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Tag: Culled Culture

  • “Snow on the Beach,” Climate Change Child’s Play, Doesn’t Provide the Best Simile For Evoking the “Unusual” Phenomenon of Falling in Requited Love

    “Snow on the Beach,” Climate Change Child’s Play, Doesn’t Provide the Best Simile For Evoking the “Unusual” Phenomenon of Falling in Requited Love

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    Even when “Snow on the Beach” was “first” released on the first iteration of Taylor Swift’s Midnights, “all the way back” in October of 2022, it was already a stretch to liken something “weird” (i.e., falling in requited love with someone) to snow falling on the beach. Because if the past several years should have taught people—even those in a protective bubble like Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey—anything, it’s that formerly “absurd” weather phenomena are now to be the norm (along with arbitrarily unleashed novel viruses). Nay, they are the norm. And, although some wouldn’t expect it, it is, in fact, rising temperatures that can eventually result in extremely cold weather scenarios. More specifically, “Ice Age” weather scenarios.

    Take, for example, the “cold blob” of water that has come to roost in the area south of Greenland. Its origins are a result of melting glaciers—melting ever more rapidly as we keep ordering our useless shit from the internet. And yet, despite the scalding temperatures that are visiting Earth at present, the effect those temperatures have on “water blobs” like the one south of Greenland influence the flow of the Gulf Stream, which is responsible for “ferrying” warm water to the north. If that flow is compromised enough, the litany of consequences could include, but are not limited to, a steep drop in temperatures throughout Europe, rising sea levels on the East Coast and more ferocious, unpredictable hurricanes. And that’s just on the Atlantic side of things. The Pacific has its own barrage of ticking time bombs.

    The bottom line, of course, is that seeing snow on the beach would hardly be “surprising” or “unusual” in an Ice Age kind of setting. Or just a post-climate apocalypse one. A “setting” that Swift herself is arguably more responsible for than Del Rey, with the former being an avid private jet user and the latter being just a garden-variety lover of casual joy riding in her car (#justride). Nonetheless, they relish singing, in “angelic” voices on the newest edition of the song (featuring “More Lana”) from Midnights (The Til Dawn Edition), “Are we falling like snow at the beach/Weird but fuckin’ beautiful?” To be clear, it’s neither that weird nor is it especially “beautiful,” so much as utterly unsettling and chilling (no pun intended).

    Yet the eeriness of such a sight is taken as an opportunity for Swift and Del Rey to try their hand at some overly wistful and romantic Jane Austen shit. Austen, however, gets a pass for being so maudlin about falling in love because she lived in an era where climate change was nary a thought in one’s mind (despite the fact that she witnessed the height of the British Industrial Revolution). She could afford to be “chimerical.” Technically, so can Swift and Del Rey, who comprise the echelons of wealth that will be able to, in some form or other, shield themselves from the climate change fallout (perhaps with an actual fallout shelter).

    With Del Rey being given the opportunity on the new version of “Snow on the Beach” to sing a full verse, she croons, “This scene feels like what I once saw on a screen/I searched ‘aurora borealis green.’” This, too, brings up the fact that even the Northern Lights aren’t immune to the taint of climate change either. Like the stars in the sky dimming as a result of light pollution, aurora borealis will suffer from its own dimming—but, in this case, due to alterations in cloud formations that will inevitably obscure the brilliance of the lights. So yes, Del Rey will actually need to search on a screen for the kind of erstwhile “aurora borealis green” she’s looking for.

    Barring climate change as a reason for snow on the beach, there’s also the consideration of how many beaches already do offer up snowy tableaus regularly. For example, Kings Beach in Tahoe, Chatham Lighthouse Beach in Cape Cod, Unstad Beach on Norway’s Lofoten Islands (where you can see aurora borealis), Sopot Beach in Sopot, Poland and Loch Morlich Beach in the Scottish Highlands. Then you have the beach that made snow on the beach truly famous: the one in Montauk where a large portion of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes place. And perhaps Swift got her inspiration from this very movie, what with Joel and Clementine starting to fall back in love on the now snow-dappled beach they initially met on.

    And yet, snow is just as liable to become part of “the new normal” (that hideous phrase people like to use to “normalize” the long-forewarned effects of capitalism) in places perennially associated with “nothing but sunshine.” Case in point, one beach that wasn’t accustomed to getting snow until recent years is Torre Lapillo in Puglia. The unlikely snowfall that occurred there in 2017 dredged up a five-hundred-year-old prophecy from Matteo Tafuri that stated two days of snowfall in Salento would be part of heralding the apocalypse. The snow came again in 2019. So surely, we’re that much closer. If not to the kind of apocalypse that signals a bang so much as a whimper, then at least the kind that standardizes snow on the beach to a point where Tay and LDR’s simile becomes increasingly less meaningful.

    As for Wallace S. Broecker, the preeminent scientist who made the term “global warming” take off in the 70s (before Dick Cheney decided that sounded too “icky” and made “climate change” the phrase instead), he’s likely not hearing the song from beyond the grave with much glee. After all, he had urged the world, before his death in 2019, to take far more drastic measures to avoid the “many more surprises in the greenhouse” to come. Trying to make snow on the beach seem like something “abnormal” while we’re already living in a climate change scenario certainly isn’t going to help with that.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Battle For the Most Powerful Geriatric Seed: On Robert De Niro and Al Pacino’s Late-in-Life Fatherhoods

    Battle For the Most Powerful Geriatric Seed: On Robert De Niro and Al Pacino’s Late-in-Life Fatherhoods

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    Forget about Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s history of de facto acting rivalry because they happen to be two Italian Americans who often vie for the same types of (usually damaging to Italian culture) roles. The new unspoken “duel” between them is: Who Can Produce Children at the Oldest Age? Whether or not those children might have some overt genetic mutations is neither here nor there, apparently. And the answer to the question, at this moment, is Al Pacino, who has beaten out De Niro’s recent confirmation of becoming a father at the age of seventy-nine. For, while he might be the patriarch of what is now a whopping seven spawns, it still didn’t usurp Pacino’s news of expecting his fourth child at the age of eighty-three. Mind you, unlike De Niro, Pacino has been “clever” enough to never actually get married.

    And so, the baby mama he’s expecting his fourth with is twenty-nine-year-old Noor Alfallah, who will undeniably be left with the task of raising their child (when the nanny isn’t). Not just because Pacino is subject to be one of the reaper’s next victims sooner rather than later, but because, well, men of Pacino’s “era” simply aren’t wont to parent anyway. To them kids are like self-raising Chia pets. Maybe that’s why it seems so easy to have one this late in the game. And Pacino’s is due real soon, with news of the imminent “bundle of joy” announced eight months into Alfallah’s pregnancy. And maybe Pacino should consider “trapping” her (as opposed to the inverse cliché about how women do that to men) with a baby to be a coup. For it’s not as though she’s any stranger to dating high-profile elderly men. This included making Mick Jagger her boyfriend when she was twenty-two and he was seventy-four (circa 2017). Now twenty-nine, her fifty-four-year age difference from Pacino will undeniably reveal some markedly different parenting styles. As for De Niro, his baby mama is slightly more age-appropriate, reported to be somewhere in her forties. Of course, that still leaves a roughly thirty-plus year age difference. But that seems tame compared to what Pacino’s got going on with Alfallah. While someone of Chen’s age is prone to get the same commentary about being with a man in De Niro’s demographic that Enid Frick (Candace Bergen) gave Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) at the party in “Splat!,” Alfallah is more likely to be met with outright contempt from “normal” women and “feminist” women alike who view her as some kind of perverse opportunist in the style of Anna Nicole Smith.

    With regard to Enid’s speech about Carrie being in her “wading pool” for dating Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov) it bears repeating: “He’s my age, and you’ve got him. And I am in no-man’s-land, literally. No man anywhere. Men can date anyone, any age, but let’s be frank, most of them prefer the bimbos. So if you’re a successful fifty-something woman, there’s a very small pool. It’s very small. It’s a wading pool, really. So why are you swimming in my wading pool?” Chen might have had to go up against this type of venom from various Enids at various New York dinner parties before having De Niro’s baby, but now, she’s “legitimate,” “untouchable,” etc. No mere “flash in the pan” taking up space in the wading pool of available men for women over fifty. Alfallah, however, is playing a different game altogether. Not just the one that entails having an Electra complex (though there should be another name for a complex that finds women being more sexually attracted to their grandfather than their father), but also, to be blunt, fucking for clout. Talk about securing a nepo baby, after all. And yes, Alfallah also happens to be a producer in the making, with a movie called Billy Knight starring (who else) Pacino being her first major feature. So yeah, why not get a little bit permanently closer to a movie industry titan? Never mind the incredible risks to the health of their child.

    And yet, because our society still reiterates that age only matters for a woman—not just for her looks, but for her ability to “bear healthy children”—old fathers continue to get a pretty big pass for the selfish part they play in procreating at an age when it is very unsafe to do so. Especially actors who have the luxury of always putting their careers first. Barring the “less severe” effects Old Daddy sperm, like telomere (a compound structure at the end of a chromosome, and also a favorite topic of Lana Del Rey’s lately) length inheritance, there’s also an increased risk for both physical and mental health issues in children born to fathers over the age of forty. Never mind over the age of seventy à la De Niro and Pacino. According to a 2019 article in The New York Times, “…fathers older than 45 ha[ve] a 14 percent greater chance than fathers in their 20s and 30s of their babies being born prematurely and at low birth weight. The mothers too faced a 28 percent increased risk of gestational diabetes.” The article continued, “As the fathers’ ages rose, their babies were more likely to need help with breathing and require admission to the neonatal intensive care unit. The risks associated with older fathers go beyond those obvious at birth. An earlier review of studies published by Dr. Eisenberg and Dr. Simon L. Conti, clinical assistant professor of urology at Stanford, linked paternal aging to an increased risk of babies born with congenital diseases like dwarfism or developing psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and developmental ones like autism.”

    But maybe that’s a small price to pay for the hard-on a man gives himself from knowing he’s “still got it” well beyond the “healthy” age to procreate. Plus, men in the entertainment industry have never been too much taken to task for being “Late Daddies.” Richard Gere became a father at fifty and seventy; Cary Grant at sixty-two; Steve Martin at sixty-seven; David Letterman at fifty-six; Quentin Tarantino at fifty-seven and fifty-nine. The list wears on. And it’s one that points out a very glaring fact about men: they’re fucking selfish pricks with no business allowing their literal prick to reproduce so late. Not just because women are subjected to such “limiting” (read: natural order-abiding) standards, but because they’re so willing to dismiss the harm it causes to the children they bear. Nevertheless, our culture continues to normalize Old Daddies—especially if they are in positions of power. Take, for example, the plot point on the recently “deceased” series that is Succession. In season three, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the eighty-something (like Pacino) media magnate that anchors the show, is trying to have a “do-over” baby with his latest “young piece,” Kerry Castellabate (Zoë Winters). This being evidenced, according to his eldest son, Connor (Alan Ruck), by Kerry packing his smoothies with maca root. Known to improve fertility and increase sperm count in men. Because why shouldn’t Logan get a chance to potentially create an heir more suited to running Waystar Royco?

    Although the fan speculations about Logan eventually spawning out of spite toward his quartet of other good-for-nothing children didn’t pan out, in the end, the point was that it would have been an entirely plausible plot development. Just like the real life Old Daddy fatherhoods of Pacino and De Niro. And maybe we should all be asking ourselves why this still feels so “huh, that’s kinda gross, isn’t it?” as opposed to “that is fucking foul, selfish and all manner of problematic.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Rob Grant and Lana Del Rey Provide A Freudian Wet Dream in “Lost At Sea”

    Rob Grant and Lana Del Rey Provide A Freudian Wet Dream in “Lost At Sea”

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    When it comes to Lana Del Rey’s “Daddy,” for once it actually refers to her real father. You know, the man who “gave his seed” to create her. Literally as opposed to metaphorically. Though many are still of the belief that Rob Grant’s “web domain money” helped bankroll Lizzy Grant’s early musicianship attempts (along with her expensive education at Fordham) and “mold her” into what she would become circa 2012. But, per Del Rey on “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing,” “I know they think that it took thousands of people/To put me together again like an experiment/Some big men behind the scenes/Sewing Frankenstein black dreams into my songs/But they’re wrong.” In other words, Del Rey maintains her “persona” has always been entirely her own. And perhaps if anyone is trying to create one right now, it’s her, um, Daddy.

    More specifically, Rob Grant has, for whatever reason, decided it’s his time to shine musically. Leading one to believe that perhaps this was part of the Faustian pact Lana made with him to get him to give up the cash necessary to support her 00s dreams of being a singer. If that’s the case, she seems only too enthusiastic to pay up, offering her vocals to “Lost At Sea,” the first single from Grant’s debut album of the same name. But Grant seems anything but lost in his determination to “rebrand” himself for his septuagenarian era. This after already relishing former careers as a copywriter (for the well-known Grey Group), a “rustic” furniture hawker, a restaurant owner, a real estate daddy and a web domain investor. It was the latter career with which he made some surprisingly big bucks (and still is). And that “entrepreneurial spirit” seems to endure with his approach to stardom, as he told The Face, “I went out and registered the domain nepo​dad​dy​.com. And we’re going to come out with a whole line of merch that’s Nepo Daddy-branded… I’m all for Nepo Daddy. And I also registered nepomommy.com. You know, I’ll listen to what the kids are saying… in the comments on Instagram or Twitter. I just crack up. Another one is ​Robert Fucking Grant!, after Norman Fucking Rockwell! So I went and registered that name, too.” Clearly, the man knows how to develop careers.

    And his latest is, per his Twitter bio, “pianist/composer.” Del Rey is happy to help secure his transition by lending her vocals to not one, but two tracks on the album, including another called “Hollywood Bowl,” which serves as the finale. She was also on hand to give Daddy Grant (a.k.a. Papa Del Rey) some advice on how to pose for his first big magazine feature in The Face. But, based on “Lost At Sea,” it would seem Del Rey has spent most of her life taking her father’s advice (despite certain betrayals). As evidenced in the lyrics, “Once you told me/Look for the north star, then you’ll see/Heavenly, I hear/Found my way to the beach /And there were waves over me/I was lost at sea/Till you found me, till you found me/Ha-ha-ha-ha, happily/Happily, happily I was found lost at sea.” For Del Rey, being “found lost at sea” can allude to so many moments in her life, not least of which is being found lost in a sea of alcohol during her early teenage years—prompting the decision for her to be “sent away” to boarding school (yes, it’s all very Serena Van Der Woodsen).

    A decision, it appeared, that was mostly backed by Del Rey’s mother. And yes, both of Del Rey’s parents have proper, important-sounding names (from a white world perspective): Robert England Grant and Patricia Ann Hill. It was Patricia whose opinion served as the most clout-laden one in “transferring” young Lizzy to the Kent School in Connecticut (thanks to some help from Lana’s uncle in the admissions office). Patricia likely wanted Lizzy out of the way more eagerly than her husband as a result of Lizzy “acting out” toward teachers and skipping school. The school where Patricia also happened to be a teacher as well. And, if we’ve gleaned anything from Del Rey’s lyrics, it’s that Patricia was and is a woman very concerned with image. Hence, her choice to swiftly exile Del Rey to boarding school rather than trying to understand what was causing her daughter’s behavior or attempting to seek help for it with her still at home.

    With Patricia’s slight, Del Rey felt similarly slighted by her father who didn’t step in to protect her. Ergo, the lyrics on “Wildflower Wildfire” that go, “My father never stepped in when his wife would rage at me/So I ended up awkward but sweet.” Traces of her contention with Mother are peppered throughout her discography, including on the works that were “pre-Lana Del Rey,” namely “My Momma” (“Me and my momma, we don’t get along”) and “Raise Me Up (Mississippi South)” (“I can talk what I want, how I wanna/I don’t have to talk taste for you, mama”). Then there’s her references to the coldness she was met with as a youth on “Bare Feet On Linoleum” from Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. Del Rey recites, “Would standing in front of Mount Rushmore feel like the Great American homecoming I never had?/Would the magnitude of the scale of the sculptures take the place of the warm embrace I’ve never got?” One can feel that lack when she described how, even in the summer, when boarding school was no longer in session, she was still forced to stay away from home. The summer of her sixteenth birthday she was sent to live with a host family in Spain, recalling, “I wasn’t allowed to come home so I went straight to Spain, to Santander. I remember on the plane ride there they gave me a little cake that said ‘Sweet 16’ because I’d turned sixteen in the air. And I was like, ‘This is cool’ but it’s also like, ‘Am I ever, like, gonna go home?’” Alas, as Thomas Wolfe warned, “You can’t go home again.” Especially not when your mother is a bit frigid and doesn’t want to deal with your Lolita ass.

    The resentment that would brew within Del Rey over her mother’s callousness reached another crescendo in 2020, as she made mention of “rifts with blood mothers” on Mother’s Day and further announced, “I am the way I am because of the women along the way who have taught me everything I needed to know and loved me unconditionally. I’m also the way I am because of the women I have encountered in this life who have put conditions on their love and are steely in their nature.” Major shade. In the meantime, Del Rey had long ago made amends with Daddy Grant, who perhaps did funnel some dough into her career kickstart out of a sense of guilt for casting her out of the house due to the “peer pressure” of his wife. While Del Rey has clearly forgiven her father, she remains openly icy in any allusion made to her mother. For example, “I’m not friends with my mother, but I still love my dad” on “Black Bathing Suit” or “What the fuck’s wrong in your head to send me away never to come back?/Exotic places and people to take the place of being your child” on “Fingertips.”

    And so one can surmise that whatever “healing” transpired between Lana and Rob obviously hasn’t happened between her and Patricia. As for the Daddy issues Del Rey has suffered over the years, “Text Book” addresses it all pretty comprehensively in lines such as, “I guess you could call it textbook/I was lookin’ for the father I wanted back” and “Then there was the issue of her/I didn’t even like myself, or love the life I had.” This again coming across as a thinly veiled dig at her mom. In contrast, her father is characterized as warmer and more understanding, particularly when Del Rey sings, “And there you were with shining stars/Standin’ blue with open arms.” Of course, when Del Rey is potentially speaking to a romantic interest in this song, she could also just as easily be talking to her father. Because when it comes to Del Rey and Rob Grant, things are nothing if not Freudian.

    Del Rey’s closeness with her father has now only been further cemented via their shared passion for music, complete with filming a video for “Lost At Sea,” directed by none other than Chuck Grant. And where else could it be filmed but in the waters of Marina Del Rey? Wherein their shared passion for sailing (if the aesthetic for Norman Fucking Rockwell was any indication) is also showcased. A moment Grant characterized as “an extraordinary experience filming onboard a 55-foot ketch in the Pacific in extremely rough seas and high winds.” In short, the metaphorical embodiment of the rocky relationship he had with Lana in her youth. While on the boat, we see scenes of Grant doing “hot daddy” things like taking control of the wheel and tying knots with his big, strong arms. Effectively, being the protector steering Lana’s ship safely to harbor that she always wanted him to be back when it might have spared her from a fate like teenage exile.

    Grant additionally opts to include home movie footage featuring him and his children (Chuck and Charlie, in addition to Lana). Notably scant in that footage, of course, is Patricia. Surely not a coincidence. In any event, Grant stated, “The final video is very personal and interspersed with rare family footage of the Grant family growing up (including images that have never been seen before).” When that isn’t happening, Del Rey and Daddy Grant are giving faux-wistful smiles to the camera as though to indicate their relationship has transcended to a new level. One that hasn’t quite exonerated LDR from being accused of having something of an Electra complex. This also made evident in a line from “Text Book” where she asks, “Do you think if I go blonde, we could get our old love back?” For it was when she was still blonde as a little girl, as shown in Grant’s “From the Vault” home movies, that he hadn’t yet “turned against her” with her mother. Now, even as a brunette, it appears Del Rey has gotten that “old love” for her father back and then some.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • From “Really Don’t Like U” to “I Like U”: The Latest Tove Lo Song Is A Declaration of Love at First Sight

    From “Really Don’t Like U” to “I Like U”: The Latest Tove Lo Song Is A Declaration of Love at First Sight

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    It seems that, when it comes to expressing like versus dislike, Tove Lo has a much easier time conveying the latter emotion for women. That is, if her 2019 single with Kylie Minogue, “Really Don’t Like U” (from Sunshine Kitty) is anything to go by. With “I Like U,” a song that Tove Lo has been performing of late on her Dirt Femme Tour, her sentiments for a “special man” (her husband, one assumes) are instead warm and fuzzy. As Tove Lo puts it, “I’m telling the story of my thoughts the first time I saw the love of my life. They’re not clean but at least I never said any of them out loud.” Well, she is now—and she’s decided to do so in yet another 00s-inspired fashion after already paying homage to the decade with the song and Anna Himma-directed video, “2 Die 4.”

    The video for “I Like U” is more minimalistic (especially compared to the one she did before this for “Borderline,” the sequel to “No One Dies From Love”), but still has plenty of “gritty 00s” flavor…mainly because there’s absolutely no use of phones, and it’s difficult to imagine someone being in a karaoke bar in the present day without using one to film their “performance.” As for the sound of the song itself, Tove remarked, “I wanted to make another dance song that sonically felt like a nod to 90s and Y2K dance music.” With this in mind, the song builds slowly to its rhythmic house-y backing beat, courtesy of TimFromTheHouse, who Tove Lo called out as her co-writer/producer by noting, “…we worked on it for months in between tours to figure the perfect arrangement. It’s not the usual pop structure but it’s perfect for this song, I think.”

    And it really is, particularly as Tove sets the tone for her burning desire with the opening verse, “I’ma tell you the truth now/‘Cause I’m too high to lie/I wish I was your girlfriend/Is she with you tonight?/You say, ‘Sorry, I’m taken’/Walk away with a smile/I know I’m not mistaken/You’re the love of my life.” Similar to fellow Dirt Femme single “True Romance” in sentiment and timbre, Tove wants the rest of the world to melt away—including his current girlfriend—so that she can be with this person in blissful, sex-drenched peace. As the backbeat builds to its crescendo and Tove offers the simple admission, “La-la-like you, I la-la-la-like you/La-la-like you,” it sounds reminiscent of ATC singing, “Just la la la la la, it’s all around the world/La la la la la, la la la la la la la.” And yes, Tove is obviously a proponent of bringing back this exact form of early 00s Eurodance.

    Reteaming with Moni Haworth (who also directed Tove’s videos for “Sweettalk My Heart” and “Bikini Porn”) for the video, the Swedish songstress finds herself roaming through the halls of an empty Koreatown karaoke bar (L.A.’s Koreatown, to be clear). Namely, Pharaoh. Wearing a trippy eye mask that makes her look like an anime character come to life, Tove wanders the halls and dances seductively for no one in the elevator before finding herself in one of the karaoke rooms singing along to the lyrics of her own song. That she’s alone throughout the video feels like a pointed choice in terms of highlighting that this love is not necessarily immediately reciprocated. In fact, maybe it’s not reciprocated at all and this is actually all just coming from the perspective of an erotomaniac. A sign urging her to “Have a fabulous time!” seems to be taken to heart as she goes apeshit on the mic, does shots by herself, briefly slumps over in the booth, dances around manically and generally looks like she’s loosely recreating that first episode of The Twilight Zone, “Where Is Everybody?,” with a greater sense of chill than the character who started to lose his shit over the realization that no one was around (granted, there are signs of some errant Pharaoh employees at one moment in the video). He was totally alone.

    Perhaps Tove doesn’t really care about being alone because the only person she wants to be with is the one she can’t (yet) have. Ergo her later lyrics, “I run into you everywhere/But you push me away/Does it mean you’re still with her?/She convinced you to stay?” If she did, cue the lyrics to “Really Don’t Like U” during which Tove says to the “other woman,” “Thought I was done feeling sorry/Knew he’d be here with somebody/Why did it have to be you?/I know I’ve got no right to, I know I’ve got no right to/Really, I just don’t like you,” adding, “None of it is your fault/And when I hate on you, I’m breaking the code/But you got him, I don’t, I don’t/Hard to be fair to you when I got my heart broke.” And yet, in “I Like U,” Tove is coming from the vantage point of becoming the “other woman” herself, lying in wait for this love of hers to realize that she’s the one. Tove’s overt comedown-from-euphoria periods in the karaoke bar, however, indicate that maybe she’s not entirely sure things are going to work out just because she wants them to.

    Her longing is captured, at various moments, through the CCTV cameras of Pharaoh. Back in front of the screen that’s parading her lyrics, she sits in the booth and bounces around frenetically as though wanting to jump out of her skin while singing, “I cannot take it.” And it really seems like she can’t—she needs this person to be with her now. As she warns him, “You make it hard/I guess I respect that/Don’t take too long/I’ve been waitin’ all night.” And she clearly has, as we see her exit Pharaoh in the hours of dawn when the moon starts to fade out.

    Soon, she’s wandering the unruly hills of L.A., where she happens upon an ostensibly wild dog (a.k.a. her own, Peggy) who regards like she’s a bit loca (though is still kind enough to sit down next to her) while she concludes the song with the outro, “I don’t know, but/Sometimes, when you find love/The wrong thing is right/It might be hard/But worth the fight/Real love.” Lately, Taylor Swift seems to be in agreement…about Matty Healy.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Madonna Taps Into The Sentiments of Her Pre-Fame Drive on “Popular” With The Weeknd and Playboi Carti

    Madonna Taps Into The Sentiments of Her Pre-Fame Drive on “Popular” With The Weeknd and Playboi Carti

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    Like Madonna’s 2018 collaboration with Quavo and Cardi B on “Champagne Rosé,” “Popular” marks another unexpected trifecta in terms of musical partnerships for the Queen of Pop. And yet, as also indicated by “Champagne Rosé,” it’s clear Madonna wants to be more involved in the genre of music that tends to outshine pop in the present landscape. Because, save for Taylor Swift, it’s difficult for people to get “excited” about pop music anymore. Certainly not the way they once did when Madonna first rose to fame in the early 80s. Indeed, it’s easy to say that Madonna invented pop as we know it, itself a diminutive of popular. Which brings us back to the title of the song she’s featured on, along with Playboi Carti, by The Weeknd. As the second single from The Idol’s soundtrack, The Idol Vol. 1, it arrives just two days before the series’ official premiere on HBO. Those who have been following the drama of the series’ rollout are aware that it isn’t exactly “on-brand” with Madonna’s usual liberal-sanctioned philosophy vis-à-vis toxic masculinity. But the “brains” behind the show claim that parading toxic masculinity is the point. Or used to be before “it went from satire to the thing it was satirizing.”

    Unfortunately, speculation about the reshoots involved stem from how “the original version of the series…focused heavily on the ‘female perspective,’ which both The Weeknd and Levinson took issue with.” This was around the time writer-director Amy Seimetz bowed out of participating in The Idol when it was eighty percent finished. Who knows if that was before or after Madonna agreed to collaborate on a song for it (perhaps in part due to one of her go-to producers, Mike Dean, appearing on the show…in addition to co-producing “Popular” with Metro Boomin)? But either way, it’s clear that M might have been drawn to the story as a result of its own resonance with her pre-fame drive. And while, sure, everyone is making the automatic comparison between Lily-Rose Depp’s Jocelyn character and Britney Spears, the OG for fame hunger as a pop star will always be Madonna. As the now well-known lore goes, a nineteen-year-old college dropout Madonna moved to New York in 1977 with nothing more than thirty-five dollars in her pocket and a dream. She didn’t precisely know what shape the dream of being famous would take, but she knew it somehow involved “the arts.” Initially, she thought that meant being a dancer (not the topless kind, mind you), but soon realized that entailed blending in when all she wanted to do was stand out.

    Thus, her next foray into fame-seeking was being in a band…as the drummer. But it didn’t take her long to see that she was still in the background that way, too. She needed to be front and center. She needed to be a solo act. By 1982, she had betrayed many people along the way to get a record deal with Sire (Seymour Stein signed her while in a hospital bed, but Madonna couldn’t have cared less—she just wanted the contract, to make that Faustian pact, as it were). So if anyone can sing the lyrics to “Popular” (not to be confused with M.I.A.’s song of the same name) with conviction, it’s Lady M. After all, the chorus goes, “Beggin’ on her knees to be popular/That’s her dream, to be popular/Kill anyone to be popular/Sell her soul to be popular/Popular, just to be popular/Everybody scream ’cause she popular.” And everyone was screaming because Madonna was so popular by the time The Virgin Tour took hold of stages throughout the U.S. in 1985. In fact, no female artist until Madonna seemed to attract hordes that would scream so much. Before Madonna, such ardor was reserved solely for male bands and solo acts (see: Beatlemania). Hence, Madonna later reflecting on those “wannabes” as follows: “If I was a girl again, I would like to be like my fans, I would like to be like Madonna.”

    Britney certainly wanted to be like Madonna too, never hiding her love of Mother Pop Star as her career took off. It was in 2003 that the trio (a more logical trio than Madonna, The Weeknd and Playboi Carti) of M, Britney and Christina Aguilera took the MTV VMAs by storm when the Queen of Pop kissed both Princesses of Pop. But it was the beso with Britney that grabbed the most headlines, with splashy images of their kiss reprinted and replayed everywhere. Certain types might have likened it to some kind of “illuminati ritual,” while Madonna referred to it simply as symbolically “passing the baton” of pop stardom to a younger generation. And yet, Madonna would never “take a bow” regardless of such statements feigning that she’s “lost her influence” somehow. If anything, Madonna remains more relevant than ever in an era where the conversation about famous women aging while “refusing” to leave the spotlight has become, somehow, a hotbed issue. Enter the lyrics to the chorus that go, “She mainstream ’cause she popular/Never be free ’cause she popular.”

    But Madonna has never really wanted to be “free” from fame, despite recent posturings about family being her more valued focus. Because fame was always, whether she was fully aware of it or not, the only way she could fill the void where her mother’s love had been lost. Dead at the age of thirty, when Madonna was just five, the loss of Madonna Ciccone Sr. to breast cancer was one that the junior M would feel all her life. The type of black hole that would prompt a girl to seek out becoming the most beloved, famous woman in the world (until being beloved gave way to being constantly condemned). So when she opens “Popular” with the solemn lines, “I’ve seen the devil down Sunset/In every place, in every face,” she knows what she’s talking about.” Funnily enough, however, Madonna has never styled herself as much of a “Hollywood type.” Sure, like any famous person, she’s set up shop there via real estate (including her purchase of The Weeknd’s Hidden Hills property in 2021), but, by and large, she’s never really made it her home à la, say, Lana Del Rey.

    When she was first “initiated” into fame, she definitely spent more time drinking Hollywood’s Kool-Aid, complete with living in Malibu after marrying Sean Penn and taking a shine to L.A. life during her “movie star era” that consisted of dating Warren Beatty and being one of the leads in his 1990 comic adaptation, Dick Tracy. Yet Madonna seemed forever beholden to the opposite coast, constantly going back to it and eventually writing off Los Angeles as somewhere “for people who sleep.” Not to mention writing an entire song (called, what else, “Hollywood”) about the false seduction of the place formerly known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles. The Weeknd has expressed similar opinions in his music, including lyrics like, “This place is never what it seems…/Take me out of LA/This place will be the end of me.” This from a song entitled, appropriately, “Escape From LA.” Elsewhere on that After Hours track, The Weeknd also criticizes (despite insisting “I don’t criticize”), “LA girls all look the same/I can’t recognize/The same work done on their face.” On the same album, The Weeknd also declares on “Snowchild,” “Cali was the mission but now a nigga leaving” in relation to the epiphany that fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

    Madonna would explore that topic in detail on one of the first records of its kind, Ray of Light, particularly via the opening track, “Drowned World/Substitute For Love.” A song that began to bubble up after giving birth to her first child, Lourdes Leon, in 1996, at which time Madonna was suddenly in search of greater meaning in her life. Hence, turning to Kabbalah for spiritual comfort in her erstwhile material world. Eventually, Madonna would render Kabbalah into another trend as well, with many celebrities in the early 00s sporting the signature red string, from Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher to Angelina Jolie to none other than Britney Spears herself. This being one reason why Madonna chose to sardonically sport a “Cult Member” t-shirt while leaving the Kabbalah Center circa 2004 (L.A., to be sure, has just as many cult leaders doubling as members). For, after M and Brit performed together at the VMAs in ’03, the latter adopted the red string bracelet signifying her “Kabbalah commitment” as well, intended to ward off the “evil eye.” If that was the case, maybe Brit actually shouldn’t have taken it off so soon after declaring in 2006, “I no longer study Kabbalah. My baby is my religion.” Because it was 2007 when shit would really start to hit the fan for her. Indeed, that’s the period of Brit’s life that The Idol appears to be “inspired by,” with The Weeknd obviously playing the Sam Lutfi figure.

    Spears and Lutfi met at a nightclub at the end of 2007 and, fittingly, The Weeknd plays nightclub owner/“self-help guru” (a.k.a. cult leader) Tedros. Like Lutfi, Tedros seems to have a knack for “attaching himself to celebrities, often at vulnerable moments for them.” And no one was more vulnerable than late ’07 Britney (which is perhaps how Lutfi was allegedly able to feed her a steady cocktail of Risperdal and Seroquel). In this sense, Madonna stands out as a singular pop star for her strength and bulletproof nature, seemingly designed to endure media scrutiny and unremitting criticism without letting it get the better of her. As she says in her “Popular” verse, “I know that you see me, time’s gone by/Spend my whole life runnin’ from your flashin’ lights/Try to own it, but I’m alright/You can’t take my soul without a fuckin’ fight.”

    Madonna’s love of religious motifs in her lyrics continue with, “Put it in her veins, pray her soul to keep.” This fixation on praying and keeping one’s soul is also present on a song like 2015’s “Devil Pray,” during which Madonna sings, “But if you wanna save your soul/Then we should travel all together/And make the devil pray” and “Ooh, save my soul/Devil’s here to fool ya.” Devil imagery has also come up in Madonna’s recitation of the Book of Revelation on 1990’s “The Beast Within,” as well as 2008’s “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You.” Her frequent lyrical ruminations on a battle between good and evil is clearly culled not just from her Catholic upbringing, but her extensive time spent in a world where carnal temptations are the name of the game. And not everyone is able to resist (on a pertinent note, Madonna has always been well-known for her abstinence…from drugs).

    At varying points in the trailer for The Idol, Tedros says things to Jocelyn like, “You’re the American dream. Rags to riches. Trailers to mansions” and “You’re not a human being. You’re a star.” Both of these sentiments more overtly apply to Spears (though Madonna didn’t exactly grow up in “baller” circumstances either) as she’s been turned into tabloid fodder in a manner that Madonna wasn’t—not to the same extent, anyway—in her early career. For she came up at a time when TMZ-level shaming had not yet become a phenomenon. Thus, back in late November of 2021, Spears wrote on her always cryptic Instagram, “I just shot a movie titled “THE IDOL”… it’s guaranteed to have hits and a lot [of] bright pics to put in my beautiful family’s faces!!!!!”

    Months later, Spears appeared in a photo with Levinson and The Weeknd. It hardly seemed a coincidence. Nor does it that Madonna is involved in the soundtrack. For not only can she speak to the kind of fiendishness for fame that “Popular” dissects, but she also witnessed Spears breaking down and breaking free (showing up to her wedding as an honored guest to support that revelation) in real time. So from whatever angle one looks at it, no one has a better view on this subject matter than Madonna. Thus, even if the show isn’t “brilliant,” at least Madonna “joining the cast” on “Popular” is.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Taylor/Ice Spice Collab: They Both Have Their Motives For Doing It

    The Taylor/Ice Spice Collab: They Both Have Their Motives For Doing It

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    As the Taylor Swift/Ice Spice collaboration continues to gain momentum (thanks in part to other Black women like Keke Palmer sanctioning it), the fact remains that, as many have speculated, Swift’s “calculated” maneuver to use her in the song is rife with impure motives. For yes, far beyond Taylor insisting that Ice Spice is “THE ONE to watch” (because we needed a blanca to tell us that, apparently), she also wants to ensure that her rebound piece, Matty Healy, is protected from the fallout of his comments on a podcast called The Adam Friedland Show back in February. Comments he didn’t really seem all that remorseful for making after “apologizing” to Ice Spice at a show in New Zealand in March by announcing to the crowd, “I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m a dick. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.” So basically, yeah, he said he was sorry for overt damage control purposes. But maybe nothing could top the kind of image damage control that is entailed by “canoodling” with America’s sweetheart. She being the one whose reputation will suffer in the end.

    Or perhaps it’s just the sort of “image change” Swift is desperately seeking for a new era. That word, of course, being associated with Swift’s The Eras Tour now (even though Madonna is the only one who has a right to call a tour that). Therefore, Healy taking up use of the word feels pointed as well, telling an Adelaide audience in April, “The era of me being a fucking arsehole is coming to an end. I’ve had enough.” More accurately, he realizes everyone else has had enough and likely comprehends that being an “areshole” doesn’t compute with Taylor’s “brand.” So this sudden attempt at an “image tone-down” could very well be a bid to work his way toward going full-tilt “official” with Swift…as opposed to just being spotted with her everywhere.

    Accordingly, it also seems no coincidence that a profile, of sorts, in The New Yorker entitled “Who Is Matty Healy?” should come out and deliberately avoid answering that very question, sidestepping as much as possible from his more controversial moments of late in favor of positioning him as some kind of intentional performance artist. Complete with the increasingly chic sentiment Healy was cited as declaring: “We used to expect our artists to be cigarette-smoking bohemian outsiders, and now we expect them to be liberal academics.” No one is really expecting either from Healy, who seems to see himself as something he’s not: some kind of “avant-garde artist,” a 60s (or 70s, of course)-esque enfant terrible. Minus the part where he might be willing to stray from his adamant heterosexuality.

    Azealia Banks, bless her merciless heart, was happy to disabuse Healy of any such self-aggrandizement via an Instagram story posted on May 30th (fittingly, the day after The New Yorker released the “Who Is Matty Healy?” article). So it was that she asked, “Does Matt Healy know that no one thinks The 1975 makes good music and that he’s a lame poser with a trash cliche band name that actually means nothing? He’s clearly so pressed that a black girl who knows nothing about him or his music is making more moves and more money than him.” This could very well be a reference to how Healy tried to DM Ice Spice and she didn’t respond (per Healy’s claim on that now illustrious podcast). Making Swift’s current collab with Ice Spice all the more awkward if Healy was trying to make Ice Spice part of one of his debasing Ghetto Gaggers sexual fantasies. Banks wasn’t about to stop there though, adding, “Does he know that black women are more coveted in the industry because there’s BIG BUSINESS in female rap? You’re not a star, nor are you good at whatever this crappy ass mid-2000s indie pitchfork darling fantasy you’re trying to sell. Ice Spice has MILES more originality than you will ever.” That’s something Swift ostensibly agrees on, even if she would never concede to the condemnation of her current favorite British peen (she told you she liked a “London Boy”—meaning any man from the UK).

    Banks delivered her coup de grâce by then addressing Swift directly and announcing, “He’s not on the level of powerful pussy u worked HELLA hard to build. Ugh this dude is a full incel. You cannot be letting him climb the rich white coochie mountain, sis.” But oh, she definitely is. And many will likely look back on this era as Swift’s version of falling prey to a K-Fed. Though at least Healy is more than just a backup dancer. Except that might actually be preferable, for Banks didn’t lie about how nominal The 1975’s music is (to put it in perspective, there’s a chance Maroon 5’s “stylings” have more personality). Particularly when pitted against the colossal discography of Swift, matched only by her larger-than-life persona. At the same time, Swift really has no persona at all. She’s arguably the blandest person to ever reach such a level of fame. To quote one Twitter user, “Taylor Swift is literally immune from slaying. Living proof that you can be the number one recording artist of all time and never once serve.” And it’s true. Everything she’s parading onstage right now is, indeed, tired drag. The sequined leotards with fishnets and knee-high boots (Madonna/pretty much every pop star ever), the ethereal, flowing dresses fit for a waif (Florence + the Machine), the floor-length ball gown (Cinderella)—none of it is a serve, but most especially because none of it is groundbreaking.

    In that sense, Swift is something of a match for Healy. And when considering her oatmeal personality, is it any wonder that so much of the identity she’s carved out for herself is tied to men/serial dating—à la Julia Roberts as Maggie Carpenter in Runaway Bride. In tending to also gravitate toward men who are sleazy enough to stand out (see also: John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhaal and Calvin Harris, to name a few), Swift literally cultivates the source material required to write some of the best-known pop songs in music history.

    And yet, surprisingly, “Karma,” her fourth single from Midnights, isn’t about an ex-love (or “lover,” if you can stomach saying that word), so much as a sworn enemy (or at least that’s how it comes across). Namely, Scooter Braun. A.k.a. the man responsible for snatching Taylor’s masters away from her for good after buying her original record label, Big Machine. Perhaps Ice Spice, then, actually is the perfect person to collaborate with her on this track, for she may have learned from Swift’s mistakes (or so Swift’s ego would like to believe) by agreeing to sign with Capitol Records under the condition that she would own her masters and publishing rights. Which is more than Swift could say at the beginning of her career. Despite the coup, it’s probable that someone like Sky Ferreira wouldn’t support the decision to sign with said label. But Ice Spice is not yet in her “activist era,” and she just wants to collect more money for that bag of hers (hence, joining Swift onstage to perform “Karma” at her East Rutherford show). After all, this is the person who told Billboard that she would Google “how to be rich” as a child.

    While she might have seen such professions as doctor or lawyer listed, everyone knows fame is a tried-and-true (and far more glamorous) method for becoming obscenely wealthy. And what better way to reach a new tier of fame than appearing on a track with Swift? Indeed, present (folk)lore claims that Ice Spice was originally the one to reach out to Swift about a musical alliance. Swift was conveniently “too busy” until the Healy backlash started to brew. As for Ice Spice, it appears to be of no consequence to her that her feature on the single completely washes her out, or that the music video has nothing whatsoever to do with Ice Spice’s “vibe.” Or even really much to do with karma, for that matter. Unless one counts the allusions to Reputation (ergo, the artist formerly known as Kanye West) and an opening shot of Swift (who also directed) dressed as gold-tone Justice herself. More specifically, Nemesis—the Greek goddess of revenge. A dish, we’re often reminded, best served cold. Especially when one “lets” karma do the work for them—this being what Swift would like to believe is happening from her beneficent perch on high.

    For Ice Spice’s part, she appears inside a clam shell (suggestive) to deliver her scant verse. One that, in fact, could be directly applied to Healy’s derogatory comments about her when she says, “Karma is a fire in your house (grrah)/And she ’boutta pop up unannounced (like)/And she never leavin’ you alone (damn)…/Got you wavin’ pretty white flags, feenin’ for that cash/Thinkin’ it’ll save ya, now you switchin’ up your behavior/It’s okay, baby, you ain’t gotta worry, karma never gets lazy/So, I keep my head up, my bread up, I won’t let up (never).” Nor will Swift…at least not when it comes to ensuring she’s the Queen of Being Well-Liked. Hence, her machination to get Ice Spice on Team Tay, ergo Team Matty. For it was only white devil dick that could prompt Taylor to finally give a feature to a Black woman on one of her songs. Where Ice Spice is concerned, well, she knows how to play the game—aware that being involved in the drama rather than off to the sidelines of it is far better for her. Financially, not karmically. ‘Cause she in ha profit-as-much-as-possible-while-you-can mood.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Eyes Don’t Have It: Succession’s Series Finale, “With Open Eyes,” Emphasizes That Hubris Makes You Blind

    The Eyes Don’t Have It: Succession’s Series Finale, “With Open Eyes,” Emphasizes That Hubris Makes You Blind

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    If Kendall (Jeremy Strong) hugging Roman (Kieran Culkin) toward the end of the series finale of Succession reminded viewers of anything, it’s that, when it comes to the Roys, love fucking hurts—and seems to cause far more pain than it’s worth. The last episode, “With Open Eyes,” offers an ominous title in and of itself without any backstory, but taking into account that it continues the Succession season finale tradition of using lines from John Berryman’s “Dream Song 29,” it adds yet another sinister layer. Berryman himself was haunted his whole life by his father’s suicide when the poet was just eleven. With Succession being, at its core, a show about daddy issues and what they can wreak, it seems appropriate to interweave this writer into final episode titles. And oh, what a final episode “With Open Eyes” is. And yes, it’s all about eyes in this narrative. Particularly how those with sight can be so blind (see also: King Lear).

    The emphasis on eyes begins the moment Shiv (Sarah Snook) arrives in Barbados at the urging of her mother, Caroline (Harriet Walter), to come and comfort Roman after the beating he took at the end of episode nine, “Church and State.” Naturally, Shiv is only really interested in taking the trip so she can lock down another vote and really secure the GoJo deal for Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), who has promised to make her the CEO once the merger and acquisition goes through.

    Alas, in the business realm, where misogyny reigns more supremely than anywhere else besides politics, it’s clear that Matsson actually doesn’t feel that comfortable with Shiv taking the front seat while he rides shotgun at best, and in the trunk at worst. A profile in some New Yorker-esque rag featuring a cartoon of Shiv as the puppet master pulling Matsson’s strings (even though the article is called “Is Lukas Matsson Taking Over the World?”) does little to assuage his wounded ego. After all, he’s already being forced to stand in the shadows for the sake of the deal going through with an anti-foreign business president taking the reins (or not…the finale leaves that open-ended as well). And it seems to dawn on him that it would be so much better to have someone (a man, of course) in charge that he could boss around with far more ease than he can Shiv, who easily lives up to her nickname by shiving Kendall in the back at the end of the episode. And just when it seemed like the trio was getting along so well, too. That is, back in the kitchen of Caroline’s “hellhole in paradise.” After Caroline remarked to Shiv about being unable to “tend to” Roman, “There’s something about eyes. They just kind of, ugh, revolt me.” Shiv clarifies, “Eyes? Like human eyes we all have?” “Yeah, I don’t like to think of all these blobs of jelly rolling around in your head. Just…face eggs.” To be sure, that is what they amount to when you can’t really see past the blinding nature of your own hubris.

    Something all four of the Roy children suffer from…because let’s not forget about Connor (Alan Ruck). Even if his appearance is minimal as usual, but nonetheless effective. Especially when, via a fresh home movie, he stands next to Logan (Brian Cox) and delivers a performance of “I’m a Little Teapot” “in the manner of Logan Roy.” The lyrics then, naturally, go, “I am a little teapot—fuck off! Short and stout—what did you fucking call me? Here’s my handle, here’s my fuckin’ spout. When I get steamed up, you can hear me shout—Frank Vernon is a moron, Karl Muller is a kraut!” But Karl (David Rasche) can still sing a good Scottish folk song as he regales the dinner table with his rendition of “Green Grow the Rashes, O.” The lyrical content of which hits too close to home for the Roy children as they listen to the words, “Green grow the rashes, O/The sweetest hours that e’er I spend/Are spent among the lasses, O/The war’ly race may riches chase/And riches still may fly them, O/And even though they catch ‘em fast/Their hearts can ne’er enjoy them, O.”

    What modicum of something resembling “hearts” the Roy children might have certainly don’t allow them to enjoy much, that’s for sure. Indeed, they all seem like masochists who actually relish torturing themselves, and reminding the other siblings of who they really are. For a brief moment in the episode, Shiv and Roman are compelled to make Kendall forget who he is at his core by obliging him in his long-standing, ceaseless desire to become Waystar Royco’s CEO. Upon Kendall informing Shiv that Matsson ousting her (per craftily-secured intel from Greg [Nicholas Braun]), the trio at last aligns to form a bloc that will stop the vote from going through. The only problem, as usual, is that none of them can agree on who should be CEO.

    With Kendall swimming out to a dock to let his siblings confer in the darkness of a Barbados beach, Shiv and Roman discuss whether or not they ought to finally just let Kendall have what he’s been dreaming of ever since this whole saga began. Roman asks, “Should we give it to him?” An annoyed Shiv says, “Yeah, we probably should.” Shiv pauses and then adds deviously. “Unless we kill him.” Although meant “in jest,” it’s ultimately exactly what Shiv decides to do by ousting her big bro at the last minute. And when she cuts him with that knife, he definitely bleeds, saying, “I feel like…if I don’t get to do this—I, I feel like, that’s it. I might, I might, uh, like I might die.” And there is that exact feeling as we watch him sink via the elevator back into the bowels of the cruel real world. Whether or not he tries to kill himself now, Kendall is already dead.

    Perhaps it’s all part of his karma for Andrew Dodds (Tom Morley), the waiter who ended up drowning at the end of season one as a result of Kendall’s insatiable search for drugs. When Kendall spots the waiter, just fired from Shiv’s wedding by Logan, he asks him for a “powder” connect. When Andrew tries to offer him some ketamine, which he does himself, Kendall insists he needs a “different vibe tonight”: coke. Thus, Kendall drives them through the darkened English countryside in search of Andrew’s connection. When he sees a deer in the road and swerves, Kendall crashes the car in the water, leaving a ket’d-out Andrew to die. In the present, when Shiv and Roman bring the murder up (which Kendall confessed to them in the season three finale, “All the Bells Say”), Kendall has lost all sense of guilt for the “incident,” immediately responding, “It did not happen. I wasn’t even there.” He then reiterates, “It did not happen!” Because when rich people say something didn’t happen, then it definitely didn’t. But this denial makes Shiv all the more disgusted by her brother, and therefore convinced they’re better off selling the company than letting him be the CEO. Blinded by her own jealousy, of course, she would rather watch the company burn in someone else’s hands than let Ken take his shot. And, talking once more of eyes and sight, when Roman reminds that, in terms of “bloodline,” Ken’s children aren’t “‘real’ real,” he escalates the eye jelly comment Caroline foreshadowed to the next level by pressing Roman’s eyeballs in (already having mushed Roman’s face into his shoulder in that previous scene of “aggressive love”).

    This gives Shiv her opportunity to go back into the meeting and cast her vote in favor of the GoJo deal despite being betrayed by Matsson. And despite the fact that the CEO position will go to, of all people, Tom fucking Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). The one person who should have been axed ages ago both personally and professionally, but managed to shapeshift his way to the top. Indeed, it’s his “mutability” that makes him so appealing to Matsson, whose opinion of this non-person is obviously cinched when Shiv describes him as “very plausible corporate matter” and “a highly interchangeable modular part.” In other words, exactly what Matsson is looking for in his own puppet. And, being that Tom sells himself by noting of his current position, “I’m cutting heads and harvesting eyeballs,” Matsson can tell he’s got the chops to give the chop to whoever he says, whenever he says. Of course, Tom’s mention of harvesting eyeballs is yet another nod to the notion of sight and vision—or rather, lack thereof—in this episode, and in Logan’s progeny.

    Kendall obviously had no foresight about Shiv’s sudden treachery, prompting him to continue to stand in disbelief in the office where the emotional and physical altercation transpired. Roman finally lays the truth out for him: “It’s fuck-all, man. It’s bits of glue and broken shows, fuckin’ phony news, fucking come on.” Unable to see that reality, Kendall keeps urging, “We have this, we can still do this.” Himself seeing clearly for the first time, Roman balks, “Oh my god, man, it’s nothing. Okay? It’s just nothing. It’s fucking nothing. Stop it!” Kendall, who has placed his entire identity into this role of “successor” cannot believe what Roman is saying, repeating “no” over and over again until Roman interjects, “Yeah. Hey, we are bullshit… You are bullshit. You’re fucking bullshit, man. I’m fucking bullshit. She’s bullshit. It’s all fucking nothing, man. I’m telling you this because I know it, okay? We’re nothing. Okay.”

    And so it is that Roman is the one to finally admit that what Logan said at the beginning of season four was accurate, even if harsh: “You’re such fucking dopes. You’re not serious figures. I love you, but…you are not…serious people.” Only ornaments and pawns in the life of Logan, the quintessential King Lear figure of this narrative. And yet, a Cordelia never seems to manifest in any of his children. It’s nothing but Regans and Gonerils where the obsession with “winning at inheritance” is concerned.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Whether It’s “Narcissistic” To Return To Music Or Not, Blur Justifies It With “The Narcissist”

    Whether It’s “Narcissistic” To Return To Music Or Not, Blur Justifies It With “The Narcissist”

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    Every time Blur has devotees convinced that they couldn’t possibly return with a new album again, the band rises from the so-called dead to bring us something both quite surprising and yet still totally on-brand (perhaps a polite euphemism for more of the same, but different). It would seem their ninth studio album, The Ballad of Darren, is going to deliver just that if the first single, “The Narcissist,” is any indication. And yes, the release of 2015’s The Magic Whip felt like something of a one-off. Almost as though to make up for 2003’s Think Tank being recorded without guitarist Graham Coxon. In fact, Coxon abandoned the recording sessions early on in 2002, stating glibly, “[The band] just recognized the feeling that we needed some time apart.” More like Coxon recognized it as a result of suddenly not “vibing” with the band anymore. After all, he had been in rehab during the initial November 2001 recording sessions, and upon coming in for the ’02 ones, he apparently didn’t fit into the permutation anymore. After the rest of Blur somewhat priggishly reported that the sessions weren’t going as seamlessly with Coxon present, the bespectacled guitarist would later state, “I had a breakthrough, I think my life just became calmer, I gave up drinking. My priorities changed as I had a young daughter. The group didn’t want me to record for the Think Tank album, so I took it as a sign to leave.”

    Who knows what the subsequent sign to come back was for Coxon, but, to the delight of many fans, whatever it was prompted a full-fledged reunion when Blur announced they would play a show in Hyde Park on July 3, 2009—eventually called All The People: Blur Live at Hyde Park. With The Magic Whip six years later, the band would also “keep it classic” by going back to their longtime producer, Stephen Street, who was given the boot on Think Tank in favor of producers Ben Hillier, Norman Cook (a.k.a. Fatboy Slim) and William Orbit (with the latter also producing the majority of 13). This trifecta being what gave that album such a “non-cohesive” sound amid the rest of their discography (granted, James Ford replaces Street on The Ballad of Darren’s production, so perhaps it, too, will stand apart). And yet, with Coxon’s absence, it was arguably the only time Blur was ever “free” enough to experiment in that “Gorillaz sort of way” Damon Albarn is so fond of. For it is Coxon who always seems to bring the band back down to Earth, to its roots in shoegaze malaise.

    That’s the case, in many ways, with “The Narcissist.” And, as Albarn himself was content to remark, “I think also it has enough of the modern world in it to kind of be relatable to people younger as well.” For, what could be more relatable to “the kids” than narcissism? Not just because the word “narcissist” is so overused at this juncture (neck and neck with “gaslighting”), but because narcissism is simply the name of the game in this thing called post-social media existence. And yes, even Albarn’s newfound nemesis, Taylor Swift, found a way to use the word in one of her most recent hits, “Anti-Hero,” by singing, “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism/Like some kind of congressman?” Perhaps that’s what Blur is doing with their own “altruistic” decision to return to music. And yet, Albarn, who has been in the business for thirty-three years (counting it from the time Blur signed to Food Records), can admit, loosely, to his own penchant for narcissism, noting in an interview with Radio X, “I think the whole nature of being in a band… especially talking about yourself, having photographs taken… that’s all about yourself.” It sounds more eloquent when said aloud than it does in writing, but anyway, Albarn can cede to the fact that he is well-versed in succumbing to the type of narcissism that goes hand in hand with “The Fame Monster.”

    By the same token, Albarn added, “There are deep practitioners of narcissism within the entertainment world, but it also applies to people like Putin… It’s one of those… troubling aspects of modern life.” That is to say, how politics and narcissism have bred a very dangerous “lovechild” in the present (see also: Donald Trump). And yes, as Blur announced long ago, “Modern life is rubbish.” And that sentiment has only intensified in the decades since the band first openly declared what everyone else knew to be true. Little did they know then…how much more batshit it would get now. Particularly with regard to sociopathy and narcissism—both of which are spurred and fortified by screens. What would have been Narcissus’ modern-day mirror. With regard to that well-known, well-worn story, Albarn makes an overt reference to Echo’s role in it in the opening verse: “Looked in the mirror/So many people standing there/I walked towards them/Into the floodlights/I heard no echo.” Among the potential meanings of the first two lines is the idea that when we see ourselves in the mirror, there are so many versions of who we are hiding behind that reflected façade. The one so carefully curated for the sake of avoiding rejection or generally being “othered.” Of course, one could take it more literally and assume Albarn is having some kind of The Twilight Zone and/or funhouse mirror experience. In both scenarios, being transfixed by “the self” is at play. A “trend,” as it were, embodied by Narcissus.

    Unlike Narcissus, however, Albarn has the good sense to recognize his vanity (or so he says) by insisting, “I found my ego” (literally and probably Freud-wise, vis-à-vis the “reality principle”). Even going so far as to admit to the Echo of his life, “You were the Pierrot/I was the dark room.” Whether or not the “Echo” in his life is ultimately himself (how very narcissistic indeed) is left to one’s discretion as he sings in the chorus, “I’ll be shining light in your eyes/You’ll probably shine it back on me/But I won’t fall this time/With Godspeed I’ll heed the signs.” “The fall” Albarn refers to seems less about falling in love and more about falling into the trap of some unhealthy addiction. And yes, self-obsession is a drug. To boot, Albarn makes mention of more literal drugs as the song progresses, describing, “I took the acid [even though Kesha’s mom said not to]/Under the white horses [this meaning the chalk white horses long ago carved into English hillsides to celebrate the summer solstice, which Albarn also brings up]/My heart it quickened/I could not tear myself away/Became addiction/If you see darkness look away.” That darkness he alludes to further applies undeniably to the darkness in oneself, particularly when they have narcissistic tendencies (usually complete with an inability to experience empathy).

    Some would say—though certainly never of male musicians (only female ones like Madonna)—that it’s pure narcissism to keep making art into one’s “old age.” But if that’s the case, then maybe there’s room for four more narcissists in Blur if they can keep creating songs such as these.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Dua Lipa Gives Barbie Her “Bespoke” Song Via “Dance the Night”

    Dua Lipa Gives Barbie Her “Bespoke” Song Via “Dance the Night”

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    As the Summer of Barbie kicks into high gear, it’s only right that the film should be matched by an indelible soundtrack (perhaps not since Promising Young Woman has so much thought and care been put into a movie’s accompanying pop song landscape). Leading up that album is Dua Lipa (who also appears in the movie as “Mermaid Barbie”) with the single “Dance the Night,” a major improvement from her so-called summer anthem of 2022, “Potion.” Teaming with Caroline Ailin again (the pair previously co-wrote “New Rules,” “Don’t Start Now,” “Pretty Please” and “Fever” together), Lipa gets some production help from Mark Ronson (who scored the soundtrack and actually DM’d Lipa to get her involved with the project), Andrew Wyatt (also in charge of the score) and the Picard Brothers for a 70s-infused feel that matches the visuals of the video (both sartorially and set design-wise).

    Favoring a “filming the video within the video” structure (à la Britney Spears in “[You Drive Me] Crazy”—which was a soundtrack single as well), we open on Lipa being escorted into a sound stage and getting quickly bombarded with the frenetic energy of the set as she’s told there’s some new choreography she has to learn (again, how very Britney while making the video for “[You Drive Me] Crazy,” as she said at the mention of new dance moves to be incorporated, “I’ve just got so much choreography on my head right now”). Lipa is only too ready to oblige the request as she proceeds to start practicing the new moves—shots that are intercut before we see Lipa telling her choreographer, “God, I love that” before the giant disco ball set piece abruptly comes crashing to the ground (an unfortunate snafu that will come full-circle at the end when Barbie director Greta Gerwig makes a cameo). Thus, not an auspicious start. But, as Lipa says in “Dance the Night, “Don’t give a damn/When the night’s here I don’t do tears/Baby no chance I could dance, I could dance, I could dance/Watch me, dance/Dance the night away.” And that’s just what we’re about to watch her do—albeit in the daylight hours, and within the setting of a carefully-curated, hyper-manipulated “dance floor.”

    When we aren’t seeing her on the stair-filled stage, there are shots of her in her dressing room (this, instead, echoing Britney’s “Circus” video, complete with all the close-ups on perfume bottles). But the walls of that dressing room quickly come tumbling down—literally—as we’re then shown Lipa among a backdrop with nothing more than a bright klieg light behind her as she proceeds to dance in conjunction with backup dancers wielding clear plastic umbrellas before her perfume bottles seemingly come to life in the form of dancers dressed up as, well, perfume bottles. Elements of the “dressing room set” reappear in the form of multiple clothing racks packed to the gills with all manner of pink and gold sequined frocks as Lipa dances in the center while her dancers move them deftly in a circle around her.

    The outline of Mattel’s signature, many-pointed logo then transitions us into seeing a bevy of Lipas walk through a hall of bulb-lit mirrors (in fact, it reminds one of a similar scene in the Chemical Brothers’ “Let Forever Be” video). Except they’re not really mirrors, so much as glassless rectangular metal bars that are the perfect size for walking through. Lipa is then joined by other dancers dressed in the same metallic pink halter top and blue mini skirt before she ascends the staircase with the (newly-replaced) disco ball at the center.

    This is a world of make-believe, and we’re given that sense repeatedly as the fantastical set pieces keep coming (including two giant makeup palettes for the background behind the disco ball). In some respects, the stairs also channel the vibe of the set for “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (something Margot Robbie would also riff on as Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey). It’s around the one-minute, ten-second mark that scenes of the Barbie movie itself start to get interspersed. Specifically, parallel dancing moments of Barbie and co. as they party on a similar set. As Barbie states to Ken in the trailer of such an evening, “I don’t have anything big planned, just a giant blowout party with all the Barbies and planned choreography and a bespoke song.” One imagines that, when the time finally does arrive to see that scene in all its splendor, the “bespoke song” has to be none other than Lipa’s “Dance the Night” (and, if not, that might be a terrible mistake).

    As the video continues, Lipa takes a brief pause to watch her presumed director scream and extend her hands out to the disco ball she sees crashing to the ground, likely watching it happen in slow motion from her helpless vantage point. As everything around her (including the disco ball) seems to freeze, Lipa keeps dancing, adhering to the casually cold lyrics, “Watch me, dance/Dance the night away/My heart could be burning, but you won’t see it on my face/Watch me, dance/Dance the night away/I’ll still keep the party running, not one hair out of place/Lately I’ve been moving close to the edge/Still be looking my best/I stay on the beat/You can count on me/I ain’t missing no steps.” No, she certainly isn’t. For that’s what it is to be a “Barbie Girl” (a.k.a. a woman in general)—you’ve got to be perfect, unflappable and always “on,” no matter what’s really going on behind those seemingly dead eyes of yours.

    In many ways, that’s the purpose of this song: to remind that, beneath the glossy veneer many women exude for the sake of making others (read: men) feel good about themselves, there’s so much involved in appearing so “effortless.” And yes, Lipa embodies such effortlessness in sentiments like, “Baby you can Find me under the lights/Diamonds under my eyes/Turn the rhythm up/Don’t you wanna just come along for the ride?/Oh my outfit so tight.” The Britney influence is evident on this verse, too, for she expressed something tantamount on “Brave New Girl” when she sang, “He said, ‘Let’s get a room girl, come and ride with me’” and “She wants the good life, no need to rewind/She needs to really, really find what she wants/She lands on both feet, won’t take a back seat.” Indeed, one can’t help but think that Spears would have been an ideal choice to create a song for the Barbie Soundtrack, her own aesthetic and discography a long-standing homage to “Barbie World.” Alas, as the movie would suggest, such a “shiny, plastic” existence is so often betrayed by a sinister undercurrent—something Spears knows only too well.

    The final pièce de résistance in set pieces (apart from a huge Playboy-esque “boudoir” heel) comes in the form of a Barbie convertible that gets split in half as the camera “goes through it” before we see Lipa sitting in her own pink car (the same one Robbie sits in for a promotional still of the movie). We then cut to a scene of her strutting through the set with a slew of human disco balls behind her. The disco ball motif, in case you couldn’t tell by now, is very important. For, as Taylor Swift’s “mirrorball” made clear, this ostensible emblem of good times merely reflects back what everyone else wants to see. Images of Barbie are also conjured when Swift sings, “I’m a mirrorball/I can change everything about me to fit in…/The masquerade revelers/Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten.”

    Nonetheless, as Lipa puts it, “That’s the moment I shine/‘Cause every romance/Shakes and it bends/Don’t give a damn.” And how could any Barbie when she looks this good as the music keeps playing? Which is why one just hates to think of the unpleasant thoughts that might creep in if it ever stops.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • No Sleep (Til Every Last Dollar Is Extracted): Taylor Swift Releases Midnights: The Til Dawn Edition—Oh, and Midnights: The Late Night Edition

    No Sleep (Til Every Last Dollar Is Extracted): Taylor Swift Releases Midnights: The Til Dawn Edition—Oh, and Midnights: The Late Night Edition

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    For those who had gotten their rocks off on making various memes about Lana Del Rey’s barely detectable presence on what was supposed to be a “blockbuster” duet from Midnights called “Snow on the Beach,” the Til Dawn Edition of the album is sure to please. And yet, its addendum of three songs (one of which, “Hits Different,” was already released on an erstwhile “exclusive” Target version of the CD) hardly feels worth the fanfare of putting out yet another version of the record. Especially when Taylor Swift could have just released the new “Snow on the Beach” (featuring More Lana Del Rey) as a single. And yet, it seems the true purpose of unleashing another edition is for Swift to showcase her “cred” with a version of “Karma” featuring Ice Spice.

    Being that “rap clout” is among the most viable of ways for white girls to prove their worth outside the pop sphere, Swift has only ever engaged with one other such musician on a remix of her song: Kendrick Lamar on “Bad Blood” (a major coup that still can’t be believed). Del Rey herself is no stranger to engaging in the “trend,” having collaborated with A$AP Rocky and The Weeknd more than once. Hence, her ill-advised, apropos-of-nothing humblebrag, “My best friends are rappers, my boyfriends have been rappers” (who? G-Eazy?) in early 2021 after announcing the release of Chemtrails Over the Country Club (ultimately, Lana’s folklore). Fortunately for Swift, the masses seem far less inclined to decry her for anything other than her romantic choices (and yes, Matty Healy is disgusting on manifold levels). Because oh, how quickly everyone was to forget about her obscene carbon footprint.

    As for her barrage of re-releases in the name of good capitalist business (a.k.a. “ownership”), no one would ever besmirch that. Even if “Dear Reader” was the perfect way to end the truest version of Midnights, the 3am Edition. As for “Snow on the Beach,” Jack Antonoff—the producer neither pop chanteuse can get enough off—provides different production this time around (complete with more “divine”-sounding string arrangements) as Del Rey’s voice is “permitted” to have a higher-volumed presence. And yes, it’s still unclear why she wouldn’t do that in the first place, despite her claim to Billboard, “I had no idea I was the only feature [on that song]. Had I known, I would have sung the entire second verse like she wanted.”

    But really, how could she not have known? Isn’t that pertinent information that both Swift and Antonoff would have mentioned to her? Furthermore, she could have sang at a normal decibel to begin with and awaited feedback about whether it was “too loud” or not. Nonetheless, Del Rey insisted her “job as a feature on a big artist’s album is to make sure I help add to the production of the song, so I was more focused on the production. She was very adamant that she wanted me to be on the album, and I really liked that song.” Even if Del Rey’s vocals and “persona” would be much more at home on “Vigilante Shit.” Indeed, “Snow on the Beach” is arguably the most flaccid song on Midnights, apart from “Lavender Haze” and “Question…?”

    Regardless, per Taylor heeding her and Lana’s fans command, “You asked for it, we listened: Lana and I went back into the studio specifically to record more Lana on ‘Snow on the Beach.’ Love u Lana.” Thus, Del Rey is given a full verse formerly taken by Taylor—the one that goes, “This scene feels like what I once saw on a screen/I searched ‘aurora borealis green’/I’ve never seen someone lit from within/Blurring out my periphery.” The two then join in together to harmonize on the lines, “My smile is like I won a contest/And to hide that would be so dishonest/And it’s fine to fake it ’til you make it/‘Til you do, ’til it’s true.” Both women having plenty of experience with that in the early days of their career, only to reach their respective zeniths in the present.

    For added flair, Del Rey layers on her own dreamy mmm-mmm-mmmm-mmms to the repetition of “like snow on the beach” (after the “contest” verse). Which, to be frank, isn’t all that anomalous in a climate change scenario. But we can pretend it still has “phenomenon” cachet for the sake of a jarring love metaphor. So, all in all, it features More Lana Del Rey for sure. Next, they’re going to have to obey a fan request for them to scissor on video for the Waking Up At Noon Edition.

    While Del Rey and Swift theoretically “gel” from a collaborative standpoint—yet still don’t deliver something that special with “Snow on the Beach” (the better Lana feature is on “Don’t Call Me Angel” with Ari and Miley)—Ice Spice makes absolutely no sense with Swift. And that comes across on “Karma,” with Ice Spice faintly saying at the beginning, “Karma is that girl, like (grrah).” Her signature “grrah” noticeably muted. Perhaps not to “scare” the fragile Swift audience with her “aggressive” Blackness. In this sense, Ice Spice becomes the new Lana on the original version of “Snow on the Beach” (now transformed into what amounts to a duet), toning herself down to blend into “Taylor’s world.” Her lone verse is hardly anything to instill fear either (let’s just say Nicki Minaj would have gone much harder) as she promises, “Karma is your chеck’s ’boutta bounce (damn)/Karma is the fire in your house (grrah)/And she ’boutta pop up unannounced (like)/And she never leavin’ you alone (damn)/Watch her put ya opps on a throne (damn).”

    Swift might have let her stop there, but instead, Ice Spice continues, “Got you wavin’ pretty white flags, feenin’ for that cash/Thinkin’ it’ll save ya, now you switchin’ up your behavior/It’s okay, baby, you ain’t gotta worry, karma never gets lazy/So, I keep my head up, my bread up, I won’t let up (never)/Promise that you’ll never endeavor with none lesser (ever, ever)/I be draggin’ that wagon, karma is a beauty winning that pageant, grrah.” Pageants and contests being the norm in Swift’s realm of white privilege.

    Another norm is releasing oh so many versions of things. Ergo, as further proof that Swift inexplicably favors East Coastians (especially those near New York), she also milked Midnights of another version called the Late Night Edition that she was only selling in a CD format at her The Eras Tour shows in East Rutherford. This one also including the Lana and Ice Spice collabs on the Til Dawn Edition, but swapping out “Hits Different” for a “From the Vault” song called “You’re Losing Me” (ostensible shade-throwing at Joe Alwyn). And maybe some Swifties would like to believe Taylor fucked over Target on their “Hits Different” CD exclusivity as retaliation for pulling select Pride merch, but, if we’re being real with ourselves, Taylor is her own big business with capitalist machinations à la Target—and therefore knows that the more versions sold, the more money made.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “What’s Love Got To Do With It”: The Song of An Emotionally Stunted Generation

    “What’s Love Got To Do With It”: The Song of An Emotionally Stunted Generation

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    Ranked as being among the five hundred greatest songs of all time by Rolling Stone, as well as being a “Song of the Century” in the RIAA’s book, “What’s Love Got To Do With It” took the world by storm in 1984. As part of what was deemed “one of the greatest comebacks in music history,” Turner reanimated in a big way after the Ike & Tina Turner Revue broke up in 1976. Having spent decades under the Svengali-like control of her husband, independence had never been worn so well. After all, this was a woman who was made entirely in Ike’s image, right down to molding her stage persona (specifically, after Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and Nyoka the Jungle Girl) and trademarking the name Tina Turner so he could replace her with another singer going by the same moniker if she ever left.

    Her first single as Tina Turner was, appropriately, “A Fool in Love,” described by Kurt Loder as “the Blackest record to ever creep into the white pop charts since Ray Charles’s gospel-styled ‘What’d I Say.’” Released in 1960, it was completely on-brand for a woman to say things like, “And listen, without the man, I don’t wanna live/You think I’m lyin’ but I’m telling you like it is/He’s got my nose open and that’s no lie/And I, I’m gonna keep him satisfied.” And no, “he’s got my nose open” wasn’t a cocaine reference, but rather, one to being like a dog sniffing out another in heat. As the early 60s wore on, other tellingly-named singles from Ike and Tina included “I Idolize You” and “Poor Fool.”

    Eventually catching the eye of Phil Spector in 1965, the Wall of Sound producer worked out a deal where he would have creative control over the sessions he produced with Turner, resulting in what he viewed as his greatest work, “River Deep – Mountain High.” To Spector’s dismay, the single only charted favorably in Britain. And yet, were it not for that favorable charting, Ike and Tina probably wouldn’t have been asked to tour with the Rolling Stones. It was during the Stones’ U.S. leg of the tour that the Ike and Tina Turner Revue finally started to get more acknowledgement from American audiences. By the 70s, the duo was among the most successful R&B acts before Tina couldn’t endure Ike’s cocaine addiction and irascible temper any longer. She jumped ship from her marriage of horrors in 1976, with the divorce finalized in 1978.

    Left essentially penniless despite all the work she had done for two decades, Turner commenced the 80s continuing to tour so that she could pay off debts (many incurred from cancelled Ike and Tina gigs as a result of their breakup). Written off as nothing more than a “nostalgia act,” Turner showed her record label, Capitol, that she was still a viable tour de force on the charts after releasing a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” in 1983. Making it into the number twenty-six position on the Billboard Hot 100, Capitol decided Turner was worth greenlighting a new studio album for. Enter Private Dancer. An absolute game-changer for women in the music industry. At forty-four, Turner would become the “oldest” female solo artist to nab a number one hit (what would turn out to be her only number one single ever). Although technically the third single from the record, the previous two tracks were covers (including the aforementioned Al Green hit and The Beatles’ “Help!”). Indeed, a little-remembered fact about “What’s Love Got To Do With It” is that it’s something of a cover, too. Originally recorded by Eurovision sensation Bucks Fizz, the band removed it from inclusion on their record after hearing Turner’s recording. For there is no one who could have made the song so decidedly “her own” other than Tina.

    Paired with a music video that features Tina sporting, let’s just say, “indelible” hair, the cautionary message of the song comes across in her intervening with the “young love” stylings of a couple dancing together on the street, warning them, “What’s love got to do/Got to do/With it?/Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?” And who should know the answer to that question better than Tina after her tenure with Ike? As she said, “It was my relationship with Ike that made me most unhappy [complete with a suicide attempt]. At first, I had really been in love with him. Look what he’d done for me. But he was totally unpredictable.” His ability to wield his status as her “savior” is likely what kept her around for so long, but, in the end, every woman has a breaking point. Especially with someone with the audacity to say, “Sure, I’ve slapped Tina. We had fights and there have been times when I punched her to the ground without thinking. But I never beat her” (this declared in Ike’s absurdly-titled 1999 autobiography, Takin’ Back My Name).

    That Tina had only one other long-term “boo” after Ike (Erwin Bach) is perhaps indicative of her overall commitment to the warning sentiments of her biggest single. The fact that it appeared on an album called Private Dancer also plays up the transactional nature of love in the twentieth century (and beyond)—particularly as the Decade of Excess arrived. An emphasis on avoiding emotions getting involved for the sake of keeping one’s steeliness intact was not merely for the sake of staving off the ramifications of a broken heart, but also keeping one’s eyes on the financial prize. For, when love figures in, dividends can suffer (Turner also learned that much after losing most of her bag to Ike in the divorce settlement, as he was allowed to keep the rights to the publishing royalties for his compositions as well as hers).

    In the 80s, there was no better time to disseminate such a message. Love complicates not only your personal life, but your banking life—indeed, can serve as a great hindrance to it. Unless you keep things nice and tidy. View “love” as nothing more than a way to satisfy physical urges and attempt to pretend that you’re not totally alone in the world just like everyone else. Thus, the lyrics to “Private Dancer” tie in quite nicely when Turner, from the perspective of a prostitute and/or stripper sings, “Well, the men come in these places/And the men are all the same/You don’t look at their faces/And you don’t ask their names/You don’t think of them as human/You don’t think of them at all/You keep your mind on the money/Keeping your eyes on the wall.” Performing seduction and sex rotely, in other words, was (and is) the name of the game for many women to secure their livelihood (this also being made apparent on City High’s 2001 hit “What Would You Do?”).

    What’s more, the 80s saw the rise of the “businesswoman”—a “career-minded lady” who supposedly placed emphasis on her income over her family. Invoking the type of fear in men and women alike that would prompt the release of a movie such as 1987’s Baby Boom, wherein J. C. Wiatt (Diane Keaton) ultimately prioritizes her newly-inherited baby ahead of her high-powered career in Manhattan. Then there was 1988’s Working Girl, which isn’t content to have Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith, whose hairstyle rivals Tina Turner’s in the “What’s Love Got To Do With It” video) succeed in her own right without a little help from her romantic interest, Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford). The point being, with women becoming—gasp!—CEOs and other assorted corporate beacons, the notion of “love” seemed especially quaint as the decade passed, and women realized that they could engage in the same behaviors as men. That is to say, treating “love” transactionally. A one-night stand here, an affair there. None of it had to be such a “big deal” like it was in the 50s or some shit.

    And maybe that’s why the adultery level started to ramp up in the 60s, as Mad Men would have us believe. And yet, articles like the one Monica Furlong wrote for a May 1968 issue of The Observer indicate that extramarital affairs seemed the best way to avert the staleness of legally recognized monogamy. After all, per Furlong, “People in love seem to capture some childish freshness of vision, to see, smell, touch, caress, kiss as if they never have before,” while marriage “is the gradual death of curiosity and uncertainty which make the early stages of a love affair so exciting.” Better yet, fleeting. Non-messy because there is a lack of genuine emotion involved. Just as Tina would advocate for.

    Despite being from a “bygone generation” when she released “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” nothing had ever spoken so keenly to the then-current generation of youths (/yuppies) who had all but dissociated entirely from the idea that “storybook love” could ever be real—least of all without some sort of major heartbreak in the end. As Turner reminded, “It’s physical/Only logical/You must try to ignore that it means more than that.” Because, ultimately, it doesn’t. “Coupling” is, in this modern world, really only about finding someone financially stable to keep the vicious capitalist cycle going and propagate a new “middle class” over and over until this system goes kabluey (likely because the Earth did).

    “I’ve been thinking ‘bout my own protection,” Turner declares, privatizing her emotions unless the highest bidder can afford to make her perform…like a private dancer.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Anne-Marie’s “Unhealthy” One-Ups Lana Del Rey and Rihanna’s Love of Toxic Relationships

    Anne-Marie’s “Unhealthy” One-Ups Lana Del Rey and Rihanna’s Love of Toxic Relationships

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    While some women like to at least slightly pretend they would “emancipate themselves” if they “could” from a toxic relationship, some simply like to own up to loving the pain. Especially in song form. For the past decade or so, both Rihanna and Lana Del Rey have been largely responsible for filling that role. And yet, as both women “mature” (theoretically), each one has “calmed down” and explored more spiritual, “good-natured” themes in their songs of late. For Del Rey, this includes falling prey to the middle-age trap of expressing the desire to just settle down and have kids with someone (hopefully not Jack Donoghue or Evan Winiker or some other out-of-left-field rando). This revealed on such Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd tracks as “The Grants” and “Sweet.” Nonetheless, she still struggles with letting go of her younger self’s input on more usual emotional pain-worshipping fare, namely “Candy Necklace.”

    As for Rihanna maybe part of the reason she’s taken a hiatus from music (save for her two singles, “Lift Me Up” and “Born Again” for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Soundtrack) is a result of not necessarily wanting to keep talking about how good toxic relationships feel (hear: “Rehab,” “Russian Roulette,” “Love the Way You Lie” and “Love on the Brain,” to name a few). After all, she’s presently in a “healthy” one with A$AP Rocky, spurred by having two children with him. Even so, considering both LDR and RiRi are like a sonic version of the Safdie Brothers’ Heaven Knows What, it’s difficult to branch out from the trope they established for themselves. That’s why Del Rey mostly hasn’t and why Rihanna has opted to become a business mogul—to avoid singing about topics that are perhaps not what people want to hear (i.e., being in love with someone stable and supportive). Because, for as much as she was ridiculed for her relationship with Chris Brown (and going back to him a second time after he physically assaulted her), listeners couldn’t deny their love of lyrics such as, “It’s like I checked into rehab, and baby, you’re my disease.” To be sure, the idea of being unable to kick a toxic addiction in the form of a love interest has been romanticized for centuries (just look at Catherine and Heathcliff). Rihanna has been able to capitalize on that repeatedly, especially after she stopped denying rumors of her romance with Brown, initially saying things like, “We are best friends, honestly, like brother and sister.” Sure, like brother and sister if they were Finneas and Billie. Or Angelina and James. Anyway, this pattern of starting out as “besties” with a guy before finally letting him into her boudoir continued with Drake and A$AP, the former being jettisoned perhaps because he was just too wholesome for Rihanna’s taste.

    Focusing on her new family and her various Fenty-related business endeavors has thus made Rihanna lose touch with her songstress “baddie” side, while Del Rey, too, shuffles in the limbo of her early persona and the one in which she tries to become this generation’s Joni (Mitchell) meets Joan (Baez). So, possibly sensing a void once wholly occupied by these two queens of championing “it hurts so bad but feels so good” relationships, Anne-Marie has entered the fray with her latest single, “Unhealthy.” Already coming in hot this year with singles like “Sad Bitch,” “Expectations” and “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” “Unhealthy” marks the fourth single that will appear on her third album of the same name this summer. Not only that, but it somewhat ironically features Miss “Man! I Feel Like A Woman” herself, Shania Twain. And yet, Twain’s notedness for being an “independent woman” took a while to cultivate after releasing “You’re Still the One,” also from her 1997 album, Come On Over.

    You might say that it, too, turned out to be a song about toxic love—once Mutt Lange eventually ended up cheating on her with her best friend, Marie-Anne (not Anne-Marie) Thiébaud (truly, the stuff of country song clichés, and also a large part of the plot driving Hope Floats starring Sandra Bullock). Weirder still, though, was Twain ending up with the now ex-husband of Marie-Anne, Frédéric Thiébaud. Meanwhile, Marie-Anne is still with Mutt. So, in the end, it was a happy little “wife swap” story, wasn’t it? The sort of story Del Rey (or Taylor Swift during folklore/evermore period) might talk about on one of her songs. The point is, the fact that Twain makes a cameo on “Unhealthy” just goes to show that, no matter how far a woman comes or how much “growth” she might have experienced, there’s always room to ruminate on the “beauty” of l’amour toxique.

    But before Twain’s verse enters the picture, Anne-Marie opens with, “Well, your love is worse, worse than cigarettes/Even if I had twenty in my hands/Oh, babe, your touch, it hurts more than hangovers/No, that bottle don’t hold the same regret.” Yet, despite knowing all these things vis-à-vis how bad this man is for her, she still can’t—nay, doesn’t want to—let go. In other words, “good dick will imprison you.” Or even slightly adequate dick, these days. With an accompanying visualizer for the song that shows Anne-Marie delighting in some junk food before proceeding to treat her ketchup bottle like an unwieldy splooging penis, we can feel her lack of concern for other people’s opinions as she blithely recounts, “And my mother says that you’re bad for me/Guess she never felt the high we’re on right now/And my father says I should run away/But he don’t know that I just don’t know how.”

    In certain respects, it channels the simultaneously parallel and antithetical anthem that is Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” during which she chirps, “My mother says, ‘When you gonna live your life right?’ Oh momma dear, we’re not the fortunate ones/And girls, they wanna have fun” and then adds, “The phone rings, in the middle of the night/My father yells, ‘What you gonna do with your life?’/Oh daddy dear, you know you’re still number one/But girls, they wanna have fun.” And the “fun” Anne-Marie wants to have is with this “bad for her” man (cue the Bridget Jones’ Diary line, “Anne-Marie, wanton sex goddess, with a very bad man between her thighs”). Much like Bonnie Parker, who one could easily imagine singing, while bullets rained down on her and Clyde, “‘Cause even if it kills me, I’ll always take your hand/It’s unhealthy, they just don’t understand/And when thеy try to stop me, just know nobody can/You’re still gon’ be my man.”

    Anne-Marie dares to release such a single at a time when it’s not exactly chic to continue such LDR and RiRi stylings in music. Which begs the question of how much a sudden aversion toward #MeToo-oriented notions have gradually started to fall back into favor, even by women themselves (Anne-Marie could very well be talking about her own relationship with Slowthai, for all we know). As for Twain, she confirms the delights of toxicity by chiming in, “Oh, this body high gives me sleepless nights/It’s a million times what any drug could give/And my red eyes, they are twice as wide/It might look like pain, but to me, it’s bliss.”

    Perhaps not since Britney Spears singing, “With a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride/You’re toxic, I’m slippin’ under” on her 2004 hit called, what else, “Toxic,” has there been so much pleasure expressed over pain. And, considering some of the other song titles on Unhealthy, including “Psycho,” “Obsessed,” “Kills Me to Love You” and “Cuckoo,” this particular single only adds to the “on-brand” motif. One that someone apparently had to pick up the slack for as Del Rey and Rihanna have started to soften.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • In the Penultimate Episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, We Learn A Truth Already Well-Known: It Doesn’t Matter How Talented You Are, You Always Need An “In”

    In the Penultimate Episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, We Learn A Truth Already Well-Known: It Doesn’t Matter How Talented You Are, You Always Need An “In”

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    As the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel comes to a close, all bets are off concerning Miriam’s (Rachel Brosnahan) big break. The one that viewers are made certain to know arrives via the various flash-forwards that occur throughout the season. And yet, the way things are going in the present for “Midge,” it’s difficult to fathom where or when her bona fide stardom might possibly enter into the picture. Sure, she’s managed to secure a writing position (referred to as the “lady writer,” of course) on The Gordon Ford Show, but from that moment onward it feels as though Miriam is destined to stall and languish forever in the writer’s room, her sole purpose to “fulfill a quota.” Worse still, her boss, Gordon Ford (Reid Scott), is hellbent on maintaining a rule about never bringing any of his own writers onto the show as guest comics. Even after his producer, George (Peter Friedman)—the man who came up with the nonsensical rule in the first place—is fired.

    With this in mind as episode eight, “The Princess and the Plea,” begins, Miriam is still unaware after all this time that Susie (Alex Borstein) is well-acquainted with Gordon’s wife, Hedy (Nina Arianda). The nature of their marriage, however, is one of convenience—for both parties involved. With Hedy’s “swings both ways” sexuality and Gordon’s penchant for other women (including Miriam), their “flexible” marriage works best for their needs while also accommodating society’s during that period. As for Hedy, her clout with and influence over Gordon is made evident after she proves her worth yet again by pulling strings to get Princess Margaret (Kate Abbruzzese) on the show. This, in turn, allows Miriam to, once again, prove her own worth by writing the funniest jokes for the princess, a coup that doesn’t go unnoticed by Hedy.

    Sidling up to Miriam at Toots Shor’s after the show to compliment her, Miriam tries to be modest by saying she just came up with the concept, but “the boys helped make it funny.” Oh how internalized misogyny gets the better of many a talented woman. Luckily, Hedy is there to tell Miriam, “Don’t. If the credit’s yours, take it. If it’s not, take it. That’s what the boys do.” Miriam relaxes at the thought of such advice, and the conversation shifts to Miriam’s manager, “Susan.” This, incidentally, being the title of season five’s fourth episode, in which viewers are at last given full confirmation of Susie’s long “hinted at” (a.k.a. overt) sexuality.

    With Susan being the more “femme” version of Susie’s name, it’s clear she was an entirely different person back then—and likely a far less jaded one. Nonetheless, Hedy refers to her as said name when they run into one another. Or rather, Susie runs away from her upon the two locking eyes in the hallway near the elevator of The Gordon Ford Show offices. In effect, she pulls a Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) seeing Steve (David Eigenberg) on the street and running the other way in season two of Sex and the City (in an episode called, naturally, “Ex and the City”).

    Chasing Susie through the just waxed floors of the lobby, Hedy reminds her that she played lacrosse (ultimate “code” back in the day for being a lesbian) and she will catch up. Which, of course, she does—but not until Susie has made her way outside, reminding Hedy that she was on the lacrosse team for all of two hours. She also reminds Hedy that she betrayed her in the worst possible way, making “plans” and “promises” only to end up ghosting her (at least, that’s the assumption). Hedy insists she did nothing wrong, she was twenty-two—“what promises can you make at twenty-two?” As far as Susie was concerned, there were plenty to be made, and kept. And as far as Miriam is concerned, the same goes for Susie, who has promised her repeatedly that her time will come. But it’s simply not, and there are only so many doors that can keep opening to her unless one is broken down entirely.

    Upon speaking with Hedy at the bar, Miriam realizes “Mrs. Gordon Ford” has been the door all along. Shocked at the revelation that Susie withheld this information from her (though it will be far less shocking than unearthing her mob ties, which Joel ends up having to protect Miriam from), she can’t believe Hedy is so out in the open with her fondness for “Susan,” telling her, “Pembroke. Class of ’48. We were roommates” by way of explanation. Miriam, who isn’t exactly blind to Susie’s sexuality, can likely guess that “roommate” is a euphemism as much as a reality. So incensed that Susie would keep this information from her, she ambushes her at Grand Central as she gets off a train from Baltimore.

    Berating Susie for not telling her about her “friendship” with Hedy, Miriam insists, “She has sway with Gordon… She’s our way in. Tell her to tell Gordon to book me.” Susie clams up at the thought, responding, “We don’t need her, okay? I got this… We are making progress.” Miriam snaps back, “Toward what? Another brick wall? …I’ve been a good soldier, I bat a thousand at work every day and he notices. It would make so much sense for him to give me a shot, but he will not be moved. That fucking brick wall keeps hitting us both smack in the face. It’s two steps forward, three steps back, and I’m tired of it.”

    This, obviously, is a sentiment that so many, regardless of what facet of the creative “industry” they’re trying to “penetrate,” can’t help but feel after years of doing just that: trying. Not to mention the years of being told tired platitudes like, “Don’t give up” or, worse still, that they can look back on this part of their lives as some kind of “kooky,” “funky,” “bohemian” phase. As if a true artist can just “turn it off” that way. Miriam certainly can’t, but her light of hope is undeniably dimming as she comes to understand that her talent and passion ultimately mean nothing without the right “in.” The connection that will finally grease the wheels. More to the point, Gordon’s wheels.

    When Susie demands what can be done about all the “fucking men” that run the world, Miriam replies, “You use whatever you can and you stop at nothing.” But Susie would love to stop at “being required to ask Hedy for a favor.” The wound to her pride, her ego, her firm stance on never giving Hedy that kind of satisfaction—it’s all too much for Susie to bear. And yet, for as great as her love for Hedy was, it’s apparent that her love for Miriam is likely greater. So when Miriam adds, “This is not enough, do you understand?” it definitely stings. Even so, she still tries to dissuade Miriam from cracking into showbiz “like this” by coaxing, “Just stop and think, okay? Do you really wanna make it by having me call in a favor to some chick I went to college with?” Miriam affirms, “Yes! Of course! Have you not been listening?” Her answer echoes the “I don’t give a fuck what it looks like” emotions of every person who has managed to break in through blatant nepotism (with Brosnahan herself being Kate Spade’s [RIP] niece). For, long before nepo babies, non-familial connections and networking were what mattered most (perhaps because the entertainment industry was still germinal then, and not enough stars had yet propagated to create generations’ worth of nepo babies).

    Still doing her best to discourage Miriam from taking this approach, Susie asks, “After all the hard work you’ve done? This is how you wanna get your big break?” Without missing a beat, Miriam confirms, “Oh my god, yes! Who cares how it happens?” But Susie keeps trying to paint a picture of how her talent will be questioned and belittled if she does it this way by telling her to imagine herself on a talk show years from now, what it will sound like if she describes how she got her break—“you don’t wanna say you had to call in a favor from your manager.” It’s then that Miriam delivers the clincher: “I’m not going to be on that show if you don’t do this… This is it, Susie. Talk to her. If you don’t, I’ll always know there’s something you could’ve done, and you didn’t.”

    Susie, as aware as anyone else that it’s not what you know, but who you know that will get you far, finally relents. She concedes to herself that Miriam’s patent talent alone isn’t going to be enough to push her to the next level. Thus, with hat (not) in hand, she finds Hedy at the studio and pleas for this favor, the one that she knows she can call in not just because of their once romantic history, but because Hedy does feel remorse deep down for the way she treated Susie.

    After allowing herself to become vulnerable in this manner, complete with literal prostration as a result of being deliberately positioned beneath Hedy at the foot of the stairs while the latter stands on high, Hedy agrees to “nudge” Gordon. Alas, Susie’s erstwhile lover then inquires somewhat knife-diggingly, “This was hard, wasn’t it? What you just did.” Susie makes no reply as she leaves. For maybe what’s just as hard to do is accept the constantly-reiterated notion that pure talent is so rarely a factor in securing one’s success.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” Proves That Madonna Absorbed the Critical Vitriol for Other 50+ Pop Stars So They Could Keep Talking Like Teens and Twenty-Somethings in Their Songs at Any Age

    Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” Proves That Madonna Absorbed the Critical Vitriol for Other 50+ Pop Stars So They Could Keep Talking Like Teens and Twenty-Somethings in Their Songs at Any Age

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    As the discussion continues about whether or not “middle age” really exists anymore, among the many pop stars to benefit from the decision that it doesn’t is Kylie Minogue. That is to say, she isn’t being reamed for not “acting her age” the way Madonna (who has influenced Minogue and so many other pop star prototypes) constantly is. For whatever reason, Madonna appears to be the sole absorber of all ageist criticisms pertaining to aesthetics and lyrical content deemed too “young” for someone “her age.” She is, in effect, the pop star embodiment of Lottie (Courtney Eaton) on Yellowjackets taking all the punches from Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), representing the public in this case, so that none of the other girls have to. And while Minogue is ten years younger than Madonna, it’s still a bit of stretch to hear some of the things she’s singing about on her first single from Tension, “Padam Padam” (luckily, not a dance remake of the Édith Piaf song).  

    This isn’t to say a woman shouldn’t be able to sing about whatever the fuck she wants, no matter what age she is, it’s just interesting that only certain women seem to eke by with a “pass” for talking about such things as, “Padam, padam/I know you wanna take me home/Padam, and take off all my clothes.” Certainly, Minogue’s well-maintained face and body are nothing to balk at and it’s easy to believe someone (man or woman) would want to take her home, but it has to be acknowledged that this sort of talk from a fifty-plus pop star has only ever been done by Madonna (that’s right, not even Cher has “dared” to do what Madonna does in terms of redefining pop stardom for an “unthinkable” age bracket). And when she did (and still does), it never quite manages to get by “the censors” without some very harsh assessments.

    Take, for example, a 2012 review of MDNA, in which the reviewer felt it essential to comment, “Let us banish from our minds the thought that there are perhaps more dignified approaches for a 53-year-old woman than singing, ‘Girls, they just wanna have some fun’ in a song named after a series of porn videos in which women are encouraged to strip off in exchange for free baseball caps…” Minogue, of course, would never get such flak for singing about similarly “undignified” things “for her age” on “Padam Padam,” elsewhere including, “I can hear your heart beatin’/Padam, padam, I hear it and I know/Padam, padam, I know you wanna take me home/Padam, and get to know me close.” Less “age appropriate” still is, “This place is crowdin’ up/I think it’s time for you to takе me out this club/And we don’t need to use our words/Wanna see what’s underneath that t-shirt/Shivers and cold champagne.”

    As for the music video to go with “Padam Padam,” Minogue reteams with Sophie Muller (who also directed, among other Minogue singles, “Magic” and “Dancing”) to create a vibrant, red-filled palette that suggests the passion and heartbeat alluded to throughout the song. That red palette includes Minogue’s très rouge Mugler catsuit (alas, a red catsuit can never be more iconic than it was in Britney’s “Oops!…I Did It Again”). The video opens with aesthetics that are right out of the Twin Peaks and Chris Isaak music video playbook—from shots of Minogue in a diner holding out her bright red cup to be refilled to Minogue lying on a motel bed with two “fuzzed-out” TVs next to her (the whole 90s-esque motel vibe smacks of Chris Isaak’s “Baby Did A Bad Thing”). The lush visuals of both locations can be attributed to the Pink Motel and its adjacent Cadillac Jack’s Café (formerly Pink Café). And yet, for all the visual precision, there’s not really a cohesive “theme,” other than: red (ironic, considering the motel’s name). At other moments, Minogue appears outdoors with a slew of backup dancers as she “oversees” more than participates in the choreography (another maneuver Madonna has taken to in recent years, especially on tour). And, despite talking about being in a club, Minogue makes mention of that line while back in the diner as her dancers move around on the stools and in the booths for a simultaneously eerie and “playful” effect.

    In another scene, Minogue sits in a “futuristic” (because of its hyper-curved shape) red armchair as the dancers gyrate behind her. This, again, indicates a kind of disconnect between what Minogue wants to “exude” within these lyrics versus what she’s capable of exuding through her physicality. When Madonna turned fifty-four—Minogue’s current age (going on fifty-five as of May 28th)—in 2012, she was still determined to match her own physical manifestation of “Girl Gone Wild” in the Mert and Marcus-directed video, gyrating in unison with Ukrainian boy band Kazaky and their male model imitators that rounded out the cast of backup dancers.

    Three years prior, Madonna had another Benny Benassi-flavored track in 2009’s “Celebration,” with the Jonas Åkerlund-directed video featuring her writhing and grinding in thigh-high stiletto boots and a barely crotch-covering Balmain studded dress. The song doesn’t just bear bringing up because of Madonna’s continued dance commitment in it, but because even when Minogue says in “Padam Padam,” “You look like fun to me/You look a little like somebody I know,” it echoes Madonna saying something similar on “Celebration” with, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?/You look familiar/You wanna dance?” Minogue has that same desire to grind up against someone (preferably of a “boy toy” demographic) on the dance floor for a while before going back to one of their places to disrobe. After all, she hasn’t put such work into her body for it to go unnoticed by another, n’est-ce pas?

    As for “Padam Padam” itself, there’s no denying it’s an absolute bop (which is a relief after the tired stylings of her Disco era). Produced by Lostboy, the song has the kind of earworm hook that made “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” so, well, impossible to get out of one’s head. Within this single, Minogue alludes to that 2001 hit with the line, “I’ll be in your head all weekend.” In addition to probably giving/getting head all weekend from the sound of it. But again, Minogue’s ability—as well as any other female pop star going forward—to refer to such things without the judgment to “act her age” is a direct result of the floggings Madonna has taken. And, as stated before, continues to take.

    Perhaps because Minogue comes across as a “nicer” person, or maybe just the fact that she’s Australian and not American (therefore not subject to the same puritanical American views as Madonna), it’s helped her avoid such similar tongue lashings. But for all of Madonna’s supposed “bitchiness,” no one, least of all Minogue, can deny the path she’s cleared for post-middle-age existence (particularly for women), whether as a pop star or a civilian. Which is to say, it no longer really exists at all as a direct result of Madonna’s refusal to pander to being, as she once phrased it in an interview with Jonathan Ross, “put out to pasture” at the age of forty.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Gagging For Gag Order

    Gagging For Gag Order

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    Although traces of the raw, ethereal Kesha everyone’s talking about on Gag Order had appeared in flickers on 2017’s Rainbow, something about her, let’s just say it, “aura” on the latest record seems to be resonating far more with listeners. Between Rainbow and Gag Order, 2020’s High Road was Kesha’s attempt at toeing the line between her then-fractured persona of party girl/goddess of sleazecore and her newfound sense of spirituality post-trauma. That COVID-19 waylaid any chance of touring High Road could have perhaps been interpreted as a sign to Kesha that she ought to “dig deeper.” Not to say that High Road doesn’t have many gems, including “My Own Dance,” “Raising Hell” and “Resentment,” but perhaps something about it didn’t ring true for Kesha as she sought to marry her “old self” with her “new” one. Billed as a “full return to Kesha’s pop roots, after leaning into a more country–soul sound,” High Road got its fair share of praise, but, in the end, it still seemed like the proverbial “ugly, redheaded stepchild” of Kesha’s discography.

    Perhaps being on some kind of autopilot in order to function contributed to a roteness in creating High Road that had to be obliterated for the making of Gag Order. And it is on the opening track, “Something to Believe In” that Kesha admits, “You never know that you need something to believe in when you know it all.” Prior to her epiphany in the summer of 2020 (the one that led to the inspiration behind “Eat the Acid”), Kesha likely felt she, in some sense, “knew it all” as she ignored the need for something “higher” to believe in—however cheesy that might sound. But when you exist in an industry that’s ultimately as nihilistic as the entertainment one, a girl could do well to find some spiritual guidance (after all, that’s what Madonna did).

    And Kesha has apparently found hers through not just Ram Dass (whose words of wisdom are wielded on the “Ram Dass Interlude”), but through a fondness of creating her own “Jesus Prayers,” if you will, on this record. For the repetition of phrases is key on many of the tracks (in a manner that goes beyond mere chorus). On “Something to Believe In,” that phrase is the aforementioned, “You never know that you need something to believe in when you know it all.” Among two of the only divergent verses from the chorus is the concluding one that goes, “I’m so embarrassing/So used to abandoning myself/I can’t believe I’m still alive.” This referring to all the times she let herself be denigrated for the sake of “going along to get along,” as so many women feel they have to in order to “succeed.”

    But her enlightenment about this and a plethora of other things arrives on the second track, “Eat the Acid,” a single that actually urges against eating the acid if “you don’t wanna be changed like it changed me” (this being the warning about LSD that Kesha’s mom, Pebe Sebert, gave to her). Funnily enough, it was Ram Dass who said, “I didn’t have one whiff of God until I took psychedelics.” Kesha appears to have found whatever “God” is without use of such drugs though. This much made clear as she imparts, “I searched for answers all my life/Dead in the dark, I saw a light/I am the one that I’ve been fighting the whole time/Hate has no place in the divine.” Even for someone who did her as wrong as Dr. Luke, her erstwhile producer/wannabe Svengali figure.

    He being at least part of the reason for all the toxic thoughts swirling in her head, as elucidated on “Living In My Head.” This being a track that was given a precursor on “Something to Believe In,” during which Kesha addresses some of the racing thoughts in her mind. For example, “Mind’s been racing like a stallion/While I watch it all collapsing/Kill the chaos, find the balance/‘Round we go, around we go/Greatness just a shade of madness/Ego just a face of sadness/Pain is just part of the package/Around we go, ’round we go/I sit and watch the pieces fall/I don’t know who I am at all.” But that was only a small preview of the hell that is solipsism compared to “Living In My Head.” Wanting desperately to escape her flesh prison, Kesha laments, “Oh, I don’t wanna be here anymore/Stuck inside my head here anymore/Stuck inside my head here anymore/Mm, I don’t wanna be scared anymore.” Though it’s hard not to be with the climate and AI apocalypse being upon us. Those who remember Ashlee Simpson’s 2008 single “Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)” will also recognize similar sentiments in the lines, “Get me outta my head/Outta my head/Outta my head.” This is, to be sure, a more relevant desire than ever in the landscape of constant social media infection, wherein we’re all made to compare ourselves to others (whether we know them or not) on a daily basis. Olivia Rodrigo acknowledged something similar on “jealousy, jealousy” via the lyrics, “Comparison is killing me slowly I think, I think too much/‘Bout kids who don’t know me/I’m so sick of myself/I’d rather be, rather be/Anyone, anyone else.” Kesha, too, alludes to the detriment of comparing herself to others when she bemoans, “God, I hate myself/Got to stop comparing.”

    By the time “Fine Line” rolls around, she’s started to achieve a more “I don’t give a fuck” state as she ruminates on the various fine lines between such things as “genius and crazy,” “sellin’ out and bein’ bought,” “hope and delusion” and “famous and bein’ forgot.” That “bein’ forgot” element likely a strong fear of Kesha’s as she was forced into silence amid her ongoing lawsuit against Dr. Luke that started in 2014. Which is part of why it took five years for her to put out Rainbow after the release of her sophomore album, Warrior, in 2012. Over the years of hardship and emotional rollercoastering, it seems Kesha learned one key lesson: “Only Love Can Save Us Now.” As the third single from the album, it marks the jubilant, “party girl” stylings she assured were no longer present on Gag Order. But hey, you can take the girl out of the party, but you can’t take the party out of the girl. Even if it’s a party with apocalyptic vibes (as Kesha once also said, “We’ll keep dancin’ till we die”—a similar assertion to Britney saying, “Keep on dancin’ till the world ends”). With regard to the frenetic, “all over the place” nature of the song, Kesha remarked, “I wanted ‘Only Love Can Save Us Now’ to sonically, lyrically, and emotionally reflect the severity of my mental pendulum swings. The world is so overwhelming sometimes. It requires a moment of surrender. The ludicrosity of life can make you crazy. If anything, IF ANYTHING, can save us, I believe only love can. This song is a desperate and angry prayer. A call to the light when all feels lost.”

    There’s another call to the light on “All I Need Is You”—the “light,” in this case, being Kesha’s beloved cat, Mr. Peeps (and yes, on “The Drama,” she’s sure to note that in the next life she wants to come back as a house cat). After nearly losing him in 2022, the seed of the song sprung to life. Sampling Indian philosopher Osho at the beginning, he states, “Authentic love is beyond your control. And the most basic thing which is dangerous in you is the possibility of love. Because if you are possessed by love, you can go even against the whole world.” Yes, a woman possessed by unconditional love for her cat is not to be trifled with. Which is why the full quote from Osho is actually, “They were afraid of your authentic love, because authentic love is beyond their control. You are possessed by it. You are not the possessor, you are the possessed. And every society wants you to be in control. The society is afraid of your wild nature, it is afraid of your naturalness, so from the very beginning it starts cutting your wings.” That Kesha’s early career is founded on some notion of “wildness” that eventually caused her to be suppressed therefore feels only too fitting for this particular assessment.

    Through the traumas and the tribulations, perhaps the only being she could truly trust was her cat. Thus, the potential of losing him prompts her to demand, “Tell me that you’ll live forever/‘Cause I’ve taken years for granted.” Speaking to the emotional dangers of opening one’s heart and becoming vulnerable—even to a cat—Kesha also adds, “Your love might break my heart harder than being alone.” As a song that’s representative of just how much the millennial generation has swapped out real children for pet children, Kesha insists, “You know parts of me nobody else will ever know” (cue the barrage of scenes featuring any cat’s voyeuristic antics) and “I don’t need much, but there’s one thing I can’t lose/All I need is you.” The Beatles might have said, “All you need is love,” but Kesha begs to differ here. All she needs is her cat to live forever. Or for it to at least outlive her à la Choupette.

    Among the most experimental tracks on the record is “The Drama,” which feels like a sonic companion to the moody viscerality of “Only Love Can Save Us Now.” Opening with a serene tone that explores more “Living In My Head” themes with the lyrics, “There’s a violence in the silence/And it’s coming for me/Oh, the paranoia/It’s creeping closer/Swimming in my head like a Great White,” the temperament changes entirely just when you think you’ve got it pegged as some kind of ballad. So it is that at the thirty-nine second mark, the auditory landscape shifts entirely as Kesha sings, “Build me up to feel the fall/And fall in love to break my heart/I’m bored and I’m broken/I’m self-destroying/At least it’s something to do/Oh, the drama of it all.” “It all” referring to being, well, human. Which is, despite any modern “conveniences” still a fucking bitch. Co-written with Kurt Vile, Kesha throws another lyrical curveball into the fray of “The Drama” by incorporating The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” (specifically, “In the next life, I wanna come back as a house cat, as a house cat/I wanna be sedated”). At moments giving LCD Soundsystem fare a run for its money, Kesha takes us back to the wonderfully weird experimentation of a song like “Rich White Straight Men.” At another point, Kesha notes, “I desperately wanna think people are good/But if you’d seen the things I’d seen/I don’t know if you would.” This echos another lyric she sings on “Fine Line”: “Don’t fucking call me a fighter/Don’t fucking call me a joke/You have no fucking idea/Trust me you’ll never know.” This idea that she’s seen horrors so indescribable they can’t actually be put into words is just the type of Hollywood cautionary tale to give any aspirant the chills. And yet, fame, no matter how frivolous, is a temptress that can’t be quelled.

    Maybe that’s why Kesha segues this track into the “Ram Dass Interlude,” a reminder of how ridiculous it is to place any emphasis on such thoughts as, “Do you approve of me? Do you like me? Am I good enough? Have I achieved enough?” Ram Dass then assures, “And then thеre comes a period whеre you’ve just gone through enough. And the space starts, that little blue sky starts to develop. And you start to identify with the blue sky instead of the cloud.”

    This is where Kesha’s at on “Too Far Gone.” And, while she might have found that space with the “little blue sky” Ram Dass was talking about, she can’t deny that there’s a part of her that will never come back. And that’s still difficult to reconcile. Hence, the lyrics, “Love comes with pain/I don’t know why/My whole life/Too far gone and I’ll never come back/Slipping through my fingers, damn, it’s going fast/Trying to find some meaning, something that lasts/Am I missing you or am I missing pieces of me? Am I missing you or am I missing who I used to be?” Part natural aspect of the “growing pains” that come with aging and part nostalgia for a seemingly simpler time, “Too Far Gone” also explores the theme of an “old self” being dead (“Think I killed the part of me that I like”) the way “Only Love Can Save Us Now” does via the line, “The bitch I was, she dead/Her grave desecrated.”

    Regardless, Kesha declares she won’t go gentle into that good night on “Peace & Quiet.” Accordingly, the track bears no aural tones that connote “tranquility,” so much as another frenetic dance experiment (in the spirit of “Only Love Can Save Us Now” and “The Drama”) co-produced by Kesha, Rick Rubin and Hudson Mohawke. As she considers, “Maybe I should stop and take a breath/Maybe I’m not making any sense,” Kesha realizes, “But I would be lying if I said I could do peace and quiet/Loving me is running into a house that’s burning down, baby/Honestly, make it out alive and you’ll get the best of me/So get into it or get the fuck out.” At a point in her life where she has no room for anything but candor and bluntness, Kesha riffs on the chorus of The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love” by chirping, “Monday, I’m praying/Tuesday, I’m heinous/Wednesday, I’m stable/Thursday, I’m up to something/Friday, I’m screaming/When I’m a-sleeping/Then by the weekend, I’ll need a restraining order.” So yeah, get into it or get the fuck out.

    Kesha goes back to her “zen” place on the “Only Love Reprise,” wherein she enlists her niece, Luna, to deliver the verse, “This is reality, can’t you feel it? I am one with what I am. Everything in color, everything. You have to see the air, you can’t believe it.” Needless to say, she’s passing on her “Kesha-ness” quite easily not just to her “Animals,” but to the next generation of the Sebert family.

    From that place of zen-ness comes the next song. And yes, in contrast to Ariana Grande demanding to “Love Me Harder,” Kesha, instead, goes in the opposite direction with “Hate Me Harder.” Yet, to use her “fine line” wisdom, there’s a fine line between love and hate. So maybe all “haters” are secretly obsessed (or they just happen to have a knack for the art of criticism). Either way, Kesha declares she can handle it as she sings, “I’ve graduated from caring about your opinions/Tell you the truth, babe I’ll never know that you existed…/So if hating me helps you love yourself/Do your worst, baby, gimme hell/Hate me harder, hate me harder/There’s nothing left that I haven’t heard/And I can take it, so make it hurt.” As such, she appears to want to alchemize the hate directed at her by radiating it back as love (besides, like she said on “Spaceship,” “Nothing is real. Love is everything. And I am nothing”). Plus, Kesha also seems to be of the Wildean belief, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” So, as far as Kesha is concerned, let the haterade rain down if it keeps the commentary flowing.

    While MARINA might have kicked off 2015’s Froot with a song called “Happy,” Kesha opts to conclude her album with a track named as such. After all, it’s the ultimate goal/achievement for anyone, famous or otherwise. And it seems that, at least for now, that’s what Kesha is. Or is striving to be. The sparse, yet rich instrumentation (which sounds a lot like The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”) heightens the bittersweet tinge of lyrics like, “If you asked me then where I wanted to be/It looks something like this living out my wildest of dreams/But life sometimes ain’t always what it seems/If you ask me now/All I’ve wanted to be is happy.” That, too, is what Beyoncé claimed as her “aspiration in life” on “Pretty Hurts.”

    More recently still, Lana Del Rey assured her fans at the 2023 Billboard Women in Music Awards that she wants them to know she’s happy. Then there was Billie Eilish naming an entire album Happier Than Ever after her breakup with Brandon “Q” Adams (a.k.a. 7:AMP). The bottom line is, famous people have been making it clear how much more challenging it can be to be “happy” while subjected to public scrutiny. Touching on the evolution of her mental state and perspective since becoming famous, Kesha ruminates, “I remember when I was little/Before I knew that anyone could be evil/These egos, some people, playing with my innocence like at a casino.” This, of course, reminds one of the fate that befell Britney when she was put under a conservatorship for little better reason than she was acting “hysterical.” Kesha, perhaps like Britney, has overcome that period of oppression, and whatever comes next, she wants to make one thing clear: “I refuse to be jaded/Still painting rainbows all over my face, oh/I’ve gotten used to the fall.” And with Gag Order, Kesha keeps falling upward.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Miley Makes Us “Jaded” By Offering Tired Visuals Amounting To a Dolce Glow Ad That Kind of Rips Off Britney’s “My Prerogative”

    Miley Makes Us “Jaded” By Offering Tired Visuals Amounting To a Dolce Glow Ad That Kind of Rips Off Britney’s “My Prerogative”

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    Giving us the third visual in five months from her Endless Summer Vacation era, Miley Cyrus’ “Jaded” video is not all that much different from “Flowers.” But, to the latter’s credit, it was at least far more dynamic (and so was the “River” video, for that matter—even if another instance of being overly derivative). Directed, once again, by Jacob Bixenman (though it’s hard to view “Jaded” as being very “directed”), the scene opens on a shot of Cyrus’ hands placed daintily on her white bedsheets (to accent her bronze skin tone, duh) as the opening guitar notes segue into her lamenting verse, “I don’t wanna call and talk too long/I know it was wrong, but never said I was sorry/Now I’ve had time to think it over/We’re much older and the bone’s too big to bury.” Obviously another song that addresses her complicated on-again, off-again relationship with Liam Hemsworth (culminating in un peu de divorce), Cyrus mimics the same sentiment from 2019’s “Slide Away” (“Move on, we’re not seventeen/I’m not who I used to be/You say that everything changed/You’re right, we’re grown now”) about being “too old” to deal with this shit anymore.

    What she’s never “too old” for, however, is imitating Britney Spears, which a lot of this video’s bed romping does. Spears, of course, learned most of her bed romping tricks from Madonna, who launched herself to mainstream fame by posing on one in bridal wear for the album cover of Like A Virgin. Thenceforward, audiences saw many other occasions when she was wont to loll around in a boudoir setting (e.g., her Blond Ambition performance of “Like A Virgin,” the “Justify My Love” video, the “Take A Bow” video and, more recently, her smattering of Instagram photo sessions featuring her “at home” bedroom stylings). And actually, about four years after the release of the Jake Nava-directed “My Prerogative,” a Rolling Stone article even called out the bed writhing similarities to Madonna’s during her “Like A Virgin” phase. Perhaps Miley could recognize Spears was paying tribute to M’s vibe as much as Britney’s, thus appearing in a jeweled cone bra number at one point in the “Jaded” video.

    However, before that moment, Cyrus is content to one-up Madonna and Spears’ provocateur levels by appearing topless in jeans (as opposed to topless in a blazer à la the “Flowers” video) as she does her rolling around. This transitions into her wearing a high-cut metallic gold one-piece bathing suit that manages to come across more obscenely than any two-piece ever could. In matching gold heels, Cyrus then serves “Hung Up” video vibes with her “practicing in the studio” aura, as complemented by a wood floor and wood-paneled wall backdrop. Bixenman then cuts to Cyrus outside in a setting that looks a lot like the Farralone House (which also more recently cameo’d as Amy’s [Ali Wong] vacation abode in Beef) from the “Flowers” video. But the palm tree backdrop indicates it’s a different home altogether. One she’s ostensibly carved out for herself without the “jaded” ex she refers to throughout the song. Either way, there’s still a pool. And one prolonged scene in particular of Miley sort of floating/standing as she stares at the camera in what’s supposed to be a “sexy” way actually comes across as super creepy, and could easily be soundtracked by a slowed-down, demonic-voiced version of the song.

    Billed as “dreamy” and “raw”—polite euphemisms for lazy and ill-conceived—the main purpose of the video appears to be for Cyrus to peddle her ongoing collaboration with Dolce Glow, a sunless tanner (because the 00s are never really over) created by “friend of Miley” Isabel Alysa. Hence, her “unfinished,” “au naturel” look. Complete with brunette hair for added “authenticity” (for, as Madonna showed during her Like A Prayer and American Life album cycles, a female pop star is taken more seriously as a “brownie”). Despite the Madonna influence, it’s Britney who emerges as the clear affecting presence. Indeed, it’s no secret that everyone rips off Britney at this point, but Miley has been a consistent “homage payer” to the Princess of Pop (as her own husband apparently likes to call her) being that she was the proverbial “voice of a generation.” Namely, Miley’s.

    Accordingly, the video concludes with a shot of Miley back on the bed looking “candidly” into the lens. In effect, it’s the same shot Britney opted to use for her final scene in “My Prerogative.” Except at least she did those scenes in black and white for a “tasteful” impact despite “ho’ing it up.” Cyrus hasn’t done that here. But it’s not because she isn’t willing to go full-tilt on emulating Britney, so much as the fact that a selfless tanner’s results don’t exactly translate well in B&W.  

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Enter the Church of Kesha on “Only Love Can Save Us Now”

    Enter the Church of Kesha on “Only Love Can Save Us Now”

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    Continuing the pop music tradition of incorporating religious metaphor (hear: Madonna’s “Like A Prayer,” Beyoncé’s “Heaven,” Lana Del Rey’s “Gods and Monsters,” MARINA’s “Handmade Heaven” or even Kesha’s own “Raising Hell,” to name a few), Kesha adds “Only Love Can Save Us Now” into the canon. While her previous two singles from Gag Order, “Eat the Acid” and “Fine Line,” didn’t so directly refer to her ongoing legal struggles with one, Lukasz Gottwald, this particular track minces no words.

    Co-produced with Rick Rubin, Jussifer and Stint, the moody, erratic beat is reminiscent of Kesha’s first two musical offerings, Animal and Cannibal. Despite Kesha warning fans that she didn’t feel like this record was “danceable,” instead billing it as a more “personal” album, the singer can’t help but surrender to visceral rhythms sooner or later when it comes to making music. “Only Love Can Save Us Now” proves that point as the more sinister, “irascible” part of the backing track would be right at home on any record before Rainbow. Even certain word choices harken back to Kesha’s “Ke$ha” period. For example, when she warns, “I’m ‘bout to blow your fuckin’ head through the ceiling,” who can help but think back to her also warning, “This place about to blow” on, what else, “Blow” (from the Cannibal EP)? Maybe that’s deliberate on Kesha’s part—perhaps she wants to make subtle digs at her “Dr. Luke era” to remind him that she’s forgotten nothing. Meanwhile, he actively works to court amnesia (no legal pun intended).

    As for the religious overtones, Kesha is quick to spit metaphors like, “The resurrection’s here/Can you believe it?” (one imagines Dr. Luke wouldn’t like to). She also mentions, “Been baptized in Hollywood in the Cathedral/The power of Christ compels me, I’m a demon/Keep singing hallelujah, nothing can save us.” For those convinced that the Hollywood machine is a satanic cabal rooted in conspiracy, this song will surely bring a smile of vindication to their face. Her use of religious “ecstasy” gone wrong makes sense when considering most pop stars can’t help but eventually come to view themselves as godlike (what with celebrities being the new deities that people worship). Like Taylor Swift before her on “Look What You Made Me Do,” Kesha announces, “The bitch I was, she dead/Her grave desecrated.” Except, of course, Taylor’s words were, “I’m sorry, but the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ‘cause she’s dead.” This idea that, after a certain amount of publicly-splashed trauma, a famous person “dies” and becomes more their impenetrable celebrity self than their former “human” self is also present in Kesha’s declaration. And maybe that’s for the best in some ways since, as Kesha puts it, “I would kill for secrets/All of mine been leaking/I don’t got no shame left/Baby that’s my freedom.”

    Having “nothing left to be ashamed of” is also something fellow Dr. Luke collaborator Britney Spears knows all about as she “dares” to keep posting videos of herself dancing with captions that are cryptic but not too cryptic to pick up on the underlying message of: “fuck everyone.” Especially people like Dr. Luke who were among the many to use her as what Dr. L himself called an “amazing vehicle.” As though she wasn’t even a person, just a money-making machine. Kesha echoed a similar feeling on “Fine Line” as she concluded, “There’s a fine line between what’s entertaining/And what’s just exploiting the pain/But hey, look at all the money we made off me.”

    That “fine line” was crossed many times by Kesha’s abuser, which is why it’s easy to interpret one of her lyrics as doubling for the perfection she was forced to strive for physically while under his manipulative control. That lyric being, “Goddamn perfection in his image he made us.” Not to liken Dr. Luke to “God” or anything, but he has had his fair share of authority over the music industry via his status as one of few the producers who can cite innumerable hits on the Billboard charts. Though he has yet to surpass his mentor, of sorts, Max Martin. Indeed, it was through Martin that Gottwald secured his “Britney gig.” Which prompted him to say such telling things as, “I’m excited to be co-executive producing with Max Martin, the person who kind of invented Britney, and to make good music.” Clearly, he thinks he’s the Regina George to Kesha’s supposed Cady Heron and, like, invented her as well. But no, neither man needed to “invent” Britney or Kesha. Their talent and hard work was what got them where they are (and, in Kesha’s case, there’s a touch of the nepo baby flair thanks to her mother, Pebe Sebert, already being in the business).

    But Kesha (and Britney) is done with the “goddamn perfection” that was expected of her. From Dr. Luke, or anyone else. So it is that she urges, “Yeah Jesus take the wheel/I’m going through phases.” This particular one doesn’t discount her past, but rather, incorporates it in a new way into the sonic and lyrical compositions. Even traces of the religious motif on 2020’s “Raising Hell” are easy to be reminded of on “Only Love Can Save Us Now.” For example, Kesha singing on the former, “Hallelujah I’m still here, still bringing it to ya/Ohm like Buddha” and “I’m all fucked up in my Sunday best/No walk of shame ’cause I love this dress/Hungover, heart of gold, holy mess/Doin’ my best/Bitch, I’m blessed.” The recurring topic of shame and ridding herself of it has obviously been something she’s grappled with in the wake of being mocked and having her integrity questioned ever since 2014, when she launched the civil suit against Dr. Luke in the first place. This prompting, among many countersuits, a libel one aimed at Kesha’s mother for speaking in support of her daughter on Twitter. Ergo, Kesha defying her “gag order” by singing, “I’m getting sued because my mom has been tweeting/Don’t fucking tell me that I’m dealing with reason.”

    In fact, don’t ever tell any woman (in the entertainment industry or otherwise) that that’s what she’s been dealing with in a patriarchal society. To boot, Kesha takes a risk on her song being too literally interpreted as some kind of sacrilege (because everyone is too literal these days). But if Kesha is “denouncing” religion, she at least champions the one fundamental principle that most of them are founded on: love. Alas, when “organized networks” get involved, that message quickly becomes tainted. Thus, she riffs on a simple moral that The Beatles gave us long ago: “All you need is love.” Except when some asshole fucks you over and incites you to write an album about the slight.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Cover Is A Landmark Moment…But Also Presents a Double Standard in Terms of Praising a “Correct” Way for Women to Be Embraced As “Sexy” at Any Age

    Martha Stewart’s Sports Illustrated Cover Is A Landmark Moment…But Also Presents a Double Standard in Terms of Praising a “Correct” Way for Women to Be Embraced As “Sexy” at Any Age

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    There are “kinds” of women who get lauded for doing the same things that other women have already been doing for quite some time. Martha Stewart is just such a kind of woman to receive praise for things that women in the latter category would instead be (and are) maligned for. And while her Sports Illustrated cover signals what one can only hope is a greater shift toward acceptance of women being sexy and sexual at whatever the fuck age they want to be, it also serves to reiterate a double standard in our society. One in which “good,” “homemaking” women are more respected than women who have been associated with iconoclasm and shirking “conventional femininity.”

    Although Stewart was long ago forced to shed her impervious image of full-stop goodness after being sent to prison in 2004 for insider trading, securities fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy (oh my!), her reputation didn’t take long to bounce back. And, if anything, her time in prison only augmented the public’s fascination with her. All of the sudden, she was way more interesting once the veneer of “infallibility” cracked. She had “cred.” Even Snoop Dogg started to hang out with her after she got incarcerated. But it was just the “right amount” of an impish streak, one that still made the public see her as a generous, ultimately docile and obedient soul. Her appearance on the cover of the famed Swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated marks her, at eighty-one, as the “oldest” cover model. In fact, one might say that setting records for being the oldest to do something is a new trend of late—considering Joe Biden’s presidency. And it speaks to a larger trend about how the so-called elderly are no longer shutting themselves away inside to avoid being met with torches and pitchforks for their mere existence. This was something that would have been unfathomable in the Old Hollywood era, when stars seemed to retreat permanently into their mansions at a certain age or die in bleak obscurity after their drug/alcohol addictions got the better of them (e.g., Barbara Payton and Mabel Normand). Better than to be “caught” looking as they did in their “aged” state. Arguably the first actress to defy this tacit, Logan’s Run-esque Hollywood rule was Gloria Swanson when she played, in meta fashion, a washed-up silent movie star named Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. A faded star, as it were, who stays, as alluded to, shut inside her house to avoid the reality that the outside world might inflict.

    But oh how times have changed since 1950, with “old” women out and about parading themselves like it’s no big deal at all. And it really isn’t. Especially with all the advancements in anti-aging treatments. Ones that a woman like Stewart can afford with no problem. And yet, despite looking barely a day over fifty (hell, maybe even forty with the right airbrushing), Stewart is still having a “break the internet” moment by gracing this cover. For it pushes a new boundary and sets a new precedent. Except that, well, it actually doesn’t. Because there’s been a certain other woman who’s been rallying behind anti-ageist views and gatekeeping for some time now, only to be met with venom and vitriol as a result. That woman, of course, is Madonna. Who has appeared on countless magazine covers and within their “spreads” to show as much (usually more) skin as Stewart is in Sports Illustrated. And sure, Stewart is almost a full twenty years older than Madonna, so it is more noteworthy in that sense, but the real reason so much praise instead of acrimony is being hurled toward Stewart is because she represents what society views as the abovementioned “right” kind of woman. More specifically, the “right” kind of “old” woman. She is “tasteful,” “beneficent,” “not slutty.” Madonna, in contrast, has always wielded her sexuality like the key ingredient of her personality that it is. And, obviously, part of her hyper-sexed nature is a result of growing up Catholic, told from the get-go that sex was wrong, forbidden, sinful—but it was especially wrong for any woman to take actual pleasure in sex. An act meant solely for men’s pleasure…and for women to fulfill their “duty” as a birthing mill.

    Stewart herself is a symbol of that kind of conventional “domestic goddess” femininity that patriarchal society still champions and reveres. And, funnily enough, she was raised Catholic as well. But it seemed the indoctrination of that religion didn’t instill within her quite the same rebellious sexual exhibitionism that it did within Madonna. It did, however, perhaps make her appreciate the value of pageantry that extended into her various homemaking and entertaining endeavors. Yet, despite being a symbol of “domesticity,” Stewart is in direct opposition to that stereotype by capitalistic virtue of being one of the most successful businesswomen in history. Monetizing reproductive labor in a manner that few women actually performing it in their day-to-day lives can. Madonna, then, is her polar opposite—the “whore” (yes, it’s ironic considering her name) on the two-sided spectrum of things that women can “be” in the eyes of men. Who still dictate what we digest via media outlets like Sports Illustrated. And, like Stewart, she is one of the most successful businesswomen ever to have existed. Except what she’s selling is not “home and hearth” (even if she did appear on the cover of Good Housekeeping back in 2000, not to mention a cover for Ladies’ Home Journal in 2005).

    Though she did attempt to for about a five-year period during her eight-year marriage in the 00s. Indeed, while married to Guy Ritchie, Madonna did have something of her “Martha Stewart phase,” catering to tropes about being “the missus” and “the Guv’nor’s wife” and “Mrs. Ritchie” as she moved to the English countryside and dabbled in writing children’s books before soon restoring herself to her original hyper-sexual form after the divorce (see: the W magazine cover that immediately followed: “Blame It On Rio,” in which she was featured “canoodling” with her brand-new, barely-clothed boytoy, Jesus Luz, among other men with anti-British bodies). In the end, Madonna perhaps realized that she couldn’t sell conventional domestic life with conviction, which is why she’s done her own version of it by being both “mother and father” to her brood of six children, three of which (Mercy, Stella and Estere) were adopted from Malawi after her divorce from Ritchie.

    Stewart flies more under the radar for her unconventional femininity, also having divorced her husband, Andrew Stewart (whose last name would prove invaluable to Martha), long before her empire reached its apex. Even so, that she’s dated so minimally (with Anthony Hopkins and Charles Simonyi being about the extent of her romantic past) since the divorce has undeniably helped fortify her “homey” image. A virtuous nun worshipping at the altar of homemaking and entertaining.

    In May of 1995, Stewart was heralded by New York Magazine as “the definitive American woman of our time.” That hasn’t really changed, despite the illusion of the alleged changing face of the domestic sphere. One that hasn’t gone much beyond the “progressiveness” of a movie like Mr. Mom in 1983 (side note: “Mr. Mom” only conceded to step into that role because he lost his breadwinning job). With Stewart’s Sports Illustrated cover, it is encouraging that women are being shown (in a rare instance of patriarchal weakness) that it’s possible (with enough money) to be “sexy at any age.” But, by the same token, it’s not comforting to realize that the reason this is being conceded to is because the underlying message remains the same as it always has: so long as you’re the “right” kind of woman, who has long advocated for the “right” kind of values, you’ll be embraced.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Acrostic Poems Never Die: Shakira Revives the Elementary School-Favored Poetry Method on “Acróstico,” Takes a Risk on the “Song For My Children” Genre

    Acrostic Poems Never Die: Shakira Revives the Elementary School-Favored Poetry Method on “Acróstico,” Takes a Risk on the “Song For My Children” Genre

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    For those who thought Shakira was all embitterment and revenge with her song subjects of late (hear: “Te Felicito” and “Shakira: BZRP Music Sessions #53”), Gerard Piqué isn’t the only topic occupying her mind (therefore, songwriting tendencies) lately. With “Acróstico,” the newest single that will likely appear on her twelfth album, Shakira focuses her mind instead on maternal sentiment—which was just in time for Mother’s Day weekend, as the song was released on May 11th. Accordingly, Shakira has no shame in getting Oedipal (just as John Lennon didn’t have any), talking about a mother’s transcendent, inimitable love for her children; in this case, two sons named Sasha and Milan (yes, they sound as though they were plucked right out of a season of RuPaul’s Drag Race).

    It is these two names that are spelled out via the first letters of the verses in the song (though Shakira cheats more than a little bit by not having them spelled in a direct row—perhaps proving that acrostic poems are not exactly “elementary school child’s play”). A slow piano ballad, the beat drops around the one-minute, twenty-second mark as Shakira sings, “Se nos rompió solo un plato no toda la vajilla/Y aunque no sé poner la otra mejilla/Aprender a perdonar es de sabios/Que solo te salga amor de esos labios.” This meaning, “We only broke one plate, not all the dishes/And although I don’t know how to turn the other cheek/Learning to forgive is wise/May only love come out of those lips” (instead of the bullshit that came out of Piqué’s). As usual, everything sounds better and more poetic in Spanish than it does in English. But these are hardly the most standout or “maternal” expressions conveyed in the song. Elsewhere, Shakira gets even mushier with lines like, “The only thing I want is your happiness and to be with you/A smile from you is my weakness/Loving you serves as an anesthesia for pain/It makes me feel better/For whatever you need, I am here/You came to complete what I am.” How Jerry Maguire.

    Of course, with Shakira’s sons only being ten and eight, it’s easy to feel such warm fuzziness toward them. But hopefully, they never take the route of Britney Spears’ spawns and veer more toward the path of Pamela Anderson’s. Depending on Piqué’s (and Clara Chía’s…if she lasts) influence, that feeling could change as they grow older (plus, if we’re drawing a comparative line, Piqué is technically Shakira’s K-Fed). Indeed, Britney is no stranger to the “write a song for my sons” genre only to have it backfire, having released both “Someday (I Will Understand)” and “My Baby” in years before the sting of Jayden and Sean’s betrayal. Years when they weren’t sentient enough to backstab (hence, lyrics such as, “Tiny hands/Yes, that’s you/And all you show/It’s simply true/I smell your breath/It makes me cry”—that last sentiment sounding more like an insult than a compliment).

    But, for now, and despite Britney as a cautionary tale about writing songs for your sons, Shakira is hedging all her emotional bets on them by claiming ownership (almost as though marking her territory more strongly than Piqué can because he ain’t a singer). So it is that she declares, “You taught me that love is not a scam and that when it’s real it doesn’t end.” No pressure or anything for these sons to be her love “catch-all,” even as they grow up and inevitably try to distance themselves from their madre. Or worse, if they decide not to…meaning whoever they end up with will be marrying Shakira as much as her sons (though that might be motivation enough for some people).

    This is when it becomes worth noting that “Acróstico” is just as overbearing as it is “sweet.” And while there have been plenty of other pop stars who have used their children as lyrical inspiration (e.g., David Bowie’s “Kooks,” John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy,” Lauryn Hill’s “To Zion” and Madonna’s “Little Star”), this particular slow jam feels more like additional leverage against Piqué somehow. Forgive the jadedness, but it’s hard not to picture Shakira diabolically laying down this track as further proof of her beneficent superiority over her shady, two-timing ex.

    The album artwork, fittingly enough, features a teddy bear popping out of an unpacked box…seeing as how Shakira has relocated from Barcelona to Miami with Sasha and Milan after the fallout with their father. The box above it also has a sticker stamped on with a broken heart icon and the words, “Fragile Handle With Care.” Shakira believes her sons will do just that, the antidote to every other ill and heartbreak that might come along. Seemingly not realizing that a mother’s son can be just as much of a bane as a boon to her emotional well-being. Perhaps fellow celebrity mom Madonna put it best when she wrote in part of her own Mother’s Day message, “I have experienced my highest highs and my lowest lows as a Mother. No one could have prepared me.” Maybe Shakira herself has yet to be prepared for the potential disappointment that can come with putting so much weight on a child’s love if it isn’t reciprocated in the “right” way somewhere down the line. To add to the “aggressive, sticky maternal love!” (as Marcello in La Dolce Vita would say) vibe, Shakira also offers an accompanying lyric video featuring animated scenes of a mama bird protecting and tending to her nest of two eggs. Heavy-handed, to be sure. But not as much as when she defends her nest through a violent storm before the eggs hatch.

    Upon “safely” bringing her two babies into the world (as though anyone is ever safe once they’re here), she proceeds to “activate” as a mother by foraging for food to bring back to them—the maternal instinct innate (or so the video would like to suggest). Jumping up and down in excitement as she watches them learn to fly, the trio soon soars off together into the sunset. And, in an alternate universe, one could even imagine a Spanish version of Princess Diana having her time with William and Harry soundtracked to this. However, for those who are maudlin-averse or perhaps have a more Mommie Dearest experience with their own mother, this song—brief though it may be—might not be easy to stomach.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • John Lennon’s “Mother”: A Song “About 99% of the Parents”

    John Lennon’s “Mother”: A Song “About 99% of the Parents”

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    Despite “Mother” being one of John Lennon’s most deeply personal songs, there was a point when he told a concert audience in 1972, “A lot of people thought [‘Mother’] was just about my parents, but it was about 99% of the parents, alive or half-dead.” That “half-dead” jibe referring to the kind of parents Lennon had, who were never quite fully there—mostly because of their own emotional stuntedness that wouldn’t allow them to be. Although “Mother,” from the 1970 album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, explored the shortcomings of both of Lennon’s progenitors, Alfred a.k.a. “Freddie” and Julia, it was his matriarch who served as the primary focus for the rage-sadness that punctuated lyrics like, “Mother, you had me/But I never had you.”

    That the song commences with a bevy of elegiac carillons additionally speaks to Lennon “laying to rest” his proverbial “Mommy issues.” Not least of which included his Oedipal admission of wanting to touch his mother in ways inappropriate for a son. Recalling how his hand grazed her tit one afternoon as they were napping, John would later muse, “I was wondering if I should do anything else… I always think I should have done it. Presumably she would have allowed it.” What with Julia’s reputation for being so “bohemian.”

    Oedipal inclinations aside, from the get-go of “Mother,” Lennon gut-punches his listeners by holding up his abandonment like an open wound he’s begging someone—anyone—to heal. As if, by showing it, maybe somebody can mend the damage. But, by that point, it was far too deep-seated to ever be repaired. Although the lyrics are sparse and often repetitive, the rich tapestry of Lennon’s varying vocal intonations is what makes the visceral song so arresting. This being in addition to the fact that so many can relate to the sentiments and themes presented. Both of which cut to the core of the type of abandonment that seemed so much more normalized when baby boomers were growing up (ergo the classic trope about Dad going out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returning).

    Not to say, of course, that parents don’t still abandon their children (in more abstract ways now) every day, but it’s certainly less “tolerated.” And the only thing people hate more than having to be responsible is being made to feel guilty or shamed about, that’s right, not being responsible. “Back then,” as the phrase goes, it appeared so much more “accepted” to abandon children. After all, there were numerous cataclysmic factors that allowed one a “get out of jail [because, yeah, parenting is a prison] free” card. World War II, the Great Depression, a lack of surveillance technology in the form of smartphones—just to name a few of those “extenuating circumstances.”

    To enhance the notion that to be a baby boomer child (and particularly a male one) was to run a higher risk of emotional damage incurred from one’s parents, Phil Spector co-produced the song. And he, too, got something of what can be called a “raw deal” in his upbringing. For his father, Benjamin, offered perhaps the worst kind of abandonment: committing suicide. Spurred by his increasing debt in 1949, Benjamin chose carbon monoxide poisoning as the most effective out. At the time, Spector was ten years old. Lennon would be far younger when he dealt with his own sting of abandonment, as his father was constantly absent due to his job as a sea merchant. But “at least” when he was doing that, he could send the checks home to help Julia support their son. Those checks mysteriously ceased circa 1944 (in the months when John would have been three) after Freddie went AWOL. A desertion that would soon extend to his nuclear family.

    Six months after his disappearance, perhaps something like a guilty conscience struck as Freddie decided to return and try to get Julia to take him back. But she had already “canoodled” with a Welsh soldier, and ended up pregnant with his child (her family implored her to put up that baby for adoption, which she did—as even she couldn’t seem to talk herself into the idea that she was a “fit mother”). After that, she got together with John “Bobby” Dykins and had two children with him, although she never officially divorced from Freddie.

    Though Julia eventually “got it together” for her second family, her “care” of John proved worrisome to her older sister, Mimi, who reported her to social services and gained custody of Julia’s firstborn that way. Regardless, Julia remained in daily contact with John and, in 1946, followed her son and Freddie to Blackpool where the latter was intending to run away to New Zealand with John. Forced into one of the most uncomfortable positions any child can be, John was asked to choose between his parents as they proceeded to get in an argument about custody. Stating that he chose his father, John then ran after an affronted Julia. But he was damned by whatever decision he made, for neither parent was equipped to raise him. Just as so many parents aren’t, yet still decide to go ahead and spawn anyway.

    Later, in a 1980 interview, John would come to understand of his mother, “[She] just couldn’t deal with life. She was the youngest and she had a husband who ran away to sea and the war was on and she couldn’t cope with me, and I ended up living with her elder sister. Now those women were fantastic… And that was my first feminist education… I would infiltrate the other boys’ minds. I could say, ‘Parents are not gods because I don’t live with mine and, therefore, I know.’” This revelation—the one that children aren’t supposed to find out about until much later—came to John earlier than it should have. Ironically, while parents are supposed to be seen as some kind of all-knowing, all-powerful gods by their children, they themselves often know so little. It was no wonder David Bowie therefore clapped back in 1972’s “Changes,” “And these children that you spit on/As they try to change their worlds/Are immune to your consultations/They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.”

    John certainly was. And it was something he could never not be aware of—no matter how many drugs or how many women (or men) he turned to as a means to numb that awareness. That’s why he was still writing about the parental slight in 1970, at the age of thirty. Perhaps finally having the clarity that’s so often associated with “age” and being able to look back on things with a greater sense of perspective and wisdom. In the end, for his own self-preservation, he has to admit to both parents in “Mother,” “I, I wanted you/You didn’t want me/So, I/I just got to tell you/Goodbye.” Unfortunately, his wisdom arrived after he had already made the same mistake of rushing into having a family of his own too early—as though to “generate” the one he never had. Thus, in “Mother” he also sings, “Children, don’t do what I have done/I couldn’t walk and I tried to run.” In effect, John urges childless people not to hurry into having kids just because they want to fill some void left by their parents’ method of “raising.”

    Shouting, “Mama don’t go! Daddy come home!” as the song draws to a close, the residual pain left by his parents is forever immortalized. And for so many children (no matter what age) who listen to it, that pain is all too resonant.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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