughout this video. And yes, Doja and Zeinali nail the look and feel of these bygone types of commercials that so breezily conveyed an aspirational way of being. And did so in a far more glamorous manner than what Gen Z is exposed to via “influencers” on TikTok. Doja herself is technically a millennial (born in ‘95), or zillennial, if you must, so perhaps she feels inherently closer to this era when product shilling wasn’t so lusterless.

    And for those who can’t remember and/or were never exposed to such forms of advertising, Doja seems intent on making everyone well-aware of what it was like back in the “glory days” of hawking wares to the public. So it is that she holds an elegant tube of lip gloss like she’s genuinely been paid to promote it while confidently singing, “Between you and a million phones/They takin’ pictures like we hittin’ a pose/It’s alright to be honest/Even when we sit in the dark/I feel the prettiest that you ever saw/Are your eyes even open?/It ain’t ever really our fault/We make a killing being so beautiful/It’s a crime to be gorgeous.”

    Although the sound and visual for the song is fiercely 80s, the theme itself is more current than ever, with Doja addressing the ways in which comparison, particularly through the lens of social media, is the ultimate source of drawing haters and envy. This, in essence, making the art of “being hot” a crime. With the punishment often resulting in the kind of microscopic scrutiny that leads a person to get unnecessary cosmetic surgery thanks to the advent of the body dysmorphia-inducing comments section—even though those who were criticizing their looks were mostly just jealous of them. So it is that Doja also sings at one point in “Gorgeous,” “Then I got surgery ‘cause of scrutiny.” With two of her known cosmetic surgery procedures being liposuction and a breast reduction.

    Whatever she “had done,” she still seems to be radiating a natural glow while promoting the Gorgeous lip gloss collection, which features the tagline, “All we need, all we want” (a bit lazy on the copywriting front, but oh well). It’s after this point that the video/commercial starts to transition into a very 90s-esque vibe in that, all at once, a slew of some of today’s most recognizable faces in modeling appear to also look overjoyed about using this fake product. And some of those “main girls” include none other than Alex Consani, Anok Yai, Ugbad Abdi, Irina Shayk and Yseult. All in addition to Doja Cat’s own mother, Elizabeth Sawyer, who not only appears next to Doja at one point looking just as “Glamour Shot-y,” but also provides the interlude portion of the track via her recorded words of encouragement, “Babe, I just called to tell you how much I love you and how amazingly beautiful that you are. Oh my god, how uplifting and inspiring you’ve been to me for all this time. And I love you and no one even has fine hair or is smarter.” That comment on Doja’s “fine hair” being an ideal segue from the perfume ad portion of the video (that perfume being called “Gorg”) into what comes next, with the Gorgeous line also offering up hair care products (including dye), as though Doja wants to not so subtly remind people that beauty is a big business with many-pronged tentacles. An industry that continues to prey on “aspirationalism” to this day. Even though that’s more of a euphemism for “insecurity” than anything else.

    To boot, there are moments when the “Gorgeous” video, not to mention the song’s lyrical content, feels like a riff on Kelly LeBrock’s own 80s commercials for Pantene, during which she famously “pleaded,” “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” In other words, it shouldn’t be a crime to be gorgeous (especially if anyone can buy the so-called necessary products to be so—as celebrity endorsements and self-started brands would try to have consumers believe). But, soon enough, the focus shifts from hair to eyeshadow, with Doja posing in front of the array of product lines before, around the two-minute-fifty-five-second mark, the color shifts to black and white for the proverbial “BTS scenes” of Doja primping in the mirror. Except, once again, this infuses the video with more of a 90s-era vibe before returning anew to the unmistakable 80s-ness of the scenes that came before it.

    In this sense, it’s apparent that Doja and Zeinali chose to combine the best elements of advertising from both decades (with the 90s being much more all about wielding “supermodels” to generate sales/interest in a beauty product). Though, obviously, the 80s reign supreme in all things related to the Vie universe. And the “Gorgeous” video certainly cements that—in addition to the fact that advertising just ain’t what it used to be.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Ladytron Unleashes a Cult Anthem Appropriately Titled “I Believe In You”

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    As Ladytron begins to prepare the masses for their first album since 2023 (Time’s Arrow) and their first album since the departure of band member Reuben Wu, “I Believe In You” is the inaugural offering from what’s sure to be yet another masterclass in the electronic genre. And, based on “I Believe In You,” the band has plenty to say on a “subtle dig” level (not that they don’t often have some shade to throw [hear especially: “Destroy Everything You Touch”]). After all, the song is so clearly a worshipful anthem that eerily spotlights a cult mentality, as made apparent in the primary lyrics, “Whatever you are/Oh, I believe in you.” Paired with its accompanying video, directed by the band’s own Daniel Hunt (who also produced the track), the unmistakable “cult homage” of the song can’t be denied.

    What’s more, Ladytron has seen fit to release such a track at a time when society (and the U.S. in particular) has never been more susceptible to “joining” a cult (though “being subsumed by one via the internet” feels like the more accurate way to phrase it). However “understated” that joining might be. Though, of course, the most overt one in recent times is that of MAGA, with political cults being the most insidious of all, as much of the brain-having part of the population has noticed in the years since the Orange Creature first entered the political stage via the 2016 presidential election. And yet, what Ladytron undercuttingly explains with this song is that so many people are desperate to believe in something, anything that might have “the answer.” To life’s woes and to life itself.

    Opening on a shot of a group of people lying on the ground blindfolded in a red-lit room that’s filled with speakers, the allusion is clear: these are cult members who have drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid. For, obviously, the infamous Jim Jones remains the benchmark for just how far into the depths of (self-)destruction a cult member will follow their leader. The blindfolds, in this case, act as clear symbol of how those “ready to worship” will enter into that state with metaphorical blindness, unable to see the obvious red flags in front of them. For, that’s the thing about being “primed” to join a cult: you don’t want to notice any of the warning signs. Are only too ready to embrace whatever “your leader” has to say so that you don’t have to think too much about things yourself.

    In the following shots of the cultish group, they begin to showcase their coordinated, rhythmic movements, totally in sync with one another while still blindfolded. A haunting repetition of “ah-ah-ah-ah-ah” before Helen Marnie drops the first verse only adds to the cultish aura radiating from the track. As the video progresses, superimposed shots of Helen Marnie (looking ever more like Shirley Manson) singing select lyrics from the song are shown. Some of the more choice ones including, “Like, like a message on the breeze/Like a signal from the tower/Like a memo from the man/Oh, I believe in you.”

    The red-lit set (which looks like it’s the type of room one might see on USCSS Nostromo in Alien) only adds to the increasingly sinister, devilish feel of the video, with the “worshippers” becoming more and more, shall we say, “taken” with the rhythm the further along the track progresses. Their movements, thus, looking almost involuntary, as though responding to some unseen force…or master. Indeed, the escalation of their dance moves ends up coming across like one of the most intense silent discos ever.

    The intentionalness of Ladytron’s mostly repetitive—like a mantra—lyrics, the ones that repeat, “Whatever you are/Oh, I believe in you” seeks to heighten the sense of “I Believe In You” being an homage to cults. Or rather, to a person being so ready and willing to “receive” something…or someone. So desperate to believe in anything, really, that might mitigate the feelings of chaos and confusion that only seem to intensify the more that time wears on.

    In between that repetition, Ladytron provides the beauty of similes to better describe the ways in which the people in this video have been made to feel by this unnamed, unseen cult leader. This includes, “Like a bulletin to heart/Like the laughter in heaven/Like a telegraph from God/Oh, I believe in you” and “Like the flutter of a wing/Like the defeat of a king/Tear falling from the past/Oh, I believe in you.” At other moments when the usual chorus is said, addition similes are peppered in like parentheticals. For example, “Whatever you are (like, like the dawning of an age)/Oh, I believe in you (like the birth of an idea).”

    By the time the video is about three minutes in, the scenes occasionally transmogrify into kaleidoscopic imagery, only adding the 1960s-esque vibe that’s already being subliminally channeled. After all, that’s when modern-day cults really gained steam, with Jim Jones himself becoming a fixture in San Francisco by way of establishing the Peoples Temple headquarters there in 1965. Then there was the cult of “hippiedom” itself at that time, with oodles of “flower children” defecting from their parents’ homes to join others in the cult of pleasure (sex, drugs and rock n’ roll). This before the Manson Family also turned cults into a very dark, stigma-filled thing.

    The kaleidoscope effect becomes even more pronounced as the video draws to a close and Helen Marnie herself at last appears in the same scene (rather than her face merely being superimposed over them) as the “revelers,” revealing herself at last to her cult followers—their unseen leader all along. And yes, she is dressed very much like a cult leader, complete with her black brimmed hat and “smart” skirt suit.

    Tapping each of them on the head one by one, they fall to the ground, indicating death by devotion. Again, just like the Jonestown Massacre, which is very much a prominent influence on the semiotics of the video. But at least, in this case, the followers are “dying” for the rhythm, rather than some crackpot white guy.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Sean Baker Meets Grimes in FKA Twigs’ “Cheap Hotel”

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    As FKA Twigs prepares us for the Eusexua Afterglow—a.k.a. the title of not her deluxe version of Eusexua, but a “sequel album” to it—she’s given the gift of “Cheap Hotel,” the first single from said record. Co-produced by Twigs, Joy Henson, Manni Dee, Petra Levitt and Lilbubblegum, the sound of the track has all the hallmarks of the early 2010s, particularly in terms of FKA Twigs’ Grimes-esque vocals. We’re talking Visions-era Grimes (in other words, well before Elon destroyed her). Then there is the element of the Spring Breakers Soundtrack to the sound, not just musically, but also with the contribution of warped-sounding male vocals that boast, “Lord on my denim, designer work wear/No pausing with these senses, I’m just tryna splurge here” (and yes, it’s also very 2010s not to mention additional vocals as an official feature [see also: Flo Rida’s “Right Round” [granted, a single from 2009], which didn’t list Kesha as the featured artist at the time when it came out). 

    To capture the trippy, gritty feeling of the track, Twigs once again tapped Jordan Hemingway (who also happens to her boyfriend) to direct the video (indeed, they co-directed and co-wrote it together). And, although the song itself is three minutes and thirty-one seconds, the video is practically a short film length, clocking in at seven minutes and six seconds. Opening with a few shots of the “cheap motel” in question, Hemingway then cuts to a scene of a man walking on the side of the highway as he tries to call Twigs’ phone, leaving a message demanding, “Yo, where you at yo? For real. You got me out here in the middle of nowhere, I don’t know where I’m at… This is gettin’ crazy now, come on, like…” Meanwhile, Twigs and a friend of hers roll up to the Royal Motel, likely the one in oh so glamorous Secaucus, New Jersey (though, admittedly, the aesthetic of the town has some decided “LA vibes”—this being perhaps a testament to how all the U.S. looks like a giant freeway with some strip malls plopped down here and there). 

    As Twigs’ friend talks about how “he wasn’t even that cute,” the viewer can infer she’s alluding to the lost dude attempting to track Twigs down in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. New Jersey). Clearly trying to continue the party/club they were at in the light of day, Twigs and her friend rock-paper-scissor for who has to go in and buy a room “for the night” (though it’s day) with the presumably kifed wallet containing the necessary credit card to do so. Though Twigs’ friend says before going, “I bet you that motherfucker’s card declined.” Fortunately for Twigs and the many other people she invites into the room, that doesn’t turn out to be the case. And from there, the title card, in all its purplish cursive font glory, establishes “Cheap Hotel” as the name of this “little movie.” One that very much possesses the style of Sean Baker—with the narrative and setting itself being almost like a mash-up of Tangerine and The Florida Project. 

    Once inside the room, it doesn’t take long for a flood of people to show up and keep the party going from the night/morning that has now turned into broad daylight. But Twigs clearly wants to have her own after-after-after-after party as she sings, “Do you wanna bring a friend?/To the cheap hotel right behind the club/In Room 20 or 24/Call me when you’re outside, endless summertime/At the mini bar, bring your credit card/We’ll go all night.” And all day. 

    Bopping along to the music she’s put on in their cheap hotel room (even though the average price at the Royal Motel is about a hundred and fifty dollars a night—so yeah, it’s a “cheap” motel by 2025 standards), Twigs ignores the various missed calls and text messages from “Hot Guy 3″ (as she’s chosen to label him in her contacts). Having way too much fun/generally too blissed out on drugs and alcohol to care, Twigs keeps dancing while various yellow-toned captions, designed to serve as “thought bubbles,” as it were, let the viewer know what each “guest” is saying. For example, “Has anyone seen my vape?” 

    Twigs occasionally checks her phone to listen to the latest message from Hot Guy 3 demanding to know where she is (and also where his “shit” is, for that matter—which plausibly means his wallet). In another instance, Twigs pauses the music to go outside and get a drink from the vending machine, at which time she encounters a very Tangerine-esque character that gets immediately uppity at the sight of her, asking, “The fuck you doin’ in my hood, babe?” Twigs ignores the question, continuing to go about her business before sauntering back into the room (though she does briefly threaten to spray her drink in the antagonizer’s face, prompting the latter to unleash another invective). 

    Back inside the room, which seems even more like another world trapped in the nighttime/some alternate universe now that we’ve seen Twigs go back into the day for a hot minute, she turns her music back on. Then, Hemingway intercuts scenes of her outside with the crew that was antagonizing her with scenes of her inside the room. This before Hot Guy 3 finally does arrive at the place, thinking that maybe he’s at last found the light at the end of the tunnel. But no, not only does everyone inside the room freeze so that they can be extra quiet and make him believe no one’s in there, but when he does open the door, he finds something quite unexpected. And this is where the unforeseen David Lynch-meets-David Cronenberg influence comes in (even though, up until this point, it was all Baker), with Twigs putting someone else’s eyeball on her face just as he enters the room. For it seems as though she’s “absorbed” everyone into her own body, become like a composite of all the revelers. 

    In a sense, this “absorption” vaguely achieves something she had said in one of the captions just before Hot Guy 3 burst in: “I wish I could be every me at once.” Perhaps that’s part of why she’s sought to combine Eusexua with Eusexua Afterglow as “companion pieces,” for they’re inevitably variations on the same theme. And whereas her videos for the Eusexua era all ended with, “Eusexua is a practice, Eusexua is a state of being, Eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience,” the ones for Eusexua Afterglow now just end simply with the question, “Searching for an afterglow?” And whether you were or not, it’s surely been found in “Cheap Hotel.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Tame Impala Speaks on Night People With “Dracula”

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    In Mark Ronson’s memoir, Night People, the quote he uses for the introduction of the book is as follows: “The night is on your mind/Ayo, the sun’ll still shine/But now the night is on the mind.” Taken from A Tribe Called Quest’s 1993 track, “Midnight,” it’s a verse that also very much applies to Tame Impala’s latest single from Deadbeat (following “End of Summer” and “Loser”), “Dracula.” The evocative title of course referring to being a creature of the night (for vampires, as everyone knows, despise the day—after all, it literally kills them). And obviously one that abhors daylight. Or, at the very least, doesn’t get along half as well with it.

    To convey that motif in the accompanying video for “Dracula,” directed by Julian Klincewicz, Tame Impala (a.k.a. Kevin Parker) sets the stage at a house party in the middle of nowhere (a setting he’s quite familiar with considering he grew up, for a time, in Western Australia’s Kalgoorlie). Except, rather than partying inside the house like semi-“civilized” people, these ghoulish creatures move about in an almost zombie-like (rather than vampire-like) fashion outside the abandoned/spooky-looking abode (given the added “deadbeat” touch of being outfitted with a string of colored Christmas lights on the exterior).

    Before the viewer is given a chance to fully take in the non-splendor of the house, however, Tame Impala, in the opening scene, emerges as though out of thin air, cutting through the night like the very vampire the song is named after. This done as a trippy, almost incantation-like series of “oh-oh-oh-ohs” are let out before the expectedly infectious beat drops. A beat, as Tame Impala, described to Zane Lowe, that heavily evolved in that it “started in this really raw, minimal way and then just sort of like slowly expanded into this sort of like pop, you know…” Parker further added, as though to emphasize he’s but a vessel for “the muse,” “I just give the song what it wants. I feel like that one just…wanted to be like a Max Martin song.” And yes, it’s probably the most “Max Martin-y” that Tame Impala will ever get.

    In any case, as he continues to walk through the deserted landscape, all at once, a semi-truck appears behind Tame Impala to follow him into the enclosure, as it were, and soon he’s strutting into the area like a rooster (especially with his “groovy” neck moves while walking). With the dominant pheromones to back up that comparison. The opening verse then heightens the establishment of the feeling that these are night people, with Tame Impala singing, “The morning light is turning blue, the feeling is bizarre/The night is almost over, I still don’t know where you are/The shadows, yeah, they keep me pretty like a movie star/Daylight makes me feel like Dracula.”

    In other words, nighttime is the right time, particularly for continuing to fool people into thinking you’re attractive (further assisted by the intake of drugs and alcohol). Even though Dua Lipa’s “Illusion” (which Parker co-produced with Danny L Harle) rightly brings up the fact that most girls are well-aware they’re dancing with a, let’s say, false presentation at this time of night, as manifest in her lyrics, “I really like the way you’re movin’/Yeah, I just wanna dance with the illusion.” And daylight is the one major thing that can really shatter the illusion—break the spell. Or trance, if you will.

    As he serves some very Kesha “the party don’t start till I walk in” vibes, the scene switches to black and white before being suffused with color again, with Klincewicz homing in on a pregnant woman as one of the many random-ass people who happen to be at this gathering. An image that solidifies the notion that not only does the nighttime always seem to bring an “eclectic mix” of people together, but also that once you are a night person, you never really let that go…no matter what your circumstances in life are. Married, pregnant, “old”—it don’t matter. Your commitment remains forever to the night.

    With the video continuing to alternate between shots in color and black and white, Klincewicz lends an added sense that there is a line between “two worlds”—day and night—being tenuously toed. As for the desolate landscape, Parker cited Western Australia’s rave scene as one of the track’s inspirations (because, again, if anyone knows about that Western Australia life, it’s Parker). And this very much comes across in the isolated, remote tableau provided by the video. Along with the cult-like “circle dances” occasionally shown via overhead shots that convey a message about how “The Night” really is a religion for some people (see also: Charli XCX—side note: frequent Charli collaborator Imogene Strauss acted as the creative director for this video).

    Throughout the strangeness-radiating “party,” Tame Impala appears to be in search of something—or someone—he has yet to find. An image that speaks to the romantic aspect of the song, which is that he’s looking for “his person,” his fellow creature of the night to depart with. Ergo, the lyrics, “In the end, I hope it’s you and me/In the darkness, I would never leave you.” That “in the end” part referring to the moment when the night really is over and you’re theoretically supposed to go “home” (or whatever ramshackle you’re currently squatting in) with someone. Unless, of course, you really are a vampire and truly only can be with someone else in the darkness (thus, Tame Impala warning, “Won’t ever see me in the light of day/It’s far too late, the time has come”—for him to enter his proverbial coffin bed).  

    As the sun starts to come up at this rave-y party, Tame Impala acts as the “cult leader” figure, leading them all away from this place (a pied piper of keeping the good times [literally] rolling) with the house rigged up on the back of the semi-truck like it’s no big deal. Clearly, they’re migrating elsewhere, maybe to a place where it’s still night (after all, “portal jumping” seems totally plausible within this video’s universe).

    While the stumbling/dancing rag-tag crew follows behind Tame Impala and his truck, the lines, “Run from the sun like Dracula” repeat. And it’s an urging that could just as well possess the subtext, “Run from responsibility at all costs.” Stay a creature of the night—someone who can never be swayed or controlled by the “laws” of the day. A message that feels especially valid on an album called Deadbeat.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • A Girl Is Driven Home Alone at Night: Florence + the Machine’s “One of the Greats”

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    In keeping with the theme of “Everybody Scream,” Florence + the Machine’s second single from the album of the same name is all about fame. Though, in contrast to “Everybody Scream,” which is sort of like Florence’s version of Lady Gaga’s “Applause,” “One of the Greats” is much saucier, exploring the more vexing aspects of what it means to be a “rock star” as a woman. More to the point, the double standard of it. And so, while “Everybody Scream” is about what fame gives, “One of the Greats” is more about what it takes (this phrase having two meanings in this instance).

    In this regard, “Everybody Scream” is the “Angel of My Dreams” of the outfit, while “One of the Greats” is more of the “IT Girl” (yes, one needs to listen to JADE’s That’s Showbiz Baby to understand the reference). And, once again, Florence Welch is very much embodying her “Elvis reincarnated” aura in the accompanying “visualizer”—or is it a video? Either way, it’s directed by Welch’s go-to, Autumn de Wilde, even though there isn’t much to direct in that all Welch has to do is sit in the back of a car and get chauffeured somewhere like the rock star she is in the dead of night. And naturally, even though it is night, she’s still got to be wearing her black shades—her “I’m too famous to be seen” sunglasses. In addition to wearing a tailored ensemble that consists of a black blazer and white button-front shirt. Then, Welch soon raises her hand to reveal she’s also holding a cigar. It’s all very Madonna—not just from her 1992 “Deeper and Deeper” single cover art, but also from the “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” video, during which she, too, is being chauffeured around at night while wearing sunglasses and also looking very blasé about the whole thing. If not utterly horrified by it.

    Welch, in contrast, is slightly more enamored of what fame has meant. Not just that she has a devoted following (like Jesus himself), but that it allows her creativity to flow into and through something that will actually be “received” by others. By the same token, being “inspired by the muse” is not without its own unique drawbacks. Which is perhaps why Welch refers to creativity almost like it’s Lazarus, rising from the dead every time an artist thinks they’ve laid their creative pursuits to rest. So it is that Florence opens the song with the evocative (and, yes, biblically allusive) verse, “I crawled up from under the earth/Broken nails and coughing dirt/Spitting out my songs so you could sing along, oh/And with each bedraggled breath, I knew I came back from the dead/To show you how it’s done, to show you what it takes/To conquer and to crucify, to become one of the greats/One of the greats.”

    And what Florence has shown her acolytes over the years, in terms of “what it takes,” is a lot of physical and emotional agony. For her, it’s the former category that has been especially prominent, having broken her foot onstage twice (once in 2015, and another time in 2022) and then having a near-death experience in 2023 (mentioned by way of, “Oh, burned down at thirty-six/Why did you dig me up for this?”) after undergoing an emergency medical procedure for a still-unspecified condition that would have been fatal had she not gotten the surgery immediately. So it is that Welch was led even further down a mystical, witchy, “hippie-dippy” path with her latest work, originally conceiving “One of the Greats” as a poem.

    In this regard, it shares a certain DNA with Lana Del Rey’s “Fingertips” (and not, surprisingly, “The Greatest”) from Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (which is delivered in a very stream-of-consciousness kind of style, though it wasn’t originally a poem). But Welch still outpaces the length of the verbose “Fingertips,” with “One of the Greats” clocking in at six minutes and thirty-two seconds. Indeed, Welch didn’t think the label would actually “let” her release a song like this, recounting, “…you’re always asking the label if you can put out a song that’s five minutes long so with this one I was like, ‘They’ll never put this out the way we really want to put this out, seven minutes long,’ but they were like, ‘Yeah, we love it.’” Which perhaps just goes to show that Welch really is “one of the greats,” therefore “permitted” to release whatever the fuck kind of music she wants to.

    In this instance, music that’s once again co-produced by Mark Bowen and Aaron Dessner, who layer on the sparsest of instrumentation so that Welch can really dig the knife in with her vocals when she says something like, “‘Cause who really gets to be one of the greats/One of the greats?/But I’ve really done it this time/This one is all mine/I’ll be up there with the men and the ten other women/In the 100 Greatest Records of All Time.”

    Welch doesn’t stop there when it comes to shading how the music industry continues to deify male musicians in a way that simply doesn’t happen for women, who are held to a standard that no man could deal with even trying to live up to. So it is that Welch ribs, “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can/Now don’t get me wrong/I’m a fan/You’re my second-favorite frontman [after herself, of course]/And you could have me if you weren’t so afraid of me/It’s funny how men don’t find power very sexy/So this one’s for the ladies/Do I drive you crazy?/Did I get it right?” The answer, of course, is a resounding yes—for there isn’t really an occasion when Welch doesn’t get it right. Yet another testament to the level of her artistry.

    However, that doesn’t prevent her from asking the question of what really makes an artist “one of the greats” and who gets to decide such a thing—and why They get to, based on what criteria? Then there is her lately constant exploration of the “cost” of fame (going back to Madonna on “Drowned World/Substitute for Love,” it was she who said, “I traded fame for love without a second thought” after realizing what she had sacrificed for so much of her life in service of fame). So it is that she told Radio 1’s New Music Show with Jack Saunders,

    “[‘One of the Greats’] was one long poem I wrote about greatness or the cost of it or why do I want it? Who gets to decide what that even is? And then it was also kind of a joke, so it’s like really serious and also [a] really unserious song… And it kind of evolves in this train of thought and that’s very much how it was recorded, but I guess I wanted it to feel like you were disintegrating into nothing at the end ‘cause it is sort of about the process of creativity being like a sense you sort of destroy yourself for something and then you kind of dig yourself up all over again to do it again and you’re like, ‘Why do I keep doing this? What is this thing that I’m reaching for?’ There’s a Martha Graham quote that’s called ‘divine dissatisfaction’ and I think that sort of sums up the process for me, it’s this sense of this like divine dissatisfaction that just keeps propelling you forward all the time.”

    Hence, Welch’s repeated divine question pertaining to divine dissatisfaction: “Did I get it right?/Do I win the prize?/Do you regret bringing me back to life?” The answer, for the fans that venerate her, is a resounding no. They would dig Welch up an infinite number of times to keep watching and listening to her be “one of the greats.” Though, if you ask any man in “the industry” about it, they’re liable to write her work off with a shrugging, “So like a woman to profit from her madness” (Taylor Swift would surely approve of this sarcastic lyric based on her own song called “mad woman” from 2020’s folklore). As though “women’s music” is just that—somehow meant to be cordoned off into its own separate “outlier” category despite the fact that, now more than ever, female musicians are dominating the charts.

    This no doubt in part because many of them feel like Welch, who admits, “I was only beautiful under the lights/Only powerful there.” Or, as she phrases it on “Everybody Scream,” “Here, I don’t have to quiet/Here, I don’t have to be kind/Extraordinary and normal, all at the same time.” Because, yes, it’s important to remember that, no matter how much you worship “one of the greats,” they still shit, too. Or, to put it in a more 2000s way, “Stars—They’re Just Like Us!”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • On Lola Young and Amy Winehouse’s Generational Divide When It Comes to Dealing With Addiction

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    While Amy Winehouse might have “glamorized” addiction (in a far less deliberate way than Lana Del Rey “glamorizing abuse”), her proverbial predecessor/the person who is now oft compared to her, Lola Young, has sought to do the opposite in her approach to songwriting about the struggle. Accordingly, her third and most recent album, I’m Only F**king Myself, is the most candid yet in terms of Young exploring her various battles with addiction. Particularly cocaine. A drug of choice that already differentiates her from Winehouse, who famously said in her signature track, “Rehab,” “I love you much/It’s not enough/You love blow and I love puff.” In effect, Winehouse says what Lana Del Rey later would with the “Born to Die” lyrics, “Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough/I don’t know why.”

    Young has slightly less “romantic” thoughts on the matter of l’amour (and drugs) throughout I’m Only F**king Myself, taking a more Lily Allen approach when speaking about her ex-boyfriend(s). For example, “SAD SOB STORY! :),” on which she sings, “But I don’t stalk your Instagram ‘cause I don’t care to know, mate/Who you’ve been sleeping with is no longer my business/And, damn, it feels good, it feels great/I moved on, but I just wanted to say/Best of luck to ya, and I hope you’re happy someday/But keep your sad sob story, ‘cause I won’t read it anyway.” Winehouse, too, had plenty of her own severe “over it” thoughts on exes. Indeed, she could be far more savage than Young—even to a bloke she was still dating. As is the case on 2003’s “Stronger Than Me,” the lead single from Winehouse’s debut, Frank, during which she ribs her then boyfriend, Chris Taylor, “Don’t you know you supposed to be the man?/Not pale in comparison to who you think I am/You always wanna talk it through, I don’t care/I always have to comfort you when I’m there/But that’s what I need you to do, stroke my hair/‘Cause I’ve forgotten all of young love’s joy/Feel like a lady and you my ladyboy.”

    Her dissatisfaction with most men only added to the proverbial void inside of her—the very one that prompted her to turn to drugs/have such an “addict’s personality.” Even becoming addicted to people. Most notably, Blake Fielder-Civil. The one who led her even further down a path of drug-addled darkness. This being yet another thing that separates Young from Winehouse: she’s not having her biggest moment yet in the spotlight while still dating someone toxic. A clinger/leech who only becomes more so at the slightest whiff of fame and fortune. Furthermore, in direct contrast to Young, Winehouse patently refused to go to rehab as her fame level soared. Even though going through some kind of “program” at that time might very well have caused her life trajectory to go in a totally different direction. That is to say, she might still be alive today if some early preventative measures had been taken. The same way that Young took them just as “Messy” was blowing her up on the charts in late 2024. While some “pop stars” might have jumped into high-gear promotion mode, this was the precise moment that Young checked in at a facility for her cocaine addiction. One that had been plaguing her for what she deemed “a long time.”

    On the plus side, as she noted to The Guardian, “…it teaches you a lot, being addicted to substances. It makes you more empathetic about other people that have gone through that. It’s just a constant journey.” Alas, Winehouse’s own constant journey came to an abrupt end on July 23, 2011, when she once again turned to alcohol as a substitute for the Class A and B drugs she had been dependent on in the mid-2000s. By 2008, however, when she truly was forced into rehab, Winehouse began to “turn a corner.” At least, in a sense. But just because she kicked the “harder stuff” didn’t mean she wouldn’t still turn to alcohol more than merely “now and again.” Even though she mentioned in a 2010 interview with Glamour UK, “I literally woke up one day and was like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’” (and yes, that is very much a Rihanna lyric).

    Of course, that wasn’t entirely true. A classic binger, Winehouse’s method was to have periods of sobriety followed by getting soused. This being what eventually led to her fatal alcohol poisoning. And, in large part, her inability to seek out the level of help she needed can be chalked up not only to her upbringing, but to her generation. For while millennials might be among the first ilk to truly push back on the general harshness of various “baby boomer philosophies,” many—especially of Winehouse’s “elder millennial” status—were still indoctrinated with the narrow-minded views imparted to them about “how to deal with things.” Especially mental health-related issues. In Winehouse’s case, it wasn’t only a matter of being from a generation that was taught to shove feelings down and/or numb them with substances. She also grew up with parents that largely ignored some of her glaring neuroses early on. Particularly with regard to bulimia. And if they did ignore her issues, it was mostly a result of their own generation’s teachings, instructed never to look too deeply below the surface of things. To just “go along to get along.” Particularly as a woman.

    But Lola Young, as a quintessential Gen Zer (born in 2001 à la Billie Eilish), has an altogether different approach to not only acknowledging her issues in the first place, but also taking them on in a constructive manner. And the number one way that her generation has done so is by seeking the necessary form of medical assistance (yes, usually that means therapy) in order to tackle their demons head-on. Winehouse was never able to fully do that, treating her demons of drugs and alcohol not as something that needed to be tamed, but as the cure itself. Worse still, she did glamorize the rush, the thrill of getting wasted all the time. Of being, as Young would say, messy. Her defiance audible in the chorus of “Rehab” as she declares, “They tried to make me go to rehab/I said, ‘No, no, no.’” The final “no” being particularly emphasized in her vocals.

    In effect, Winehouse would never be the sort of woman to say something like, “I’m a dumb little addict so I’ve been tryna quit the snowflake,” as Young does on “Not Like That Anymore.” Instead, she would bill her drinking and drugging lifestyle as the chic explanation for why “you know I’m no good.” Shrugging it off as though it’s her doomed fate. In this regard, too, Young can at least address her awareness of wanting to responsibility-shift and “blame it on the gods,” as it were. This being the line she wields in the first verse of “Spiders,” the one that goes, “Can you take, take it off my hands?/To make me feel like I had something planned/And blame, blame it on the gods/So we don’t feel like we did something wrong.”

    Winehouse’s songwriting, in sharp contrast (though not in terms of how autobiographical it is), is all about the simultaneous acceptance and guilt of being “born bad” (or, as Del Rey says on “Kinda Outta Luck,” “I was born bad, but then I met you/You made me nice for a while/But my dark side’s true”). This shines through on songs like “What Is It About Men,” “You Know I’m No Good,” “Love Is A Losing Game” and “Addicted.” As far as she’s concerned, the die is cast vis-à-vis the outcome of her life. Whether related to matters of romance, family or otherwise. So why not just knock another bottle back and take things as they unavoidably come? There’s no stopping any of it anyway.

    And yet, Gen Z does have this same sort of fatalistic worldview as a result to the very “No Future” vibes that have been further compounded by the inevitability of environmental collapse and/or an AI takeover of the world—whichever comes first. The thing is, they just don’t drink and drug about it as casually and endlessly as millennials like Winehouse. And if they do, they’re sure to take a page from Young’s book (digital though it may be) and seek help before they go down the same (back to) black hole that Winehouse did.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Endorphin Endorsement: Exercise Gets Madison Beer Feeling Flushed in Video for “Yes Baby”

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    Although it hasn’t been very long since the last time Madison Beer offered her fans a single, it feels as though years have already gone by in the period between now and the release of 2024’s “Make You Mine” and “15 Minutes.” That said, Beer more than likely had her reasons for wanting to release a particularly high-energy track amidst a climate that is decidedly, well, “high energy” in all the wrong ways. So yes, more than ever, something uplifting is appreciated. Even though, for those with body image issues, the video for “Yes Baby” might not be.

    In the spirit of Charli XCX’s style of “working out” in the “360” video (that is, in “hot girl” attire with tights, heels and a glass of red wine in hand), Beer takes a similar approach to her fitness regimen (there are even a few moments later on where she, too, bounces up and down to make her tits jiggle à la Charli) by walking in “model strut” mode on the treadmill while wearing above-the-ankle white socks paired with black stiletto heels. Needless to say, her workout ensemble is meant to channel a certain “coquette” aesthetic.

    So it is that Beer goes from the escape room of “15 Minutes” to the gym of her 80s-inspired dreams for “Yes Baby” (indeed, it seems many have been inspired yet again by the 80s lately). And while quite a few of Madison Beer’s music videos feature her in situations that either find her alone or with just one other person (e.g., “Home to Another One,” “Spinnin” and “15 Minutes”), “Yes Baby” stands out for the great number of other women in her midst who all seem to be “turned on” by exercising. Or maybe “animated” and “flushed” by it are the more euphemistic word choices.

    The presence of all these women is perhaps meant to emphasize Beer’s insistence that the song is one “you want to blast with your friends.” A feeling that came to the fore after the creation of the music video, co-directed by Beer and (as usual) Aerin Moreno. Something Beer commented on by noting, “‘Yes Baby’ is really just a fun and flirty song. After I shot the music video, though, it took on a whole new energy…” That energy being one of a matriarchal good time.

    And yet, clearly, everything about the song oozes sex (with a man)—in fact, the lyrics make it sound as though Beer is already in between the sheets on the verge of orgasm with the repetition of, “Yes, baby, yes, yes, baby, yes, yes, baby.” These two words being the phrase that makes up the majority of the song. Even though there are occasional verses of “poetry,” including the opening one that goes, “Speakin’ to me soft like silky sheets/Figures in the dark, two heartbeats/Basically a God, you pray to me/Whisper in the dark, you want me.”

    Beer sings these words as intercut scenes of the various exercise options in this apparently multi-faceted gym are shown. Seeing her and her sistren in ballet attire at a barre in front of a mirror wall-outfitted dance room, Beer also adds, “It’s a look/It’s a touch/It’s a dangerous kind of crush/Say it once/Say it twice/Come and say it another time.” The “it” she wants to hear another time being, of course, “yes baby.”

    As the beat drops (after building up for about the first minute of the song), co-producers Beer, Leroy Clampitt and Lostboy help to recall elements of Benny Benassi’s signature 2002 hit, “Satisfaction” (even lyrically speaking, with Beer repeating “yes” at times in the same way that “push” is repeated on “Satisfaction”). What’s more, the “Yes Baby” video also has a certain similarity to the one for “Satisfaction,” what with lots of women jumping around in a sexually charged manner even though they’re being featured in an “everyday” kind of setting (for the women in the “Satisfaction” video, that “everyday” setting involves the use of power tools).

    As the video progresses, Beer finds herself in a few other new “workout” scenarios, including being perched on the balancing beam with her fellow workout enthusiasts in leotards as she does little to indicate much in the way of “strenuous” exercise. Perhaps proving, yet again, that half the reason that women truly enjoy going to the gym is for the additional wardrobe it allows them to don (hence, Kate Hudson starting a clothing line called Fabletics just for “activewear”). As for the mirror wall scenes in the dance studio, it has a certain Madonna in the “Hung Up” video cachet (along with Dua Lipa in the “Houdini” video, itself a nod to “Hung Up”). To be sure, it’s likely that the Queen of Pop herself wouldn’t mind sweating it out to this particular song on the dance floor or in the gym—the two primary venues that this song was made for (apart from, one supposes, the boudoir).

    Incidentally, both locations are quite voyeuristic in nature, with everyone observing others—sizing them up (especially from a “physical beauty” standpoint). So it is that Beer’s lyrics, “Something in the way you’re watchin’ me/Talkin’ to me nice and slowly/Promise if you ask, you will receive/Come a little closer to me,” further amplify “Yes Baby” as a simultaneous club and gym banger. Both of these locations still struggling to make a full comeback since Covid.

    But at least Beer is doing her part to remind listeners of what Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde once said, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands, they just don’t.” Hence, the reason why so many tradwives are fitness freaks. After all, you’d have to be to keep yourself from shooting some of the conservative husbands out there. So, in a sense, Beer is now picking up where Brooke Taylor-Windham (Ali Larter) left off with her own kind of “fitness empire.” One that is decidedly more, let’s say, “auto-erotic.”

    This much is made even more apparent by the non sequitur concluding scenes of the video, which find Beer outside on a lawn as the sprinklers go off. Naturally, she lets them drench her, perhaps a less on-the-nose “metaphor” than a scene of her drenched in sweat would be. Both scenarios indicating that exercise (whether in the gym or in the bedroom) makes her wet. Though that definitely isn’t how most people feel, ergo the success of Ozempic.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • To Her (And Most Women’s) Detriment, RAYE Goes Especially Retro on “Where Is My Husband!”

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    After the success of her debut album, My 21st Century Blues, in 2023, the music industry was pretty much immediately itching to see what RAYE would do next. And what she’s decided to do with her sophomore album, evidently, is take the Amy Winehouse approach to things (even more than before, and maybe even more than Lola Young on I’m Only F**king Myself). Except, in contrast to Winehouse, the sound she’s wielding for her fusion of doo-wop and Motown influences, doesn’t exactly contain “modern” lyrics in the way that Winehouse’s did (e.g., “Don’t make no difference if I end up alone/I’d rather have myself and smoke my home-grown/Oh, it’s got me addicted/Does more than any dick did”).

    Instead, as though to reflect back the state of the world and its reversion to a time when a woman’s primary goal in life was to get married, RAYE makes the central focus of the song all about her desperate search for a man who will marry her (begging the question of whether or not she might as well name this album My 20th Century Blues). So it is that she delves right into the “despairing” chorus, “Baby, where the hell is my husband?/What is takin’ him so long to find me?/Oh, baby, where the hell is my lover?/Getting down with another?/Tell him if you see him, baby, if you see him, tell him/He should holler.” Those of a more literal-minded nature might, of course, take RAYE’s question to mean she’s wondering where her actual, “already-in-existence” husband is, as though she already has one and wants to know his physical, in real time location. This further compounded by RAYE singing another verse that literal-minded listeners would infer to mean her “actual” husband is cheating on her when she says, “I only fear he taking time with other women that ain’t me/While I’ve been reviewin’ applications/Wait till I get my hands on him, I’ma tell him off too.”

    But, of course, anyone with even half a brain can comprehend that RAYE is essentially saying what Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) already did in the season three episode of Sex and the City, “Where There’s Smoke…” Her frustration expressed while hungover and irritable, Charlotte demands of her friends, “I’ve been dating since I was fifteen. I’m exhausted. Where is he?” It’s Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) who then incredulously clarifies, “Who, the white knight?” Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) quickly adds, “That only happens in fairy tales.” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) then chimes in, “Charlotte, honey, did you ever think that maybe we’re the white knights, and we’re the ones that have to save ourselves?” Charlotte immediately writes such a “novel” thought off as “depressing.” As RAYE probably would based on the lyrical content of “Where Is My Husband!” Content that mirrors the retro visuals of the video, directed by brothers Will Reid and Ed Reid a.k.a. The Reids.

    With the help of these two brothers, RAYE takes the retro concept to the full visual extreme, starting with the fact that the video is introduced with a Looney Tunes-esque set of circles in black and white featuring the text (with each phrase stacked atop the next), “RAYE Presents Where Is My Husband The Sound is Retro-Pop.” Obviously, it’s not just the sound that’s retro though. It’s the entire belief system that would have a woman of the present singing, “…how long he kept me waitin’, anticipatin’/Prayin’ to the Lord to givе him to my lovin’ arms/And despite my frustrations/And he must need mе/Completely/How my heart yearns for him/Is he far away?/Is he okay?/This man is testin’ me/Uh huh, uh huh, uh/Help me, help me, help me, Lord/I need you to tell me/Baby/Where the hell is my husband?”

    After the title card sets the tone for the “throwback” feel, the black and white color palette continues as RAYE finds herself in the middle of a hallway in an apartment building looking quite confused about where the fuck she is (almost like David [Tobey Maguire] and Jennifer [Reese Witherspoon] after entering Pleasantville in the movie of the same name). In the distance, however, she clocks the silhouette of a man who seems to be getting ever farther and farther away from her. Especially the more that she chases him. This, of course, serving as a metaphor for how, the more you try to find/get something (or someone) you’re after, the more likely it (or, in this case, he) is to slip through your fingers as a result of “forcing it.” This is the running (pun intended) motif throughout the video, which then alternates between rich “Technicolor” (thereby fully showcasing the vibrancy of RAYE’s red sequined dress) and B&W—almost like an unwitting way to accent how schizophrenic a song like this feels in the present era. Or so-called present era.

    The time we’re supposed to be in is further called into question when two of RAYE’s backup singers appear on the proverbial sidelines waving signs to “cheer her on” in her thus far abyssal “love search.” These signs assuring, “Love Will Find You” and “Your Husband Is Coming!” (which, frankly, comes across as really fuckin’ ominous). In a scene soon after, RAYE keeps running around in her black and white version of the world (you know, like a 1950s version of it) frantically looking for a man who isn’t really there. Finding herself in a random room, she encounters a bridal-outfitted mannequin placed next to a groom.

    After approaching it, she pulls the veil off the mannequin’s head before turning to see the live (read: non-mannequin) priest holding up not a bible (as it might appear), but some kind of legal history book that, for whatever reason, has a chapter on the Forestry Act of 1945 (perhaps an unintentional allegory intended by the marriage between government and increased control over the management of land [read: forestry]). Written over that text is RAYE’s attempt at making this entire song feel slightly more modern: “Find yourself & love will find you!!” In other words, don’t try to be someone you’re not in a fruitless bid to attract the “perfect person.” Because, of course, somewhere down the line, revealing the “real” you to the one you “lassoed” under false pretenses will only lead to pain on both sides.

    And yet, what leads to pain primarily for the listener who can’t stomach such a gender-conventional/supporting-of-gender-conventions song is how much this “little ditty,” as “sweet” as it’s intended to be, even undoes something as “progressive” as Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” which is equally as “where is my husband”-centric. Not to mention as reinforcing of how materialistic women make themselves out to be when it comes to weddings and the trappings thereof. Hence, Bey’s taunt, “If you like it, then you should’ve put a ring on it.” Her desire for this material symbol of love being something she tries to backpedal on later in the song when she adds, “Don’t treat me to these things of the world/I’m not that kind of girl/Your love is what I prefer, what I deserve.”

    RAYE claims the same, yet also reverts to babbling on rather passionately about a wedding ring, singing in an ultra-fast manner, “I would like a ring, I would like a ring/I would like a diamond ring on my wedding finger/I would like a big and shiny diamond that I can wave around/And talk, and talk about it.” So it is that RAYE, “catchy tune” or not (courtesy of co-production from Sabath, who also, along with RAYE, greatly contributed to JADE’s recent debut, That’s Showbiz Baby) only ends up reiterating a tired message about women and their “desires” (/main goals in life) at a moment in history when it’s extremely perilous to do so.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lola Young Continues to Prove Herself to Be the Musical Lovechild of Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen on I’m Only F**king Myself

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    In 2016, Lola Young played one of her earliest live gigs at a pub called The Bedford in London. She was sixteen at the time, and had no idea that, while she was singing at that very moment, Nick Shymansky would walk in. As in, the man who became Amy Winehouse’s first manager, shepherding her along for the majority (of the most successful parts) of her career. Young’s comparisons to Winehouse (in addition to Lily Allen [before she was Lily Dabblin’]—for it can be said she’s both British chanteuses rolled into one), both vocally and “emotional rawness”-wise have only added to the uncanniness of Shymansky managing her, and yet, there’s no doubt that one of the reasons he was drawn to her in the first place—having previously insisted he was done with managing—was because he had to do a double take to make sure it wasn’t Winehouse herself. At least from an auditory perspective (though she is currently rocking a similar “skunk blonde streaks” look as Winehouse did at one point).

    As for his first impression of Young, he told Anthony Mason of CBS Mornings, “I was completely seduced by Lola’s talent and character.” Enough to take her on as the client that brought him out of retirement. Young, likewise, was insistent that out of all the managers she had met with, Shymansky was the only one she liked, the only one she felt could understand her and her vision. To add to the full-circleness of their partnership, he began managing her when she was sixteen, the same age Winehouse was when Shymansky first entered her life (then nineteen himself—a teenager managing a teenager). Unlike Winehouse, however, it seems that it’s her third album, I’m Only F**king Myself, that’s going to serve as her true international breakthrough (though “Messy,” from 2024’s This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway, was the launching pad with “Rehab”-level clout).

    And yes, with three albums already under her belt at just twenty-four, her musical output already outweighs Winehouse’s when she was the same age (Back to Black, her second and final studio album, arrived the same year that Winehouse turned twenty-three). Indeed, perhaps learning from Winehouse’s mistakes, a key theme throughout I’m Only F**king Myself is her recent lifestyle amendment: going sober.

    Which is why choosing to open with an interlude called “how long will it take to walk a mile?” has more than a slight touch of double meaning cachet. Because, often, the struggle to get sober can feel like an endless marathon—even if it’s “only” a mile in other people’s (read: non-addicts) minds. But it isn’t Young who speaks the interlude that kicks off the record; instead, she pulls a bit of an Ariana Grande by employing one of the recorded messages of her friends. In this case, artist Mandisa Apena, who sweetly chirps, “But I’m actually really grateful for life. I’m grateful for you and grateful that I’m here and I’m makin’ art. And I’m grateful that, you know, uh, that there are cows. I’m grateful that the grass is still green here. And that the air is still really clean. And all my friends and family are safe and well. I’m really, really grateful, I’m grateful for you, Lola. So, yeah, this is a bit of blabber but give me a message. How long will it take to walk a mile? Like what, forty-five minutes? I’m gonna walk a mile. Okay, I love you, talk to you soon, bye.”

    From there, Young takes us into the more jarring sound of “F**K EVERYONE,” which she described to Apple Music as a “kind of punky, early-2000s, but heavily alternative with distorted, crunchy guitars.” This sound, produced by Solomonophonic and Manuka, perfectly complements the edge of Young waxing on about her self-destructive need to “fuck guys who don’t like me and don’t mind” and “fuck girls who don’t love me, they don’t mind.” This declaration speaking to her recent “coming out as bisexual” moment (which, in contrast to Billie Eilish, she at least got to do on her own terms, even if only via a cheeky TikTok comment). As for the title of the song, it, too, is ripe with a double meaning (just as the opening interlude and the title of the album itself). And while she might be boning everyone to fuck the pain away, she is also saying “fuck everyone” by refusing to engage beyond a (very) surface level in relationships.

    Singing, “I’ve been right down in the gutter, blood on my knees/And I don’t have a lover, and I don’t need one/I’vе been fucking like no other and I don’t cry,” there’s an obvious tinge of self-preservation to the practice. As though Young is doing this whole nympho bit to “protect her heart,” if you will (or, as she phrased it to The Guardian, “Sex was my way of masking pain and aggression”). Which is also very much in the Lily Allen wheelhouse (hear also: “Everything to Feel Something”). And yes, even in Winehouse’s, as evidenced by her self-admonishment, “I should just be my own best friend/Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men.”

    Though this façade is obviously a form of armor, Young reemphasizes her sexual prowess on the Afrobeat-infused “One Thing,” which marked the first single from this album. Subverting the usual adage about how “men only want one thing,” Young not only willingly offers that one thing, but also suggests that she’s the one who only wants that that one thing from a man (“If a man can say he’s only here for one thing, so can I”), confidently declaring, “Break your bed and then the sofa/I wanna pull you closer/Everybody wants to know ya/But me, I only want one thing/I don’t even want your number/Don’t care if you got another/‘Cause tonight, I’m your only lover/And I’ma give you that one thing/I’ma give you that one thing.” Whether or not she’s drunk and high off her tits while making this offer is left to the listener’s discretion. Which brings the listener to the subject of the next track (and third single), “d£aler.” Speaking on her desire to “get away, far from here/Pack my bags, my drugs and disappear,” Young suggests that the only way to really put a stop to her addiction (specifically, cocaine) is to be cut off at the source: her dealer (as though she couldn’t find one in another town).

    So it is that she adds, “Tell you, ‘No,’ make it clear/I’m not comin’ back for fifteen years/I wanna write a note/Leave it with my next door neighbor/Who don’t give a shit/I wanna get away, far from here/Pack my bags and tell my dealer I’ll miss him.” Though, naturally, what she’ll really miss are the drugs he provides. The levity, sound-wise, of the track is in contrast to the fact that, as Young put it, “It’s an uplifting song, but it’s got a sad message. It’s definitely one that goes a bit deeper for me.” The same goes for “Spiders,” the subsequent song (and most recent single)—except there is no “uplifting” note to it. Neither musically, nor lyrically. And as Young grapples with some of her biggest fears, she belts out an admission that a woman isn’t supposed to say out loud anymore, namely, “Make me feel like I’m not incomplete for once/‘Cause I’m not a woman if I don’t have you/I’m not a woman if I don’t have you/And you’re not a man if you don’t have me.”

    This confession to the type of codependency in relationships—particularly for women—that can so easily arise, even to this day, is part of Young’s fear on multiple levels. On the one hand, it speaks to her fear of being vulnerable with another person; on the other, it’s about facing that fear (the “spiders,” so to speak) head-on (hence, the literalism of the accompanying video). In Young’s words, “[The song] encompasses all the pain and fear I have ever felt towards myself, and it’s about wanting someone to love me beyond all of that. Sometimes you want to kill what you’re most scared of in life, but when you actually face up to it, it’s really not as scary as you thought it would be.”

    And neither is creating a “Penny Out of Nothing,” yet another visceral, 90s alt rock-esque type of song (as is “Spiders”)—with a dash of Adele panache on “Set Fire to the Rain” (which makes sense, since Adele [along with Winehouse], like Young, also went to the BRIT School). Though Young insists the track is “a different vibe for me,” it has the same hard edge as some of the previous songs on I’m Only F**king Myself, including “F**K EVERYONE” and “Spiders.” Though she’s not wrong in classifying the chords as “kind of bossa nova, but a bit psychedelic.” Even so, what stands out the most about the track is Young’s casually passionate delivery of the chorus, “So I’ll create a penny outta nothing/Take the bullet out a gun/I’ll make a fool out of a man/I’ll make a man fall out of love/Make an atheist forgive, get on his knees and pray to God/I’ll make him think I’m fine when I’m not.” In short, she’ll spin gold out of straw. Even though, at first, that level of “confidence” isn’t exactly apparent in the opening verse, “Pains under my skin/So where do I begin?/There’s so much I wanna give/But life’s a game and I just can’t win.” Even though, obviously, she’s won big time. This due to, as she says, being able to “create a penny outta nothing.”

    As for the line about making someone think she’s fine when she’s not, well, it ties in nicely to the bridge that repeats, “I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna cry” (neither does Mariah). But that really is true on the following song, “Walk All Over You,” which once again channels Young’s inner Lily Allen as she takes the piss out of some shithead guy. Indeed, it has shades of Allen’s “Not Big” and “Shame For You” as Young chastises, “I’m quite amazed you think I’m/Just gonna pick your shit up, love you like a dog/When you can’t fix up, go get a life and get a job [how very Billie Eilish on “Lost Cause”]/And do you know the difference between me and you?/Well, you loved me for your ego, I loved you for you/So don’t say you don’t understand/Just ‘cause you’re a man don’t mean you can sit there/And trеat me like shit on your shoes/‘Causе do me wrong, I’ll put ‘em on and then I’ll walk all over you.”

    To that point, of all the “official videos” (not “official visualizers,” mind you—even though that’s exactly the vibe they’re serving) that Young released to accompany the songs on I’m Only F**king Myself, the one for “Walk All Over You” is the most literal. This in terms of Young hovering over the blow-up doll created in her image (you know, the one that’s also featured on the cover)—the POV shot making it look as though she could step on the viewer as much as she could the “doll”—while she warns, “I’m gonna walk all over, I’m gonna walk all over you/I’m gonna walk all over, I’m gonna walk all over you.”

    Elsewhere in the song, she proves Sabrina Carpenter right on “Tears” by speaking to how “wet” it could make a woman to, as Carpenter says, “just do the dishes, I’ll give you what you, what you want/A little communication, yes, that’s my ideal foreplay/Assemble a chair from IKEA, I’m like, ‘Uh.’” Young has similar feelings beneath her criticism, “You’ve told me plenty of times that I’m needy, and I’m greedy, and I’m unreasonable/So you can stop now and you can clean up the kitchen.” Though, of course, the bloke in question is likely thinking, “As if” to such a suggestion. Hence, Young’s “Post Sex Clarity” (a continuation of “Lily Allen-ness” that even Allen herself couldn’t ignore, posting an image of Young’s album artwork soundtracked to this particular song). That title being another troll of a common sex-related phrase—“post-nut clarity”—by flipping the script on it (much like what she did in the lyrics to “One Thing”). Or, as Young captioned a post about the song, “There is freedom and liberation in flipping the male-centric phrase post-nut clarity.” So it would seem, with Young bringing her blow-up doll into the “official video” for this as well, cradling, er, herself in her arms as she soothes, “When I’m lyin’ in bed, got post-sex clarity/I still love you, and I don’t know why/‘Cause every other man didn’t mеan a goddamn to me/When I finish, it’s not the еnd of you and I.” In effect, Young is, rather than experiencing sex in the “male way” by treating it essentially like a “grooming exercise” (designed for “relief”), presenting it as the very thing that reminds her why she’s so “attached” (because, as Billie Eilish would point out, it’s the oxytocin).

    As “Post Sex Clarity” transitions out in a very “Blur circa 13” kind of way, the song abruptly cuts off before the listener is transported to the dreamier, gentler-sounding “SAD SOB STORY! :).” Of course, Young is anything but gentle as she goads her ex, “And I’m so glad we’re over/No more trying, then fighting, then fighting again/And you can keep the damn sofa/‘Cause I never liked the orange, but you hated the red.” Once again appearing with her blow-up doll in the “official video,” she joins it in a white bed while directing her admonishments at it. Critiques that amount to a lyrical and thematic tincture of Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” and Selena Gomez’s “Lose You to Love Me.” Both songs evident in the chorus, “Guess I had to let you go to know that I didn’t need you in the first place/Life’s about learning and it can show you that the hard way/But I don’t stalk your Instagram ‘cause I don’t care to know, mate/Who you’ve been sleeping with is no longer my business/And, damn, it feels good, it feels great, I’ve moved on but I just wanted to say/Best of luck to ya and I hope you’re happy someday/But keep your sad sob story ‘cause I won’t read it anyway.” Ah, if only Amy Winehouse had come to this realization about Blake Fielder-Civil before it was too late.

    Instead, Winehouse chose to ignore the many red flags (generally via copious amounts of drugs, alcohol especially). Something Young also wants to do on the avoidant person’s anthem, “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(”—which amounts to her version of “Rehab.” This achieved through the themes addressed and lyrical turns of phrase used (though certainly not through the rock-à-la-Soundgarden-oriented sound). As for the first pair of lines, however, it’s all Lily Allen on the mic as Young sets the stage, “I play with fire, kinda like the way I feel when it burns/If I’m bein’ honest, I’ll take anything as long as it hurts.” This once again echoes Allen’s similarly alluded to “pursuits” on No Shame’s “Everything to Feel Something” when she sings, “I’ve tried everything/Everything/Everything/To feel something/But nothing.” However, Winehouse reemerges in the “scene setting” of the next “couplet,” “I need a doctor, got a sickness, and it’s just getting worse/I said, ‘I think I’m dying’ he said, ‘Darling, you’ve been dying since birth.’” This manner of describing a back and forth (with a doctor no less) dialogue also recalls Winehouse on “Rehab” when she sings, “The man said, ‘Why you think you here?’/I said, ‘I got no idea’/I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose my baby/So I always keep a bottle near/He said, ‘I just think you’re depressed’/This me: ‘Yeah, baby, and the rest.’”

    In the accompanying “official video” for “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(,” Young is once again shown in a car with her blow-up doll the way she is in the “d£aler” visualizer. Only this time, she’s the one in the driver’s seat, no longer in the back while she lets the blow-up doll “drive.” This perhaps being a slight metaphor for gradually taking charge of her life.

    Then again, the driving visual is more than likely about Young’s desire to simply run away from her problems, playing into the chorus, “Can we ignore it, baby, even for just one day?/Don’t wanna talk about it, I just put on my face [a very drag queen-meets-twentieth century woman thing to say]/And if you love me like you say, you’ll let me escape.” Of course, that’s the “trick” of the proverbial test she’s giving: seeing if the person who says they love her actually won’t “let” her run away. Even though there’s always that element, in each of these songs, of her actually talking to herself (this notion underscored by Young screaming at the blow-up doll with her face on it in many of the “official videos”).

    Alas, Young’s faith in being “vulnerable” has only been further frayed by being “shut down in therapy, he said there’s people who need real help (I need you to need me, darling)/What a waste of my fucking money, I’ll just do it myself.” Here, too, the Allen influence shines through, with shades of “Everything’s Just Wonderful” when she resignedly chirps, “I wanna get a flat, I know I can’t afford it/It’s just the bureaucrats who won’t give me a mortgage/It’s very funny ‘cause I got your fucking money/And I’m never gonna get it just ‘cause of my bad credit/Oh well, I guess I mustn’t grumble/I suppose it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.”

    Allen stylings win out over Winehouse ones on “why do i feel better when i hurt you?” as well, with the title alone suggesting the influence of the former. In addition to once again alluding to the fact that maybe Young has just been talking to herself all along (beneath the guise of mainly ribbing an ex). For it’s easy to believe that all of her negative internal self-talk could lead her to the question, “Why do I feel better when I hurt you?/Always try to put you in the worst mood” (not unlike JADE singing to herself, “You’re just a glitch/Get out of my head, get out of my fuckin’ skin/You’re telling me lies, telling me how it is/Sick of you talking to me like I’m your bitch/When I’m that bitch” on “Glitch” from That’s Showbiz Baby).

     The themes of “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(”—a.k.a. the intense desire to ignore glaring issues and realities—also endure in “why do i feel better when i hurt you?” Particularly when Young declares that talking about a problem at hand is so much less pleasant/helpful than just ignoring it. So it is that she reminds of the value of ignoring, “There’s no other way around it/‘Cause I know, when we talk about it/It’s always the worst that we could do/Real love, no, we haven’t found it/Let’s not even talk about it/That’s nearly the worst thing we could do.” In the “official video” for it, Young appears in yet another different “scenario” with her blow-up doll, actually blowing it up from its deflated state (just as she does in the teaser for the album) while wearing a shirt that reads, “I Just Freaking Love Lows.” Because, if nothing else, at least they’re inspiring—allow for something akin to an “emotional breakthrough.” Sort of like the one Charli XCX has on Crash’s (the deluxe edition) “Sorry If I Hurt You” as she comes to terms with her own toxic/abusive behavior by announcing, “I’m sorry if I hurt you/I only make it worse.” As for Young, the lone person she might say that to on this record is herself. Even if only in a roundabout manner that hints at a path toward self-forgiveness, therefore self-love.

    This much is apparent on “Not Like That Anymore” offering the first true taste of the album’s motif (along with establishing what most of all the other “official videos” would look like), which is, in its way, all about “turning a corner” and re-setting herself on a less self-destructive path (something that many wish Winehouse had done before it was too late). Ergo, Young’s “seeing the silver lining” chorus, “And now I’m locked out, got nowhere to go/And my phone got stolen, and my balance is low/But if I look on the bright side/At least I’m not fucking myself anymore, not anymore.” This after referencing her resolve to get sober in the first verse, “I’m a dumb little addict, so I’ve been tryna quit the snowflake/I guess life sucks dick, but especially if you sniff it all away.” Such an attempt hardly being the mark of someone who would shruggingly demand, “who f**king cares?” This being the title of the penultimate track on the standard edition of the album (though an “exclusive version” of it concludes with “Blisters,” a track that finds Young bemoaning, “I’ve got the whole world right in my hands/So why does it slip through my fingers?/I just don’t understand why life keeps giving me blisters even in the best pair of shoes that I have”).  

    As the most musically “stripped down” track of I’m Only F**king Myself, it’s fitting that Young should be at her most lyrically frank (which really says something) on “who f**king cares?” Her candor manifest in such lyrics as, “Nowadays, it’s hard to feel alive/When the only way I want to live is to try and slowly die.” What’s more, in addition to having previously channeled lyrical elements of Billie Eilish and Selena Gomez, Young also dips into Olivia Rodrigo territory when she remarks, “In the meantime, I’ll cry to Radiohead, hoping my ex still cares, but/That’s unlikely, he’s probably having great sex/With that girl I knew was an idiot, the one with the bleach blonde hair.” It’s that “coup de grâce” mention of the girl’s blonde hair that especially exudes Olivia Rodrigo on “drivers license” when she (allegedly) shades Sabrina Carpenter with the verse, “You’re probably with that blonde girl/Who always made me doubt/She’s so much older than me/She’s everything I’m insecure about.”

    But, as usual, it’s always Winehouse who emerges as the “center of the mood board,” with Young once more singing in the “storytelling through dialogue” style of Winehouse when she adds, “And my doctor said, ‘You’ll get sick again, you can’t mix these meds with white lines.’” Yet another allusion to her hard-to-shake coke habit. At the same time, Allen’s influence continues to vie for attention in terms of Young’s frequent dissection of her insecurities as they relate to her body. Ergo, kicking the track off with, “Nowadays, I don’t really go outside/I don’t even like the way I look, let alone the way I feel behind.” This sentiment recalls Allen’s own body (and emotional) insecurities on “Everything’s Just Wonderful” when she laments, “I wanna be able to eat spaghetti Bolognese/And not feel bad about it for days and days and days/In the magazines, they talk about weight loss/If I buy those jeans, I can look like Kate Moss.”

    In the end, however, Young goes back to herself as her “favorite reference” (to quote Charli) with the concluding interlude, which, although spoken once again by someone else (this time, Tia Shek), recalls “Outro” on This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway. In this case, Young bills it as an “interlude” rather than an outro, titling it “ur an absolute c word” in reference to Shek (providing the other “bookend” of the record, as it were) being able to so effortlessly come up with something as brilliant as, “To feel is to be open/And not everyone is broken/But I know that the ones that I chose/Sit here with their hearts stolen/To feel is to be present, deep in adolescence/To be betrayed, losin’ trust by a certain age/And if you must you might feel a type of way/I love to feel, but I don’t wanna die/I’m lonely and I’m hurtin’ and sometimes I feel alive.” This being the first portion of Shek’s “interlude.”

    A “positive affirmation” of the kind of self-love motif Young was speaking on during “Outro” when she said, “This album is me discovering and trying to understand/Through my one and only true love that is music/That I can too be my one and only true love/That I can learn to heal alone/I can dance in the mirror and feel seen without being watched by someone/Especially not no ugly man or woman/That I can cry and feel every tear without needing a shoulder/And I haven’t got there yet but I will/And when I do this album will be for me.”

    As it stands, I’m Only F**king Myself is very much not only an album that’s instantly “for” Young, but also for anyone else who has struggled with that seemingly cornball concept of self-love and, as a result, had it affect the relationships they found themselves in or the addictions they ended up falling down the rabbit hole of. So it is that Young once again conveys and holds tight to this message she had already imparted by the conclusion of This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway. But, of course, it’s a message worth reiterating. Besides, it’s not like Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen are really “around” to do it anymore.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Miley Cyrus’ Something Beautiful Deluxe Likely Only Has Two Additional Songs On It Because One of Them Is Thirteen Minutes

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    Move over Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey, there’s a new pop star in town with a track that’s somehow even longer than “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” and “Venice Bitch.” And it’s none other than Miley Cyrus with “Lockdown.” Even more clout-laden still is the fact that David Byrne has joined her on the song, which clocks in at thirteen minutes and thirty-one seconds. This now bumps up the length of the original (a.k.a. non-deluxe) version of Something Beautiful from fifty-two minutes and five seconds to sixty-nine minutes and twenty-five seconds. That makes a seventeen-minute, twenty-second difference. In other words, approximately the length of what Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine went from (35:26) after becoming Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead (55:21). The latter featuring five new songs (because also counting the “extended” version of “intro [end of the world]” as six new songs feels inaccurate). Meaning that Miley achieved a “deluxe length” with just two tracks thanks to the robust duration of “Lockdown.”

    While some speculated that the track might be about the so-called lockdown that occurred during the pandemic (though it was hardly a “lockdown” in the U.S. compared to the more intense restrictions that other countries imposed), Cyrus’ lyrical motif is instead centered on the notion of a “secret” love. And, since “secrets” are a running theme of the two tracks that appear on the deluxe edition of Something Beautiful, it’s only right that she should mention that word again on “Lockdown,” singing, “I won’t lie, baby, you’re my secret/Oh, your love stays on lockdown.” A phrase not to be confused with what Kanye once said on 2008’s “Love Lockdown,” “So keep your love locked down/Your love locked down.” A.k.a. guard your heart and don’t open it to anyone. Cyrus, in contrast, is trying to keep her relationship both locked down and on lockdown—away from the prying eyes and opinions of others. So it is that she commences the song with the lyrics, “Oh, your love stays on lockdown/Can’t tell my friends, ‘cause they all talk now.” And what they’re likely to talk about is whether or not they “approve” of Cyrus’ romance.

    However, it doesn’t take David Byrne (who has been having quite a moment in terms of being embraced by female pop stars [/rockers, depending on who you ask] of a younger generation this year) long to weigh in on the matter from a supportive standpoint. A view that comes from a place of understanding for Cyrus’ situation—her desire to exist in a “love bubble,” as it were. Hence, “I don’t know if it’s day, I don’t know if it’s night/I don’t need to go out, I wanna stay inside/Come on over, love, and we’ll be lost and found/Come on over, love, and we can lock it down/Lock it down, down, down, down, down, down.” After Cyrus then delivers another round of the chorus, the song returns to its more experimental instrumental form. The one hinted at in the beginning, but that wasn’t quite “processed” by the listener due to how quickly Cyrus materialized with her vocals. But by the two-minute mark, the production comes into full focus.

    Amid the trippy horns and generally psychedelic aura (to that point, there is definitely something very Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz about “Lockdown”), Cyrus occasionally interjects with some minimal repetition of the same phrases. To create this transportive portion of the track—the part that takes up most of the thirteen minutes and thirty-one seconds—Cyrus clearly needed some co-production assistance. And she got it from Jonathan Rado, Maxx Morando (her still-current boyfriend), Max Taylor-Sheppard and Shawn Everett (with both Everett and Rado in particular working on most of the songs from Something Beautiful).

    The musical meandering of “Lockdown” changes tones and tinctures as the track goes on, eventually brought back to where it started around the ten-minute, forty-six-second mark, with Cyrus returning to the kind of vocal delivery that could actually be played on the radio (at least on an “indie” station) as she sings, “You bring out an animal feeling/Why’d you leave me waiting so long?/I’ve been drowning in your love beneath me/Drink my breath away ‘til it’s gone/Put me on your carousel, chandelier/Fairy tale, atmosphere/Marigold, fields of gold/Icon, centerfold/You’re the only one I chose/No one has to know, you know.” And so it is that Cyrus brings back the notion of “secrecy” into it, of keeping her “special relationship” away from anybody else to see, therefore judge (which is probably what would have made it a good song to play during Sex and the City’s “Secret Sex” episode, if only this single had existed at the time).

    Byrne then rejoins her to repeat his verse about not knowing if it’s day or night—this being a phrase that captures what it feels like to be caught in a kind of “sex haze” (a.k.a. honeymoon phase) with someone. Locked inside at all hours of the day because you’re still not sick of the other person (or the various orifices they have to offer). Of course, Byrne isn’t exactly referring to this, instead inviting his would-be lover over to join him in feeling lost together so they can, thus, be found (this echoing Addison Rae’s “Lost & Found” interlude on Addison, during which she repeats, “I lost myself and found myself again”).

    The length, “unwieldiness” and “incohesiveness” of the song all further point to what Cyrus suggested throughout interviews about Something Beautiful, which is that this might very well be her last attempt at bothering to write an album for the mainstream. Indeed, it’s clear she’s been gagging to go more full-tilt experimental for years (and yes, it all goes back to Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz). Even so, it’s also apparent that Cyrus continues to have a knack for creating “easily accessible” singles like “Secrets” (not to be confused with Madonna’s “Secret”), the first additional track on the deluxe version of Something Beautiful that helps listeners “ease in” more gently to the complexity of “Lockdown.”

    Or rather, “complexity” by the current standards of an “average” pop song (which scarcely clocks in at two minutes anymore). Luckily, Cyrus is still toeing the line between both “guises”: “experimental” and mainstream pop icon. Thereby making those who know and prefer her in the latter incarnation more amenable not just to her in the former incarnation, but also to the former genre itself.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Miley Cyrus Will Keep Your “Secrets” (So Long as She Can Do It in Haute Couture)

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    In a bid to remind people of what a still-underlooked masterpiece Something Beautiful is (in truth, among her best albums to date), Miley Cyrus has returned with a new single, “Secrets,” from the deluxe edition of the record. Perhaps unfortunately timing the release to coincide with the advent of Cardi B’s Am I the Drama? and Lola Young’s I’m Only F**king Myself, it’s possible that her new iteration of the album might get lost in the proverbial shuffle, but, hopefully, listeners will at least pay attention to the fact that “Secrets” exists, if not the fact that a deluxe album does. And that, more importantly, it’s Cyrus’ “peace offering” to her father, Billy Ray Cyrus (as in, the man that made her a nepo baby).

    That said, in captioning a clip of the video on her Instagram account, Cyrus was sure to say, “This song was written as a peace offering for someone I had lost for a time but always loved. In my experience, forgiveness and freedom are one and the same… This song is for my dad” (though, as alluded to, it’s as much for her as it is for him, because it means being free of the toxic emotions that come with resentment). Accordingly, the single, co-produced by Cyrus, Jonathan Rado, Shawn Everett and Michael Pollack, bears an extremely nostalgic sound—one that’s drenched in the vibe of 1980s-era Fleetwood Mac.

    So, naturally, why shouldn’t Cyrus have Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood accompany her on the track (though, noticeably missing is Stevie Nicks—even if she seems to have reconciled her differences with Buckingham earlier this year)? Indeed, it’s their contributions that help make the song sound more distinctive and unique despite lyrics that are frequently ripe with banalities that have already been well-played. Namely, Cyrus’ assurance, “Anywhere you go, you know I’ll follow/I’ll follow anywhere you go.”

    This, of course, smacks of Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him,” when she sings, “I will follow him/Follow him, wherever he may go.” Worse than that, it mimics The Calling’s only hit, “Wherever You Will Go,” when Alex Band promises, “I’ll go wherever you will go/Way up high or down low.” Regardless of Cyrus reemploying this cliché, she makes it all her own, especially with the haute couture-drenched visual that accompanies her earnest pledge. Fittingly dramatic in its presentation—while also embodying the aesthetic of one of Cyrus’ many high-fashion brand commercials/print ads of the moment (e.g., Gucci and Maison Margiela)—the newly “matured” singer roams an empty space while outfitted in an all-white getup (complete with the kind of headpiece Madonna was rocking at the 2021 VMAs afterparty), presumably Maison Margiela. And yes, she even has the audacity to insert a Katy Perry-coined phrase when she announces, “We’re chained to the rhythm.”

    But whatever baggage she was previously chained to when it came to her relationship with her father, Cyrus has decided to not only let it go, but to rebuild with this song. One that Billy Ray was so touched by that he even felt compelled to write of it on his Instagram account, “For my birthday, Miley gave me the gift of music and wrote me a song called ‘Secrets’ and got my favorite musicians Fleetwood Mac to play on it! I love you Mile.” And yes, it’s not lost on anyone that Cyrus has further layered the song’s weight and meaning by including these two heavy-hitting musicians from a previous generation. The intent being to “bridge the divide” by joining forces. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Lindsey or Mick were about to appear in the video with her.

    Instead, Cyrus carries the song all on her own in this regard, walking through an empty theater at the midpoint of the video in a perhaps even more dramatic ensemble, this one featuring a bejeweled black mask she wears while sitting down in one of the red fabric-upholstered seats. Slowly, she pulls the mask off, as though to symbolically mirror that she’s now decided to let down all her defenses when it comes to dealings with her father (would that Lana Del Rey could say the same about her mother). This echoing her surrender to vulnerability in the very first verse of the song (the verse that happens to contain the most original-sounding lyrics), “Secrets, I wanna keep your secrets/Like sunlight in the shadows/Like footsteps in the grass/I won’t ever break my promise/Like a songbird in the silence/Like stones against the glass.”

    This urging on Cyrus’ part for her father to fully grasp that he can trust her with things/information he might have previously been afraid to share (especially based on the reactions that Miley set a precedent with) is meant to be a sign of her growth. A show of newfound strength and resilience when it comes to handling family matters she previously couldn’t. In other words, the family matter pertaining her parents’ divorce in 2022. At the time, Cyrus heavily took sides with her mother, Tish, but, in the present, she’s learned to accept both parents’ choices and the individual lives they’re currently leading (with both having moved on to new partners).

    After lying down on the floor of the theater to sing, “Can I be your hero?/Call off all your forces/A white flag in the war” (an image and vocal timbre that recalls “End of the World,” itself a song written for her mother), Cyrus seems to purge something from within herself.

    So it is that she emerges from the theater bearing an aura that suggests she’s been “transformed,” with the marquee outside displaying the lyrics, “Anywhere You Go Know I’ll Follow” as though they’re a movie title. And, in the movie that’s been Cyrus’ life thus far, that little platitude hasn’t always been the case (except when it came to Liam Hemsworth—and we all saw how that turned out). If it is now, it’s only because Cyrus has gone through the emotional work to make it so. At least for select people in her orbit.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Romance and Yearning, Irish Style: Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Stay on Me” Video

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    While Sophie Ellis-Bextor might be a born and raised West London girl, her affinity for Ireland is evident in the video for her latest single, “Stay on Me,” from Perimenopop. Working once again with her fellow Sophie, Ms. Muller, the romantic vision for the narrative is immediately apparent in the first shot, which features Ellis-Bextor silhouetted against the sea in front of her as the black veil she’s wearing whips in the wind. Waves crashing before her, there’s an instant Wuthering Heights kind of feel to it (much to Emerald Fennell’s dismay). All self-torture and seemingly endless waiting.

    In the next scene, Ellis-Bextor, outfitted in a very “Victorian-chic” kind of way (complete with her updo of a braided hairstyle), is shown behind the counter of a pub that the viewer later learns is Mike Murt’s in Cahersiveen. Though, even before that, there were plenty of signs that the setting is in County Kerry. Case in point, Ellis-Bextor standing next to an “old-timey” vehicle while perched on Valentia Island Car Ferry. Not to mention later being perched atop the Kerry Cliffs, a key part of the scenery of the video’s location, of which she remarked on her Instagram account, “Obsessed with the beauty of this place.” That much comes across throughout “Stay on Me,” itself an extremely romantic and dreamy track (as are most on Perimenopop). This manifest in the overall theme of the lyrics, which sound, at times, Selena Gomez-y because she’s actually one of the co-writers (along with Julia Michaels, Caroline Ailin and Thomas Hull). And they’re lyrics that are in direct contrast to most pop songs by women in that they suggest an extreme confidence in her lover’s fidelity.

    Hence, Ellis-Bextor’s beatific delivery of the verse, “All his fine flirtation/Only lives for me/Such a sweet sensation/That I’m all he sees.” (And, who knows, it’s possible that Gomez was the one who thought of that verse when thinking of her relationship with Benny Blanco.) She then switches to addressing her lover directly in the chorus, “You can have your pick here in this room/Something in the way you move [yes, that feels like an overt nod to George Harrison]/Everyone’s got their eye/Got their eye on you/But I know there’s nothing they can do/‘Cause his eyes stay on me”—switching back to the third person for that last line. Thus, clearly setting herself apart as a POV-alternating queen.

    And, talking of alternating points of view, one of the ongoing through lines of the video is Ellis-Bextor acting as though she’s reading from a script to memorize her dialogue. Which is, of course, nothing more than the lyrics of the song. As for the elderly man occasionally shown in the passenger side (or is it the driver’s side, since this is England we’re talking about?) of the “automobile” (a befitting word for its aesthetic) parked on the Valentia Island Car Ferry, perhaps he’s meant to be the “director,” of sorts, of whatever made-up project she’s rehearsing for.

    The intensity with which she continues to “study her lines” continues in another scene involving a fresh location: some abandoned-looking mini chateau (or what the Irish would call a “manor”) that she retreats into to keep poring over her script, which Muller closes in on to reveal that, yes, in fact, it contains the lyrics to “Stay on Me,” marked up by Ellis-Bextor, who has now done a hair and wardrobe change for the sake of this simple scene that features her sitting on the staircase of the manor and scribbling fake notes onto her lyrics.

    In the next instance of Muller offering up a new location that the viewer hasn’t previously seen, Ellis-Bextor drives up the coast, still with the inexplicable elderly man in tow—something about this giving Madonna carting around an old lady in her car (one of which ends up being stolen) throughout the “What It Feels Like for a Girl” video. Stopping at one point to hang out on the abovementioned cliffs, Muller provides plenty of “romance and yearning, Irish style” via her lush visuals. Ones that, of course, aren’t difficult to create considering how photogenic this part of Ireland is.

    Of course, all these shots of “yearning” (/randomly memorizing lines in a manner that makes it look like she’s going to play the part of Eva Perón in a remake of Evita) belie the motif of the song, which is, as the bridge puts it, “They can try/But his eyes stay on me/Yes tonight, yes tonight and for life/His eyes stay on me.” So it is that the video almost suggests a touch of erotomania on Ellis-Bextor’s part, for this man she keeps sounding so sure of is nowhere to be found (unless one counts the three old codgers who stare at her while she’s sitting at Mike Murt’s).

    As the video draws to a close, Muller and Ellis-Bextor persist in capitalizing on the Irish setting with the inclusion of a pair of donkeys (see also: The Banshees of Inisherin) framed in the doorway of the manor, adding to the idyllic tincture of the visuals. This prompting Ellis-Bextor to remark on social media, “This is my 19th music video with Sophie Muller and we always have so much fun—I really trust her. It’s our first video involving donkeys though.” And, as Ellis-Bextor closes the door behind her to join said donkeys in the garden (or, to use a less romantic word, “yard”), one is left to imagine that maybe she will meet up with this “oh so steady” bloke of hers offscreen.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Allie X’s “Is Anybody Out There?” Captures the Loneliness and Insecurity of Solipsism Perfectly

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    Allie X herself remarked to fans (which she labels “X’s”) that, while they might not have been expecting a new era so soon after Girl With No Face (especially since she’s been known to take three and four year breaks in between albums), the new era of HIGGY, as she’s branded her next record, couldn’t be stopped or contained. And time will tell as to what HIGGY might be an acronym for, but, in the interim, her lead single from the record, “Is Anybody Out There?,” provides a glimpse inside the mind of “a woman in her clear cube”—this being one of the labels she’s given her new alter ego, used to describe herself in the captions of photos whilst appearing in a clear cube amidst such settings as a Jack in the Box parking lot and the woods. Divergent locations that reveal, perhaps, that no matter where you go, there you are—trapped inside your mind with your tortured thoughts.

    Because the cube, of course, is a metaphor for the isolation of being inside one’s own “vacuum-sealed” brain, as it were. The pain and agony of only knowing for certain that your mind is all that’s sure to exist, and not really being able to comprehend who another person is because you can never comprehend for sure what they’re thinking—or, hell, if they even have a mind (an ever more valid suspicion these days). Even those who might be closest to you, whether as a friend or creative collaborator. In the case of the latter, Allie X addresses the sorrow of losing the person who helped her co-write and co-produce the song, Bram Inscore, acknowledging his 2023 suicide via the lyrics, “Genius that I wrote this with said, ‘So long,’ took his life/If I stay too long here I don’t think that I’ll survive.” Indeed, this notion of not being able to survive in a world so cruel and cold that it makes everything about life even more dangerous than it is at a baseline level is a recurring motif in “Is Anybody Out There?” A guttural scream demanding to know if anyone else happens to notice how fucked up this all is, or has everybody gone totally comatose?

    Hence, Allie X’s aura of combined resignation and earnestness when she sings, “Gotta get ready for the rapture, stop my blasphemy/Is anybody out there?/Is anybody out there?/Is anybody listening ‘cause I’m not hearing anything/I think I might be in this world alone/Is anybody out there?/I don’t know.” Being a Los Angeles resident for over a decade now (she moved there in 2013 to pursue her music career), Allie X also has an even more innate sense of isolation/“living in a bubble” than the average person (read: a non-Angeleno). Not to mention a greater sensitivity to and understanding of the devastation wrought by the multiple wildfires that ravaged the city at the beginning of January.

    So it is that she honors her adopted city (and the adopted city of so many others) when she says, “Santa Ana winds, they came, they scorned us and we burned/Now the insurance brokers got morose and taciturn’d.” Her poetic turn of phrase is in keeping with her “Victorian garb,” as she described it in one of her promos for the single (a mock tabloid about a “strangeling” who “rock[ed] ladies of the country club”—a Del Rey-ian kind of sentiment). Further intensified by a hairstyle befitting a very kooky queen. In fact, it’s not totally unlike the “coiffure” of what Helena Bonham Carter’s Queen of Hearts (a.k.a. the Red Queen) sported in Alice in Wonderland. Just much higher and more divided into two distinct “pieces” on each side.

    Referring to herself as the “Infant Marie” throughout these visuals that show her encased in a glass cube, Allie X provides comfort to those who have grown more fearful in recent times of what it means to keep enduring. The irony of present-day survival being that, if you do keep staying here too long, you won’t survive. Certainly not with the newly-minted emotional and physical rigors of the twenty-first century.

    And so, once more speaking to the increasing perils of living under various governments that treat humans as non-sentient (though maybe that’s only fair considering that humans treat every other living thing like they’re non-sentient), Allie X mentions another highly specific incident (and one that would have also been a big deal in L.A.): “A million Yogi tea bags got recalled for pesticide/If I stay too long here, I don’t think that I’ll survive.” These horrified reflections are complemented by the subtle psychedelic sound of the track, further amplified by The Beatles-esque tone of it (think: sonic elements of “Dear Prudence”).

    As for the accompanying visualizer, directed by Cal McIntyre (because “visualizers” are basically music videos now), Allie X of course appears in what is now her “signature” clear box, situated in what looks like a recording studio. Pacing the confines with a conductor’s baton in hand, her earnestness and desperation are most apparent in the delivery of her final answer to the question posed in the song. And that answer is: “I don’t know” (Lelaina Pierce of Reality Bites is familiar with realizing that, too).

    Alien undertones of the song aside, there’s also, of course, the fact that Pink Floyd once posed an “inverse” sort of question on “Comfortably Numb”: Hello? (hello, hello, hello)/Is there anybody in there?/Just nod if you can hear me/Is there anyone home?” Which perhaps just goes to show that, for quite some time now, humans have been wondering not just if there’s “anybody” out there, but if there’s anybody with a shred of humanity still left out there.

    Perhaps this being the concern that bridges the endless divide caused by solipsism. For it’s the one thing that many can presently seem to agree on. Because, when taken to mean “the belief that only your own experiences and existence can be known,” Allie X reminds that many of us do know one common experience: loneliness. Feeling as though no one can ever truly understand us, or the pain we’re going through. And “Is Anybody Out There?” absolutely cuts to the core of that feeling on a visceral level.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lily Dabblin’: On Allen’s Departure from Miss Me?

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    Ever since Lily Allen “unofficially” stopped making music on a consistent basis in 2014, with the release of her third album, Sheezus (a title that now forever associates her with the ilk that once thought Kanye was god), she’s most definitely become what can be described as a dabbler. Not to say that Allen had yet fully indicated a complete “step back” from music at that time. However, the fact that it took her another four years to release the next album, 2018’s No Shame, began to infer a certain “lapse.” Or lack of interest. Not just in music, but in the industry surrounding it, especially as Allen began to realize how crushingly lonely it could be (particularly while on tour).

    As for the name of that album she now released seven years ago, No Shame, it appears to be a title that has taken on new meaning in the years to follow, in terms of indicating that, indeed, Allen has had no shame when it comes to doing whatever she wants. Career pursuit-wise. And the one thing she seemed not to want to do anymore was music. Not just because, as she’s mentioned on Miss Me?, she feels that No Shame didn’t get the kind of attention and success it deserved when it was released (though it did get nominated for a Mercury Prize). But also because of her conscious decision to recoil from the rigors of pop star life (particularly touring) for the sake of raising her two daughters, Ethel and Marnie. The children from her first marriage to Sam Cooper, a “normal” (a.k.a. a builder and decorator) who served as the primary inspiration for Allen’s No Shame. In addition to serving as “material” in her autobiography, My Thoughts Exactly, which would come out later that year. To be sure, 2018 was the last truly “big” year for Allen in terms of “output” on the tangible release front.

    Though, when it came to participating in theater and other acting endeavors (e.g., a short-lived TV series called Dreamland), Allen became rather prolific starting in 2021, when she took on her first West End play, 2:22: A Ghost Story. Then would come her mostly panned performance in a revival of Martin McDonagh’s 2003 play, The Pillowman, followed by this year’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, renamed to just Hedda and once again directed by Matthew Dunster (who also directed Allen in The Pillowman). Going even more “esoteric,” the play was put on for an extremely limited run in Bath—so yes, it was a peak example of Allen aiming to attract only the nichest of the niche in her already niche audience. Which is becoming even more so by all this dabbling (complete with her OnlyFans feet account).

    In order to “focus” on getting ready for Hedda (in other words, memorizing her lines), Allen took what can best be categorized as her umpteenth break from Miss Me?, the podcast she had started with her long-time friend, Miquita Oliver, in early 2024. In point of fact, it’s usually been Oliver that’s carried the show on her back every time Allen decided she needed to dip out. Something that didn’t only happen when she went through a bad breakup/divorce with David Harbour (a marriage itself that was a bit of a “dabble” for her), but also when she felt obliged to tap out for various trips. All the while, the only times Oliver “checked out” was when she had surgery for her fibroids and a couple of times for some trips of her own. This lopsidedness in devotion throughout Miss Me? seemed to signal some inevitable form of doom (at least for Oliver). And, in truth, it’s a wonder Allen endured as long as she did (at a whopping year and a half) without “bowing out” sooner. After all, despite the general success of the podcast, Allen faced a backlash after many of the episodes, whether it was her take on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, her (lack of) will to keep a misbehaving rescue puppy or, more recently, her comments on not being able to recall how many abortions she’s had. Save for the puppy backlash, most of her podcast regaling was taken out of context and overblown. As is the way of the media (especially the British media).

    But, of course, nothing Oliver said ever made headlines. A further testament to their discrepancy in fame levels. Which is also why something about Allen’s seemingly abrupt decision to bounce feels all the more reckless in terms of leaving Oliver in the lurch as she scrambles to take the helm of the show herself. Not that she hasn’t been doing this for the most part already, having invited such guests as Jordan Stephens and Zawe Ashton on during Allen’s noticeably numerous absences. However, the BBC must have some faith in her (perhaps after monitoring the ratings she pulled in after Allen’s “tap outs”) to even consider letting her continue to do Miss Me? when the entire show was founded on the concept of them, specifically, “chatting shit.” In effect, the entire premise is centered on their friendship/rapport.

    And, yes, because they’re such good friends, Oliver was nothing but supportive when Allen publicly made the announcement on the September 11th (how fitting) episode, “Exodus.” The first show in many weeks since the two had been reunited, between Allen’s Hedda gig and Oliver going on a little vacay (no doubt, in part, to process losing her partner in crime on the podcast). And so, to come at the audience with that for their reunion was a bit…much.

    As for Allen’s explanation, it was sort of the usual. In a nutshell/to paraphrase: “I just need time to focus on other things.” Further adding/emphasizing that the podcast actually is quite a lot of work. Chiefly, the time and effort to record and edit it, not to mention its frequency (twice a week)—no radio pun intended. As for the “other things” she might be referring to, naturally, the remaining devotees of Allen’s music career were quick to speculate that her newfound commitment to finishing an album (one she’s talked about [on the podcast] being in the vague process of making) has at last taken top priority after so many years of dabbling in everything else. Having her hands in a lot of different pies (and not just the ones she’s been making at home), as it were.

    While this may or may not be the case, there are those who are clearly gunning for a “breakup album” (that at last confirms what really went down with Harbour). Though they’ll certainly take whatever they can get from Allen at this point. Even an Alright, Still re-release/anniversary tour in ‘26 (this, too, being something Oliver has encouraged her to do on Miss Me?). Just as long as she’s done dabbling in other things for a while (including her input into the creation of a line of vibrators). Because, honestly, what except going back to music, could be worth casually jettisoning a podcast with your (alleged) best friend?

    As for the fact that both Allen and Oliver are Tauruses, well, let’s just say that only one of them fits the conventional stereotype about how consistent and reliable that sign is supposed to be.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Thursday Murder Club Adaptation is An Insult to the Intelligence of the Audience Its Geared Toward

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    There is an ever-burgeoning genre in the world of film and TV: that which can be ascribed to something like a “rest home caper.” From Book Club to Poms to Queen Bees to A Man on the Inside, the growing genre isn’t without its merit. However, apart from A Man on the Inside, there has yet to be a truly standout offering within this category in recent years. The Thursday Murder Club proves no exception to the rule. And, like most movies (whether Netflix or otherwise), it is adapted from a novel of the same name. Though one imagines the book’s author, Richard Osman, didn’t quite have this in mind when envisioning the translation of his work from the page to the screen (but then, he likely never suspected that Netflix and co. would come knocking on his door at all, so why not just take it as a blessing, no matter how the final product turned out?).

    Of course, to cushion the blow of the, shall we say, “wonky” execution, there is the cast: Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie. A veritable who’s who of British heavy hitters of “a certain generation.” But it’s Imrie who has the most experience with this genre, having previously appeared in Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (along with its sequel). Alas, her “experience” with this kind of material does little to spare it from being a hatchet job. Regardless of Steven Spielberg being a producer on the project via Amblin Entertainment. And yes, one imagines that it was Spielberg’s long-standing relationship with writer-director Chris Columbus that landed him the gig, replacing Ol Parker as director. Yet it is Parker who has more adjacent experience with the “rest home caper” genre, with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again all under his belt. No matter, apparently. The production went on with Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote taking over the screenwriting process and, in so doing, trimming away here and there at the book’s original structure, which often features diary entries from Joyce (Imrie), the retired nurse that Elizabeth (Mirren), Ron (Brosnan) and Ibrahim (Kingsley) invite into their club to help them with a particular “humdinger” of a case involving a woman named Angela Hughes, whose murder ultimately went unsolved in 1973—indeed, the Thursday Murder Club specializes only in cold cases.

    Cold cases that require a sharp mind to solve. So it is that, by bringing Joyce into their group, she quickly learns two things: 1) part of the reason she’s been enlisted is to replace Penny Gray, a former detective inspector recently transferred to hospice care and 2) because of Penny’s former profession, they have access to these types of files that would otherwise be confidential. In the book, Joyce acknowledges these two points as follows: “I suppose there had been a vacancy, and I was the new Penny… Penny had been an inspector in the Kent Police for many years, and she would bring along the files of unsolved murder cases. She wasn’t really supposed to have the files, but who was to know? After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever takes your fancy.”

    To that point, when you get right down to it, that is what this genre is all about—reminding people that the elderly aren’t to be underestimated or written off. For to do so is often at one’s own peril. And yes, it’s also a “gentle” nudge for those audiences outside the demographic it’s aimed for to remember that they, too, will “be there” someday. Albeit probably not in a place as tony as Coopers Chase, which also happens to be one of the linchpins to solving this seemingly quagmiric mystery. One that all goes back to the murder of Hughes.

    However, it isn’t Penny who brought this cold case to the TMC’s attention, which should be the first red flag to viewers. Instead, it’s Elizabeth who fished it from the proverbial wreckage, curious at how a woman could have died from a stab wound in that particular part of her body so quickly—this stabbing done before being thrown out of a window. And thrown out of it just as Hughes’ boyfriend, Peter Mercer (Will Stevens), happened to be walking home from the pub, seeing a masked man run away from the scene of the crime. It is from this very moment, the outset of the movie, that the believability factor, combined with the acting delivery, is made apparent in its badness by how “la-di-da” this Peter character is about chasing after his girlfriend’s presumed aggressor, barely bothering to walk after him, let alone run as he shouts, just once, “Stop!” But, of course, after about another two hours of circuitous attempts at offering “red herrings” (in the spirit of Agatha Christie, which the book version of The Thursday Murder Club had intended), the viewer is at last shown, in an extremely dry iteration of how Mystery Incorporated (a.k.a. Scooby and the gang) unveils their findings, who the true killer is. And, in truth, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! actually does offer more sense (and entertainment) in terms of the final results of their cases.

    With The Thursday Murder Club, it’s obvious that the tone and wit of the book dissipated in the translation, making the way in which the case unfolds less of a “joy” and more of a grin-and-bear-it fest. And no, even the presence of some younger British heavy hitters, like David Tennant and, increasingly, Naomi Ackie, can’t do much to alleviate the core problem of the movie: it insults the intelligence of its intended audience with its hyper-saccharine nature. To be sure, Chris Columbus does tend to be responsible for making these types of movies (e.g., Gremlins and The Goonies). However, in the past, the final result has been far more, let’s say, “aware of itself” (see also: Mrs. Doubtfire, the obviously far better collaboration between Columbus and Brosnan).

    Whereas, with The Thursday Murder Club, it’s clear that Columbus feels there is an “elevated” aura to it…and surely, in part, because of the “Spielberg cachet.” What’s more, Spielberg, too, is well-known for being a champion of the saccharine. But, like Columbus, he has had much better luck in the past with carrying it off than he does here, where the mantra of everyone involved seems to be, “Just an entire vat of sugar makes the medicine go down” (even if you might almost immediately yak it up right after).

    That medicine, in this scenario, being the notion that—gasp!—the elderly can have a life after “a certain age.” Can still use their bodies and, even more importantly, their minds to great effect. Often to greater effect than those younger than they are. Just not when it comes to this particular adaptation of a book.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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