Music & Films for
Common People
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VENICE BITCH
Lana del Rey
10
Venice Bitch is a song that lasts nine minutes and 40 seconds, the longest one in Del Rey's whole catalogue, a daring move for a pop artist, one that could have killed her career ten years ago, and that even in the Spotify era will test the endurance of many listeners that won't find the quick gratification they are used to. Lana derails her melancholic love song in a psychedelic trip heavy with electric guitar noise and a second part that lacks any sort of structure.
In some ways, her poetic palette hasn't changed: jeans, summer, ice queen. But in this stance, it feels more a self-retrospective that a repetition; she charges the track with a new found melancholy for the crazy old times while she keeps moving forward. Lana has finally matured, and it is now that no one doubts her talent and her relevance that she can focus on creating new paths for her music by experimenting in meaningful ways.
PYNK
Janelle Monáe feat. Grimes
9
For Janelle Monáe, one of the most ferocious feminist queer music artists nowadays, it is time to empower the conceptions we have about vaginas. It is time for women to feel pride on the most intimate part of their bodies, and it's time for men to stop thinking of them as simple holes to be filled. Pynk, that color that's associated with femininity, is used as a symbol for what Monáe herself has called "pussy power". Musically, she goes with a soft and bubbly synth at first to then erupt with guitar riffs accompanied by Grimes.
Above all, Pynk is a celebration of womanhood, of the long path that feminists around the globe had endured so in 2018 we can have a black queer woman singing about the beauty in her vagina, about the pleasure that it makes her feel (on her own or in the company of a lover, no matter if it's a boy or a girl), and about the power that owning herself has brought to her life and her craft as an artist.
ROSEBUD
U.S. Girls
8
A plot device in the film Citizen Kane, the word "Rosebud" acquired since a new meaning that relates it to that what it's more precious to ourselves, not because of the "thing" itself, but because of the emotional connections it carries. Meg Remy uses that same metaphor a song about taking a trip inside oneself to understand what are the things that make us unique, but it won't be a trip to a zen and pleasant spot, Remy sings, like a mantra "It'll hurt, I promise you".
Being such a political artist, this track comes as a more philosophical and personal take in her catalogue, Rosebud is a reminder that the first fixture we need to address is an interior one. This self-discovery trip might incur in some drastic changes in one's personality and style, and Remy might very well be telling us that her own personal rosebud might have to do with danceable disco music, since she's ditching her noise artsy sounds for a much more seductive beat.
NOBODY
Mitski
7
Nobody, the second single of the album, finds Mitski in one of those vulnerable moments of self-discovery, and, as told by her, is all about going back to a place where you grew up and finding up that there are no ties with the place or the people and experiencing a total loneliness.
Nobody is our most embarrassing moment of fragility, the point when we throw a childish melodramatic tantrum. In the chorus, Mitski only repeats the word "Nobody" until it starts losing its meaning, she gloats in her own misfortune and pairs it with a disco beat that gives it contrast, almost as if she was accentuating the ridicule on her situation. If some of the lyrics of the song seem taken from the dairy of an angst teenager, she is very careful at letting us know that it was on purpose, since she can accompany them with a verse about the global warming destroying Venus, that is a beautiful and bitter comment on the nature of love and on our common behaviors as a society.
MY MY MY!
Troye Sivan
6
Sivan's success would have been unthinkable ten years ago and the existence of a song like My My My! would have only been possible amidst rumors of dating one of the Fifth Harmony members, and tweaks to the lyrics to make it clear that it was sung to a woman, probably its title would have been "My My Girl!". So the existence of a pop hit like this one it's a reason of pride and praise.
It is such a good thought track, charged with confidence and unapologetic sexual freedom, about not escaping a feeling that pop up unexpectedly in the middle of a fling. We know it's a boy singing it to another boy, and that image of "my tongue between your teeth" becomes a powerful lust declaration: queer people are not hiding anymore their displays of affection, and there's no need to find poetic figures to camouflage it anymore, it's very literal queer eroticism happening in front of us.
MALAMENTE
Rosalía
5
Malamente is Rosalía's most daring effort to date. Here, she not only brings freshness to flamenco, but mixes it with one of most important post-millennial trends: trap, but also subverting the negative connotations of it (misogyny, glorification of violence), to challenge at once past and present, the old and the new. She wants to discomfort purists and confront all sorts of toxic masculinity in the way that only a strong talented woman can do.
With rhythmic claps as the backbone of the song, Rosalía starts singing about presenting the break of a crystal, a mysterious dark magic that is replicated in the synths. The imageries of gypsy culture are present all over the lyrics, and she displays her collection of amulets to protect against a bad omen. Rosalía's voice is sensual and effervescent, with hard accents breaking the song and giving it cadence, opposing the vocal curlicues traditional of flamenco singing.
LEMON GLOW
Beach House
4
Lemon Glow is the track that is showing a band that finally understood the importance to explore paths out of their comfort zone, and it is an undulating synth the one that comes to set the difference. It's a simple effect, just a jerky but constant line, but the difference it makes it's huge: we're not anymore inside a silky dream, but in an acid psychedelic trip.
Unequivocally it's a Beach House song (Legrand whispering provocative verses to induce love-making, the layered sound of instruments), but it is definitely a new direction for them. The way that this synth line interacts with the different combinations of sounds is a kaleidoscope that takes us to discover ever-changing colorful forms through the song. The "Lemon Glow" is a beautiful synecdoche: the yellow texture of a dim light to represent the intimacy of making love, but in contrast, it also could be "candy colored misery".
THIS IS AMERICA
Childish Gambino
3
There are a few songs that we just can't dissociate with their music videos, but This is America's is successful because it is a collection of iconic images ready to be distorted and transformed in so many ways to please any set of mind the common viewer might have, and that appropriation in self-edited videos and memes only make the importance of this song even wider. This track is about the states of shock and elation that media is provoking in people. This is America: a country where outrage for a mass killing in a school will be taking less and less space in ours news feed, replaced by memes and quizzes.
Glover contrasts the funky gospel light-hearted opening with broken dark trap beats on the chorus to get this idea of this state of the nation: outraged one second for keen to immerse themselves in online vacuities. Glover's art is highly political and incendiary as it is appealing and immediate. This might be a pop culture hit, but it is also quite an accurate diagnosis of the situation that America is facing.
HONEY
Robyn
2
Teased more than a year ago as the credits song of an episode of Girls, it opened the possibilities of a new Robyn album that was long due since her latest solo album was released in 2010. After much speculation, the final version of Honey was notably different to the one on the TV show, less explosive and more suggestive, charged with a sexual electricity that we had never heard on any of her songs.
Robyn is assertive and commanding: "Come get your honey", she demands after stating that "You're not gonna get what you need, but I have what you want". Her voice is at the front of the track, but the space created by the synths is able to give so much depth and air to her lust whispers. It's not explosive in the usual way bangers are, but the tension of the arousal keeps building in a perpetual tease, an open invitation for mutual pleasure with evocative and arousing images of "some kind of flower stuck in glitter, strands of saliva".
MAKE ME FEEL
Janelle Monáe
1
When in Make Me Feel we feel a immediate connection to Prince's "Kiss", it's because it was the pop royal himself who was in charge of the synth line of the track. But beyond the sound, Make Me Feel is uniquely a Prince tribute thanks to the unchained sexuality that it displays. Monáe's electric personality matches for a new musical sex queer revolution like the one Prince fronted 30 years ago.
Make Me Fell represents the empowerment of enjoying and assuming our own sexuality as a way to free ourselves, instead of as a tight box where we need to fit. For Monáe this freedom makes her feel "like I'm powerful with a little bit of tender; an emotional sexual bender". And indeed, owning herself has allowed Monáe to deliver performances with such strength and self-security that bring the best of the emotional soul legends and the electric rock idols. Make Me Feel is funky, fun and a joyous pop moment with electrifying guitar riffs.
A statement of forward feminism, and a reconstruction of sexual songs, Make Me Feel recognizes the sensations that two human beings can arouse in one another; her feminist sex is an endless exploration and the only limits are the ones stablished by consent.
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