“Bike Dream” feels like the colors of its cover: sherbert pinks, blues, and purples. Although there is no lyrical mention of an actual bicycle, I imagine coasting down a tree-lined street into a wash of sunset. I’m not sure what the part of the production makes it feel so trance-like, but it has a soft, blurry quality, like someone put a fuzzy filter on my eyesight. “Nighttime Drive” by Jay Som has a very similar effect.
Metric made an impression on me as a teenager, with all its anger and defiance. Emily Haines’ solo project is much more experimental, mystical even. The music video is out of focus, shaky, styled like an old VHS tape in places. It feels right; the song is disconcerting and strange. It reminds me strongly of the film Caché (2005). The song cuts off abruptly in the middle, and is replaced with dialogue between a Haines and a casting agent. The agent asks Haines to take her shirt off, “for the role.” This interaction, like so many that happen between women and the male gatekeepers of their chosen industries, is not addressed further. The song enters just as suddenly as it stopped. The lyrics wander over the felted piano line and soft percussion:
With all the coal in the core
All the water and the oil
You can buy any girl in the world
With the soil that you borrow
And the moral you deny
You can buy the eyes of the world
I remember when A Seat at the Table (2016) first came out and everyone lost their minds. Sonically, Solange explores funk, pop, neo-soul, rap, spoken-word; thematically, she delves into Black pain, pride, and power. And despite its breadth, this record manages to maintain a centralized message, epitomized in “F.U.B.U.” and discussed in far more depth in this episode of Still Processing: A Seat at the Table isn’t for everyone.
Erasure’s song “Hallowed Ground” pulls out every stop of 80s popular music; the only song I can think of that outdoes it is “Africa” by Toto. There are multiple bouncy, chipper synths, an anguished male vocal, a melodramatic narrative lyrical structure, drums that sound like they’re in a tin can.
And I love it. I’m a sucker for a song that leans into its tropes so hard that it comes out the other side of kitsch and lands in the territory of brilliance. “drivers license” is a great example; it makes use of every trend in pop music right now, all at once, and is the most impressive earworm since “Don’t Start Now.” I’m not ashamed of respecting a song that’s been engineered to my tastes exactly, that knows its audience and plays right into their heads. I don’t believe in liking particularly convoluted music solely on the merit of its complications. If something is good, it’s just good.
I hope we can all move past being embarrassed about the music we like, past shaming teenage girls for making the bands we “liked before they were famous” famous. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean that we have to stop being fans, turn to something more “underground” or “indie.” Why turn your Spotify session to private when you listen to Taylor Swift when you could just live? I say blast it, baby.