I just don’t understand how some artists get recording contracts. After dinner tonight, as we all sat around sipping our coffee, we began talking about gendered labels and how we each felt about specific terms like “lady” “guys” “girls” etc. The term “biddy” was mentioned and then the term “broad”. One of us questioned whether “biddy” was used often in contemporary songs and so we turned to the laptop, switched off the Air and our licentious music exploration began.
Some of the songs made my jaw drop actually. Mouth hanging open listening to the most ridiculous words being barked at me through the speakers. Honestly, how in God’s name do people listen to this!? In fact, how do they write it!? How do people read the lyrics and go: “Oh yes, perfect. This will be song number 3.” Lines like (and I’m slightly paraphrasing here) “blow my mind, you know which one I mean, the one below the waistline”. What? Really. I’m not even going to address the question of why one of my roommates had all these songs on her laptop.
But really, if these songs were not bad enough to sit and listen to, these are songs that if played in a public space, nothing good comes of it. Maybe I’m scarred from my 7th grade experiences at Batmitzvahs watching all of my metal mouth contemporaries moving their gangly little bodies up and down like robots to a pounding baseline. But no, I have empirical evidence that whenever these songs are played bad things happen. 7th graders grinding: bad. In high school, seeing the people I saw in 7th grade grinding, grinding as 11th graders in someone’s dingy basement: bad. As a freshman in college- seeing people I just met grinding: bad. Back to 7th grade- being peer pressured into grinding: bad. As a senior in college- being drenched in sweat in a dingy basement (back to high school) seeing people grinding (back to 7th grade terror): bad BAD (the second bad was added because you’re sweaty during all of this). Now for people who don’t think grinding is bad, these situations aren’t negative. In fact they may perhaps even be positive- I’ll admit that. And I will also admit that were I a better dancer, if I looked more suave on the dance floor, perhaps I would be more sympathetic to grinding as well. But I’m not. My position as an ungraceful, indie music dancing, women and gender studies major is one where I dismiss this music like a hipster dismissing Coldplay. Yes, I am making this analogy and what’s so special about it is that I bet that hipster vibes to the very Coldplay songs they vehemently denounce in discussions with other hipsters over glasses of PBR. And in fact, I found myself bobbing my head to the Ying Yang Twins. I was, I was bobbing my head I’ll admit it. Michael Jackson’s PYT (pretty young thing) I downright grooved. HOWEVER, just as Coldplay still isn’t cool regardless of whether the song Yellow makes you cry, this licentious music isn’t okay though the baselines are quite energizing. However, I am excited for the next few chapters of my life to unfold. Will this pervasive pattern of grinding continue after college? What about at office functions? At your good girlfriend’s 42nd birthday party? Try to visualize that. Weird.
Shhhh,
Steph
