Victoria Monét’s “Jaguar II” Is Fighting for Queer R&B’s Life

I was late (relatively speaking) to discover Victoria Monét.

Monét has long had cred as a songwriter, having previously written for Brandy, Selena Gomez, and others, in addition to being the pen behind Chloe x Halle’s 2020 hit “Do It” and having written a significant portion of Ariana Grande’s entire library — including picking up a Grammy nomination for her work on Grande’s pop epic “thank u, next.” Still, it wasn’t until until Monét’s turn in front of the mic on the gay as hell “Touch Me,” off of Monét’s 2020 Jaguar EP (it’s about the amazing sex Monét used to have with Kehlani… oh, did I forget to mention that Kehlani is her ex?), that I perked up and paid attention.

The first thing that I caught about “Touch Me,” of course was how hot it was. There are few songs that I’d be willing to call “sex on a track” with a straight face — but it’s obviously at the top of that list. Second and much more lasting though, was that “Touch Me” filled something I had been longing for, craving really, without putting my finger on it and never being quite able to fulfill: it was a legit, mainstream radio play worthy, R&B ballad about two queer Black women.

Queer R&B is hard to come by (and trust, me I spend a lot of time looking). Yes, there’s Janelle Monáe’s Prince influenced love letters pansexual android queerdos flying high on spaceships, and there’s Jamilia Woods alto holding space for those of us Black girls who smell like a little too much coconut oil and our girlfriend’s lipstick coming back from the protest. Obviously, Kehlani is Kehlani. There’s a constellation, however small, of queer girls making their home in one of Black music’s longest traditions. There’s fewer still who have clawed their way to the status of being R&B’s up and coming It Girl, let alone while crooning about a preference for short fingernails or even cracking a weed joke that “it’s a bisexual blunt, it can go both ways” (which yes, is exactly how Monét opens Jaguar II in her 420 tribute “Smoke,” a duet with Lucky Daye).

Part of what has made Monét’s unofficial, but nearly uniformly agreed upon, Next Big Thing crowning so notable is that it comes at a time when R&B overall, depending on which discourse you plug into online, already has its back against the wall. In her review of Jaguar II for Rolling Stone, Mankaprr Coneth notes that “Whereas R&B divas like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Janet Jackson once ruled pop, soul seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of modern music… Maybe it’s because older R&B standards and the music in their lineage are less clippable for social media, relying on build up and slow burn when the internet demands speed and shock.”

To put it more bluntly, as Edward Bowser did in his Jaguar II review for Soul in Stereo: “R&B fans have watched the genre’s biggest legends abandon their core audience to chase trends; we’ve heard literal computer programs corrupt the lush harmonies that defined the genre, pumping out soulless drivel instead; and we’ve seen the art of songwriting – once poetic and heartfelt – crumble into the equivalent of your little niece’s troll tweets.”

I’ve been looking for queer R&B — because try as hard as I might, and as faithful to Mary Lambert’s “She Keeps Me Warm” as any Cancer queer who loves to cry into her morning coffee I might be, acoustic white lesbian coffeehouse jams are never going to be my thing. I grew up in the early 90s recording TLC and Aliyah mixtapes off of the radio in my bedroom. My love songs come in the tune of Keisha Cole, not boygenius. And while I’ll never join the chorus of those who worry that good R&B is dead, it’s hard not to observe the sticky and treacherous landscape it’s been forced to hold of late.

Here enters Victoria Monét’s follow up to her 2020 EP Jaguar with her debut full album, the similarly titled Jaguar II (the Jaguars were originally planned as a set of three, meaning we are smack dab in the middle of whatever Monét is cooking). Standing at just a little over 30 minutes long, Jaguar II is efficient, making the most of every second. Each single feel purposeful, with rich brass horns and smart production choices rounding out Moét’s already silk voice, creating something that I would only know how to describe as sounding like expensive incense, crystals, and the good red lingerie.

Though I would have preferred slightly more diversity in terms of tempo — melodic for melodic sake has never been my preference of choice — it’s impossible not to see Monét’s vision. A well-placed feature from dancehall legend Buju Banton on “Party Girls” expands her horizons, but without feeling like she’s stretching or trying to hard. Equally welcome is Earth, Wind & Fire’s feature on “Hollywood” (a shout out to those of us Black girls who grew up with Earth, Wind, & Fire on our Mama’s cleaning the house mix). I’ve written about “On My Mama” before, but it’s hard to undersell what a standout it is. Monét’s penchant for a earworm hook has never been better on display than in her glossed-up sample of Charlie Boy’s 2009 song “I Look Good” (Boy’s version was long a TikTok feel good sample, and now Monét’s has quickly pushed beyond every expectation). Jaguar II borrows from pop, dancehall, hip hop, disco, funk in ways that the R&B gods themselves intended. It’s the kind of album that could have landed at any point in the last 50 years and found its play cousins.

After she publicly came out as bisexual in 2018, Monét noted that one of the best changes in her life was the ability to write the correct pronouns of the love interests in her songs. It’s a small thing, really, but the opportunity to be yourself on your own terms — it tends to bleed everywhere. It makes you more full, complete, better. That same confidence is felt throughout Jaguar II and it’s wild to think: for Victoria Monét, this is still only a start.

You can stream Jaguar II now.

“Age of Pleasure” Has a Track For Each Summer Sexy Mood

How has it been five years since Janelle Monáe released her last album? It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, but here we are. Their new album, The Age of Pleasure dropped earlier this month, and I was not ready. When their first single “Float” was released back in February, I was curious as to the direction the album was going to take. “Float” sounds like a Janelle Monáe song, but that’s also because her style is constantly evolving. It didn’t give us a whole lot of indication of what the rest of the album would sound like, but it was definitely a departure from the android/computer persona Monáe had previously inhabited. They were going to be tapping into a new part of themselves, and I don’t think any of us could have been ready for it.

Instead of doing this like a traditional review, I’m going to take you all on the journey of listening to The Age of Pleasure for the first time. I knew this album was going to be sensual, if not downright sexy. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been paying rapt attention to the aesthetic of this album. Janelle said “titties out” and I have no choice but to enthusiastically endorse this decision. ENTHUSIASTICALLY. Who am I to question their motives? I can only respect the process. Anyways, here we go!

“Float”

The first words we hear are “no, I’m not the same.” Clearly they are telling us upfront that we’re in for something completely different than we are used to. Right out of the gate, they’re coming at us with swagger, a different kind of swagger than we’re used to. It’s confidence, not bravado. Floating through life is something that is equal to freedom. And by embracing her identity, she is freeing herself from the expectations of others. “Float” is the levity of self-acceptance.

This is the song for when you’re laying out in the sun
Whether you’re at the beach, the pool, or even laying in the grass on a blanket at the park, this song just screams summer.

“Champagne Shit” & “Black Sugar Beach”

This song comes out grooving — I instantly want to start dancing when I hear it. (I’m immediately adding it to several playlists) Like, I can immediately picture dancing to this in a dimly lit room with a bunch of other sweaty bodies around me. “Champagne Shit” has more of that braggadocious kind of swagger over an infectious drum beat. “Black Sugar Beach” is the outro to “Champagne Shit”, and you don’t even realize they’re two different songs.

This is the song for when you want to get the party started
If you want to pop bottles and put on your dancing shoes, this is the song that gets you there.

“Phenomenal” (feat. Doechii)

“I’m looking at a thousand versions of myself, and we’re all fine as fuck.” Okay! I’m liking what this song is putting down. Even through the African drumbeat at the heart of the song, it’s very sensual and even seducing. Again, it’s a song that I can picture dancing to, but also using to set the mood for some sexual activity. I like to switch up the kind of music I use for foreplay, and this song will definitely be going on the list.

This is the song for when you need to hype yourself up
We all need a little hype sometimes. Put this on and get a little hop in your step.

“Haute”

In addition to being an incredible musician and rising actor, Janelle Monáe is a known fashionista. The Met Gala is always infinitely better when they’re walking the red carpet. “Haute” usually refers to couture clothing, but in this case, it’s a play on the word “hot”, which is also incredibly clever. The whole song is a repeat of feeling sexy, hot and feeling themself.

This is the song for when you’re feeling yourself
I mean this more figuratively. If you’re feeling cute, put this song on.

“Oooh La La” (feat. Grace Jones)

Grace Jones is an absolute ICON, and I love this pairing so much. It’s only thirty-five seconds of Grace Jones speaking French, but I still love it? I do truly wish it was a full song, but this is still magnifique!

This is the song for when you need a minute to yourself
This is a brief interlude, so it gives you a second to collect yourself and get in the right headspace.

“Lipstick Lover”

I still haven’t fully recovered from the music video for this song. You may recall how it melted many brains here at Autostraddle. I’ve listened to this song many times already, but I finally figured out that the first line of the pre-chorus “Cause for your love, I’ll take my time” is a Stevie Wonder lyric! It has been haunting me every time I listen, so I finally looked it up. Stevie Wonder is credited as one of the songwriters on the track as well.

This is the song for when you want to seduce someone
It’s a sexy song, we all know this. It feels like fingertips brushing down a jaw or a back; pure seduction.

“The Rush” (feat. Nia Long & Amaarae)

Nia Long’s voice is so seductive on this song. I don’t go here, but even I’m looking twice. This song signifies the tonal shift of the album from self-love and pleasure to pleasuring someone else. “Pussy gonna lay go down, make you rest in peace, Fuckin’ you like it’s my destiny. God, what’s come over me?” Adding this to my playlist immediately!

This is the song for when you’re making your move
It’s heady, it feels like the moment you give over to pure feeling and forget how to think; you’re acting on instinct.

“The French 75” (feat. Sister Nancy)

A French 75 is a gin and champagne cocktail, and this song sounds like it was recorded in a bar. The whole song is just a long toast.

This is the song for when you’re not paying attention
This song is really just background noise, quite literally. You don’t really need to think about it.

“Water Slide”

And now I see why the album is called The Age of Pleasure. “Water Slide” is one hundred percent about self-pleasure. “I’m holdin’ my breath with my eyes closed, I can swim solo. Feelin’ all around for the right spot, Playin’ Marco Polo.” Need I say more? I do not think so!

This is the song for when you’re feeling yourself
I mean that literally. If you want to turn your body into a slip n’ slide, put this on and have at it.

“Know Better” (feat. CKay, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80)

Opening with a strong brass section and Afro-Caribbean beats, this song is pure seduction. I’m getting the energy of a person you see across the room at a bar and you are instantly drawn to them. You know it’s not going to last for more than one night, but you want that night to go on as long as it can. I really love the brass on this song.

This is the song for when you need to make a move
The beat just propels you forward, whether it’s to make your move on someone or something.

“Paid in Pleasure”

This feels like a follow-up to the song before. They were able to seduce the person into a one night stand, and now we’re getting to hear what happens during that night. With lyrics like “I lick, lick, lick from you nectar,” it sounds like it was a GREAT night.

This is the song for when you want to set the mood
This is pure, unadulterated sex. Go forth and do with that what you will.

“Only Have Eyes 42”

I don’t know if this is yet another continuation of the songs before it, but I feel like a fly on the wall of a very sexy evening. Monáe samples one of my favorite songs, “I Only Have Eyes For You”, using it to declare their interest in two different sexual (maybe romantic) partners. The song is brief, but very intimate.

This is the song for when you want to seal the deal

There is a singular focus to this song, and it will remind you to keep your eyes on the prize.

“A Dry Red”

It feels fitting to end the song with one last plea for the pleasure they’ve been experiencing for the last four or five songs. They’re almost begging, but it doesn’t sound desperate, it’s almost wistful. Clearly, this person has made an impact on them in a way that they haven’t been able to forget since the summer, and while we have no idea how much time has passed, it’s clear there was a strong connection between them and the person they’re pining for.

This is the song for when the night is over
If you’re still starry eyed, put “A Dry Red” on and be transported back to the moments of pleasure.

And that’s it!

My biggest complaint about The Age of Pleasure is that it’s only thirty-two minutes long. Just as the album starts to really hit its stride, it’s over! I know that short albums are the style right now, but I miss albums that were at least forty-five minutes long. It feels too much like foreplay; I was left buzzy and wanting more.

Joy Oladokun’s “Proof of Life” Will Save Your Soul

Decades from now, I imagine I will be sitting around a campfire in the woods with my oldest friends – queerdos who have retired to the mountains with our dogs, partners, and guaranteed incomes. Wearing flannel and overalls, one of my friends will light a blunt. [Calm yourself – it will be legal everywhere by then.] Another will throw out a question to our group, “So where were you when you first heard Joy Oladokun’s Proof of Life?”

Some of us will quietly think. One of my friends, the one with the voice of an angel, will sing a bit of the chorus from the final track on the album, “Somehow:”

I know what goes up comes down
And if you stick around
Life can change with the weather
Oh, somehow things just get better

Maybe someone will join in with the chorus, and I will smile, remembering the first time I heard those words. It was another cold, gray Friday in Ohio. I was neck-deep in work, as I always was back then. The world was on fire – as it always is somewhere. I will say that I played the album from top to bottom the morning it was released. I will tell my friends about how I repeated it until the sun shined a few days later, how I knew it would be an album that I would hold dearly just as the songs held me.

I imagine my friends will all nod, smile in agreement, and we will spend the evening swapping stories and bits of Proof of Life. We’ll talk about that time in our lives – when some of us wanted to die, when others that we loved did, and when we were just trying to make it through each day while our world was crumbling. We will toast to freedom and Joy Oladokun, the queer Black Bruce Springsteen of our generation, for an album that brought us to this moment.

If you’re still reading, I recommend stopping here. I recommend getting in a car, finding a backroad to drive down with the windows down (mountains preferred), and blasting Proof of Life through the speakers. Maybe ask a friend or lover to accompany you — definitely not a hater though, this ain’t no hating music. This album is holy water.

With her fourth studio release, Nigerian-American Joy Oladokun sought to bring the world an album that sees us, everyday folks, in our struggles and offers us a glimpse of hope. In short, she succeeds. Released last Friday, Proof of Life is a collection of tender ballads, uplifting anthems, and truth-filled realities that encapsulates what it means to be “just trying to make it” in this moment. It’s music for those of us who are growing, loving, aching, and wandering aimlessly (and sometimes hopefully) through a world on fire.

Like her previous albums, the thirteen-track masterpiece showcases Oladokun’s voice which is somehow always equal parts raspy and smooth as butter. With production and songwriting collaborations from some heavy hitters, Proof of Life has got the juice to make it an instant indie classic.

If you’re a fan of Oladokun (or even just an indie music fan), there’s probably a chance you’ve already heard a few of the tracks on Proof of Life. The album’s first single, “Keeping the Lights On,” actually dropped in January 2022 right after her Austin City Limits performance. Co-written with industry titans, Mike Elizondo and Ian Fitchuk, it is your typical uplifting indie-pop anthem. In it, Joy Oladokun sets the tone for the rest of the album – this is an album that sees us fighting through the darkness. Her voice reminds us, “It ain’t easy” to keep the light on but Joy says, “we won’t let go” and it’s easy to believe her.

Other standout singles from Proof of Life include “Sweet, Sweet Symphony,” a dreamy duet with Chris Stapleton, and “We’re All Gonna Die” which features Noah Kahan. The Stapleton duet is exactly what you might expect – perfect in all of the ways. If you’re a queer couple looking for your wedding song, this might be it. I’m actually considering re-marrying my wife just to slow dance to it under some twinkle lights in a repurposed barn. As if that wasn’t enough, the video for the song is probably the cutest thing I’ve seen in ages.

When I first heard Oladokun’s duet with Kahan, “We’re All Gonna Die,” I first thought, “damn, this is so relatable.” The song’s sound is upbeat (think the aughts pop-rock), but the message definitely feels so connected to the activism and feelings of so many of us millennials and Gen Z-ers – reflective of generations screaming, fighting, and escaping our way to the end of the world.

Three years into a pandemic that has changed our lives, Proof of Life feels like one of the few albums that somehow finds a way to capture the grief and uneasiness that accompanies our daily existence. In “Changes” (first released February 2023, cowritten with Semisonic frontman, Dan Wilson), Oladokun sings, “people still don’t understand / What it’s like to hope again and again knowing / That heartache’s gonna be there ’til the end.” I have thought about “Changes” almost every day since I first heard it earlier this year. In these words (and rest in the song), Joy’s queerness, Blackness, and loving spirit shine in the raw and hopeful truth-telling. This is not the only song where this happens. On “Taking Me for Granted” and “Somebody Like Me,” Oladokun’s smoothness is backed by gospel choirs (shout out to the amazing The McCrary Sisters) that leave me feeling as blessed as my grandmama did after Sunday service. Think: Black Church vibes but queer with guitar (+ post-church brunch).

This album is worth listening to just for the last minute of “Somebody Like Me” which makes me just want to yell, “Go ahead and pass the collection plate!” Church is in session and Pastor Joy is in the pulpit.

She comes by her holiness honestly – she was raised in the church and led worship services growing up. But Joy Oladokun always keeps it real about the nuances of her journey with sexuality, spirituality, and life. Another raw ballad, “The Hard Way,” begins “​​Jesus raised me, good weed saved me.” All the queers say, “Amen!”

With the exception of one track, “Revolution,” that I’m still learning to love – Oladokun does not miss. Don’t get me wrong, “Revolution” is a beautiful song with an even lovelier message of community and change. Whenever I hear it, I think, “montage of underdog boxer training in their old gym for a big fight.” I guess the “miss” is not really anything Oladokun did, except for keeping the Maxo Kream feature on this song. I love some of Maxo’s work, but this weak verse gives “weird Christian rapper” vibes in the middle of the song. I hate to say it but… was Macklemore not available for this one? These days, Maxo is caught up in some legal trouble so I doubt they’ll ever perform it live together (which might also be a blessing in disguise).

Joy Oladokun’s Proof of Life is top-shelf gold. There’s a song for everyone (unless you’re a racist homo/transphobe – if that’s you, there are no songs for you). With soulful refrains and sounds that wrap you in warmth, this album is a reminder that we’re not so alone in this sh*t of a world and leaves us believing that somehow things will get better.

You can stream Proof of Life now.

“Forever Means” EP Creates Perfect Bridge Between Angel Olsen’s Past, Present, and Future

The first time I heard Angel Olsen’s music was in the back of a small record store in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in 2011. She was accompanying Will Oldham (known by the stage name Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) on his Free Florida Tour as a member of his “Cairo Gang,” and she also got to open the show with a few songs of her own. Like Oldham and the rest of the gang on tour, her short set was very bare bones — just her and her acoustic guitar. And honestly, she didn’t need anymore than that. From the moment she started singing, the whole room went quiet, everyone’s eyes (and ears) fixated on this woman with the most luminous voice some of us had ever heard live. Even though I was there to finally see Old perform live in my hometown after spending the few years prior traveling around the country to see him, I walked away that night with more than just the fullness of his performance. I wanted to know who Olsen was and how I could hear her voice more often.

When I got home that night, I scoured the blogs I was familiar with at the time looking for more information on her and her work. I eventually found a six-song EP she released a couple months prior called Strange Cacti. The songs on the EP were as immediately arresting as her performance was that night. With its lo-fi production and its clean but complex arrangements, Strange Cacti was the perfect showcase of Olsen’s luminous voice. But more than that, it also showed off her ability to tell beautifully constructed stories through her lyrics and to arrange complex compositions in ways that make them feel as if they’re floating on air. I was hooked. And I knew I’d follow her work probably for the rest of my life.

Since 2011, Olsen’s career has moved forward in the most incredible way. She has not only held onto the shimmering promise of her early work; she’s just gotten more and more talented. In a level of productivity I could only hope to aspire to, she’s released six full-length studio albums, one compilation of b-sides and demons, and four EPs — all with varying thematic explorations of disappointment, despair, loneliness, and hope and with shifting experimentation in genre and song structure. Olsen’s bent towards eloquent and ornate instrumentation and heavier composition has become more and more prevalent with each new release, showing her voice is just one of many stunning tools she has at her disposal. Last summer, she released Big Time, her lushest, warmest, and most explicit homage to the country music that informed much of her youth, to great acclaim and once again proved her ability to tell thoughtful and poignant stories in addition to moving effortlessly through a new genre.

I know this seems like a wildly long lead up to a review for her newest release, the Forever Means EP, but I think that it’s important to have context for the songs she produced for it. As was highly publicized during the release of Big Time, Olsen’s life for the couple years preceding its release took massive twists and turns: She fell in love, publicly came out as a queer, and lost her parents within the span of a few weeks. When you think about it, it’s truly amazing then that such a hopeful, tender, coherent, and commanding album came out in the wake of all that. The tracks on Forever Means not only help cement Olsen’s previous work and Big Time to each other but also provide some insight into how the work on Big Time came to be.

Produced during the recording of Big Time, the four tracks on Forever Means are not nearly as stripped down as Olsen’s early work but they feel the most reminiscent of it out of anything she’s produced in the years since Strange Cacti came out. More than that, it feels like the culmination of a career spent experimenting with the expansiveness and limits of her own capabilities.The EP opens with the slow, imposing notes of “Nothing’s Free,” which has the kind of patient piano composition that makes you feel as if it’s building to something much bigger. “Here it comes,” begins the song in Olsen’s swaying lilt, “feel it break that old cell / The one you thought had kept you safe.” Horns come in to accompany the piano and the light drum beat as she continues, “Here it comes / No way to stop it now / I’m broken / Down for you like no one else.” This gives way to a kind of jazzy saxophone solo that helps usher on the rest of the instrumental swells. Somehow, still, Olsen’s voice and her exploration of the feeling of discomfort that’s felt when you’re finally trying to allow yourself to be vulnerable and emotionally honest stand out amongst the ballad-like turns of the instruments.

The title track, “Forever Means,” was, according to Olsen, written during the production of her 2019 album All Mirrors, but came back to her when she was writing Big Time. It is the most evocative of Olsen’s early work in terms of style, but the lyrics present a wider picture of the growth Olsen’s experienced since the beginning of her career. Olsen’s voice is at the forefront of the song with light electric guitar playing to accompany it. She sings:

Forever means always looking,
Forever means trying to see,
Forever means saying what’s on your mind,
Forevеr means always trying to find,
Forever mеans make sure, take your time,
Forever in your eyes
Forever in your eyes
I see you when you shine

Where her earlier work, particularly on her second full-length LP, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, often highlighted her ruminations on the ends of things — relationships, experiences, feelings, etc. — “Forever Means,” like most of the work on Big Time, is focused on the concept of “forever” within the context of intimate relationships and how we grow up, age, and grow old with others. To Olsen, “forever” doesn’t just mean holding on to someone, but also holding them dear.

The last two tracks on the album take turns stylistically toward Olsen’s work on All Mirrors and My Woman, but definitely showcase her songwriting’s thematic progression throughout all of her work. “Time Bandits” has a dreamy, vibrating composition that will remind many listeners of the new wave and post-punk slow jams of the late 1980s. Over playful drums and wistful synths, Olsen proclaims, “I want you, I want you, I need you right now / To be here and lay down and get on the ground / And hear it, feel it, know that you’re bound / To the Earth, to each other, and that’s where it’s found.” It provides a great book end to the emotional urgency she’s created in her work on the EP and on Big Time. This is Olsen at her most vulnerable in terms of expressing desire for another person’s love and attention.

“Holding On” takes us back to some of Olsen’s pre-Big Time songwriting, where she examines the pains and consequences of loss, but it also serves as the EP’s glittering climax. The psychedelic guitar style and choppy drums give way to a rising string arrangement producing a fullness in the song that makes it feel as if it’s hovering right above you. Olsen’s vocals are once again the guiding force of the track as she delivers melodies from all over her range and some of the most somber songwriting on the whole EP. “Holding On” ends the EP but doesn’t exactly provide a sense of finale. Instead, where the rest of the tracks help point us toward the work she’s produced so far, “Holding On” provides a sense of futurity, showing us where her work might be heading next.

As I finished the EP, I found myself immediately starting it over to listen again from the beginning. Although Forever Means is only four tracks long, it is a perfect bridge between Olsen’s past, present, and future. It showcases Olsen’s ability to move easily and freely through several genres, styles, and themes, and helps reflect back the over decade-long career she’s had of creating work that is emotionally resonant and sonically ambitious. They aren’t just “tracks that didn’t fit on the album.” They are little worlds of their own, calling us forward while recalling what’s available to us in the past. If “forever means” always searching, always exploring, always trying, then this EP is a gorgeous example of Olsen doing exactly that in her work.

Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” Is an Unapologetic Dedication to Blackness and Queerness

The first time I learned about sampling was because of Beyoncé. I was no older than five or six when my childhood friend and I would curate dance performances for our mothers — and Beyoncé was always the soundtrack. We’d design zany, rather camp outfits using princess dresses that barely fit anymore and random accessories to complete our looks. We strutted and danced to “Crazy in Love” and “Déjà Vu,” two young Black girls turning the small Crenshaw living room into our powerful main stage.

Without fail, every time “Crazy in Love” came on, my mom would remind me: “She got this sound from the Chi-Lites! My generation of music is the blueprint!” She’d play the original song “Are You My Woman? (Tell me So)” during the car ride home. This blew my young mind! Growing up, I was in love with the music that came before me. Truly my mother’s child, I loved music from the 60s-90s with a passion. For Beyoncé to not only honor and reference the sounds that came before, but to push them forward into a new era dripped in her flavor and style — she won my heart and respect from a very young age. With my mother’s ear for samples, I’ve grown to see sampling, when done well, as a love language, a way to remain connected to our history and communicate with the musical innovators who shaped, and continue to breathe life into, our culture.

Now, of course, Beyoncé did not invent sampling. As The-Dream — a featured writer and producer on her new album Act I: Renaissance, in addition to other Beyoncé hits like “1+1” — pointed out on Twitter, there is a long history of Black artists sampling, especially within the hip-hop and house genres. But what Beyoncé did invent is the lane she has worked hard to cultivate for decades and occupies as one of the few artists alive today who is not only an immensely talented singer and performer, but a fervent, unrelenting student — of music, of dance, of culture. And in her true Virgo Sun Scorpio Moon nature, she makes it clear that she does this out of the purest love, loyalty, and dedication to her family, her culture, her fans, her passion, and her craft.

As a long time and dedicated member of the Beyhive, it was no surprise to me that her newest release, the first act of Renaissance, is a phenomenal piece of art. Executive produced by Beyoncé, it’s thoughtfully written and produced, with each note, harmony, sample, and interpolation intentionally placed and woven throughout to create a cohesive body of work that honors not only the Black queer icons who shaped and paved music and life as we know it today, but also honors Beyoncé’s growth as a musician. However, I am still shocked at how she has once again “raised the bar” — and did it flawlessly. Beyoncé is not afraid of evolution, and her new album is a testament to that.

Through this futuristic album full of 70s/80s house, disco, soul, R&B, and even gospel sounds, Beyoncé shines vocally while giving us a story of rebirth and joy, of renewal of love and light — and not only within herself, but for all who listen. In honor of her late Godmother Uncle Jonny, Beyoncé writes that her album is dedicated to “to all of the pioneers who originate culture, to all of the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long.” Renaissance is like a call into prayer as she invites all of us — but especially Black queer folks and Black femmes — to join her prayer-line during a time filled with such darkness and sorrow and find a renewed sense of love for ourselves, for each other.

Renaissance begins with “I’m That Girl,” which features a sample of “Still Pimpin” by Tommy Wright III (ft. Mac-T Dog & Princess Loko) and a deliberate tone that commands you to sit up and pay attention, as the Queen has arrived and she’s still that girl. She melodically transports you into a sonic cinematic world of soul, harmony, and empowerment. The song builds to a signature Beyoncé bridge full of energy and power as she lets us know that “motherfuckers ain’t stopping” her.

From here, she seamlessly transitions into “Cozy,” the first transitions of many that reflect the excellent music production accomplished on and exhibited by this album. This track utilizes a sample of Lidell Townsell and M.T.F’s’s “Get With U,” providing us with the catchy bassline that grounds the song. From the production power of trans music icon Honey Dijon, the commanding voice of trans activist and TV personality Ts Madison, to the “Unique” adlib and bassline from Peter Rauhofer and Kim Cooper’s New York gay club circuit hit, Renaissance stands firm in its intention to serve as an unapologetic dedication to Blackness and queerness — reminding us that we are “gods,” “heroes,” “confident,” and “lethal.”

In “Alien Superstar,” Beyoncé continues to push her sound forward. Traces of “Sweet Dreams” from I Am…Sasha Fierce and “Haunted” from her self-titled album can be heard as she builds off her music repertoire to give us enchanting, magical, powerful pop melodies and vocals that transport us to outer space. In the same way that Lady Gaga has her Monsters, Beyoncé now has her Aliens — a symbol that represents the embracing of our queerness, our boldness, our uniqueness. Queer folks continue to bring Beyoncé’s music to life with 070 Shake, NOVA Wav, and DJ Honey Dijon giving us the vocals, songwriting, and production needed to create this galactic Ballroom energy. The featured “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred interpolation is catchy, fun, and elevates the mood even further, while the interpolation of “Moonraker” by Foremost Poets further emphasizes the intergalactic tone. She ends this iconic track with an outro featuring words from Barbara Ann Teer, emphasizing the daring eccentricity that is core to Blackness and queerness, highlighting how “We dress a certain way/We walk a certain way/We talk a certain way/ We, we paint a certain way/We, we make love a certain way, you know?/All of these things we do in a different/ Unique, specific way that is personally ours/We just reaching out to the solar system.”

Our previous track took us to outer space, yet Beyoncé still “wanna go higher” in “Cuff It.” Here she captures 80s disco and shows the depths of her vocal range. Images of Beyoncé roller skating in her “Blow” visual flood my mind whenever I listen. “Cuff It” reminds us how joyful and fun experiencing life and love can be. The post-chorus verses are particularly memorable, giving us a deep groove that leaves listeners no choice but to dance and feel the love permeate throughout your body. The samples of Teena Marie’s “Square Biz” and “Good Times” by Nile Rodgers & Chic accentuate the vibe and era that Beyoncé is aiming to embody, with the subtle interpolation of “Ooo La La La” by Marie further defining the track. Between the excellent percussion brought to us by icon Sheila E, the groovy lyrics and composition from Nile Rogers, and the funky bassline and horns from Raphael Saadiq, Beyoncé shows us again that she is a student of her craft.

In “Energy,” Beyoncé asks us to recharge as we get ready to liberate ourselves in “Break My Soul.” New Orleans bounce legend Big Freedia commands us to release our stressors, be free, and love one another as Beyoncé fuses house and gospel through her samples of “Show Me Love” by Robin S. and “Explode” by Big Freedia, while her background vocals take us to church, which perfectly ushers in her next track, “Church Girl.”

Opening with a Clark Sisters sample, in “Church Girl,” Beyoncé takes a moment to preach to the masses, highlighting the plights of her past and of those in the Black and queer community who have to “move mountains” in the face of struggle. As always, Beyoncé incorporates her southern roots, soulfully imploring listeners to embrace ourselves and our culture, because we are the embodiment of love. Similar to the styling of B’Day’s “Get Me Bodied”— which also utilizes the same classic bounce sample “The Drag Rap” by Showboys in the Homecoming version, Beyoncé instructs all the baddies listening to “drop it like a thottie” and “twirl that ass like you came up out the South.”

Got to listen to Syd’s track, PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA, with her last night in the middle of a Tokyo 🌈bar last night. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/ImvpBAxL34

— Jeremy O. Harris (@jeremyoharris) July 29, 2022

Her first slow jam on the album, “Plastic Off the Sofa” utilizes Beyoncé’s ability to artistically, yet precisely, manipulate her vocal tone to paint a rich and divine picture of true love. Queer musicians are further highlighted on this track, with Syd featured as a co-writer and co-producer, as well as Sabrina Claudio as a co-producer and background vocalist. I can hear their respective artistry combining to help Beyoncé cultivate a Venusian vibe that Syd (alongside her bandmate Patrick Paige II from The Internet, who is also a co-writer and bassist on this track) and Claudio both curate in their own music. “Plastic Off the Sofa” transitions perfectly into “Virgo’s Groove,” a six minute sensation that transports you to the sweaty dance floor right in your own bedroom. Musically, “Virgo’s Groove” is like “Blow” and “Partition“‘s grandchild, like “Kitty Kat” and “Greenlight“‘s love child. It’s an invigorating, sensual groove that reflects the boundless love that Beyoncé is expressing lyrically, further conveyed with her smooth runs and Destiny’s Child-inspired harmonies at the end of the track.

With runs and harmonies that remind me of “Naughty Girl” and “Beautiful Liar,” Renaissance’s “Move” is for the girls with boss energy. It opens with the great and powerful Grace Jones commanding us to get on our feet, dance, and make room for what is to come. With the help of dancehall producer MeLo-X, Afrobeat DJ Guilty Beatz, and Afro-pop singer Tems,  “Move” has a bold and empowering electric vibe that is reminiscent of Beyoncé’s experimentation on Black is King. Beyoncé continues to build on this Ballroom-meets-dancehall-meets-R&B sound in “Heated,” with the hit-making, songwriting genius of Drake, alongside music production from Boi-1da and Sevn Thomas (both responsible for hits like Rihanna’s “Work“), as the cherries on top that perfect her sound. She gives her beautiful Uncle Jonny numerous shoutouts throughout the track, paying homage to his style and grace as she sings “Uncle Jonny made my dress/That cheap Spandex, she looks a mess” in true Ballroom shade fashion. And with the help of LilJuMadeDaBeat, the same producer that gave us hits like Megan Thee Stallion’s “Big Ole Freak,” Beyoncé follows “Heated” with “Thique,” a hip-hop, pop, electric, house fusion perfect for the club.

Renaissance’s final four tracks are some of the most memorable on the album. “All Up In Your Mind” is an experimental pop track full of raspy, galactic vocals that remain stuck in my head. “America Has A Problem” features a sample of Kilo Ali’s “Cocaine (America Has A Problem)” with orchestral hits and invigorating background vocals that will have you up and pop locking like you’re on Soul Train. While the original song makes a statement about the effects of drug addiction on the Black community, Beyoncé’s version is about the high places her love will take you. “Pure” is the most house-forward song on Renaissance, with audacious, bold, “cunty” lyrics about her technique and fabulous spirit that embody the energy of Ballroom tradition. “Pure” transforms into a Prince-inspired music experience during “Honey,” with unapologetically queer samples such as “Cunty” by Kevin Aviance, “Miss Honey” by Moi Renee, and “Feels Like” by MikeQ ft. Kevin Jz Prodigy. Featuring an interpolation of disco queen Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” the album finishes off just as strong as it began, with Beyoncé giving us a church-like praise break at the end of house/R&B track “Summer Renaissance” — demanding we join in with a round of applause in honor of the celebration of life and love we embarked on together during this album, which leaves us waiting for more.

Renaissance is a musical love letter to the Black queer community. In a time plagued by resurgence of pandemics, transphobia, homophobia, and anti-blackness, Beyoncé reminds us that no one can judge us but us as her heavenly vocals emphasize that we were “born free.” She has made room for us to be bold, breathe, scream, dance, and smile — while honoring the musical genres and cultures born out of Blackness and queerness, at a time when those in power are trying to erase us.

Beyoncé has grown into an unapologetic music superstar that consistently studies and evolves. Her cultivated power has birthed this album that represents the very things she sings about: love, light, togetherness, empowerment, boldness, uniqueness, divinity, and pride. And while the first act of Renaissance is an excellent project based on the production value alone, what is most magical about this album lies within Beyoncé’s loving devotion to her craft and her people. Beyoncé’s music feels like love — and that’s because it is love. Her love is her loyalty, her dedication to evolution, and despite being at the height of her decades-long career, she remains loyal to musicianship and to her fans. She will stop at nothing but perfection, and I can’t wait to see what she has in store for us in the next two acts.

Lesbian Jesus Rises! Hayley Kiyoko Gets Vulnerable on Sophomore Album “PANORAMA”

This summer really is for the girls, gays, and theys. We’re out at brunches and beaches. Beyoncé and Lizzo came out with new music. Oh, and the second coming of THE Lesbian Jesus, AKA Hayley Kiyoko, happened this past Friday.

PANORAMA is Kiyoko’s sophomore album, following the release of Expectations in 2018. In between that time, she released EP I’m Too Sensitive For This Shit in 2020. The album also follows the recent news of her confirmed long-term relationship with former Bachelor contestant Becca Tilley. The title of her new album is fitting: PANORAMA takes on a more mature, rounded tone. It shows that Kiyoko is more in tune with herself. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the singer stated: “I feel like I know myself more than I ever did”.

The usual pop-synthetic sounds that Kiyoko is known for are prominent throughout the album. It starts with “sugar at the bottom,” a fuck you anthem to an ex-lover who’s now “someone else’s problem.” This confidence and growth from toxic relationships are themes that appear more than once in
PANORAMA.

In “well…“, Kiyoko struts with charm and shows off her newfound growth:

“I’m looking hot as hell…/
And girl I’m gonna flaunt it…/
I know I’m doing well and everyone can tell I’m doing better than
You!”

And, yes, I’m eating it up, absolutely obsessed.

But there are more than messed-up relationships to be found on the album. We all know the “for the girls” music video is inspired by the Bachelor, the reality TV show Kiyoko’s current lover Tilley is well known for. While listening to “forever” and “deep in the woods,” I channeled my inner Carrie Bradshaw, and I couldn’t help but wonder if these romantic tracks about deep love are about Tilley. During the chorus of “deep in the woods”, Kiyoko sings:

“I know I met you in another life/
You’re unforgettable/
It’s like you’re my dream, my déjà vu, a ghost/
You’ll be right there wherever I go.”

It’s not confirmed whether or not these songs are actually about Tilley, but let’s be real. These lyrics can make any heart swell, any listener swoon.

Kiyoko has been open about feeling lost and grappling with her mental health. PANORAMA showcases these things and is arguably Kiyoko’s most vulnerable album. In “supposed to be,” she reflects on a failed relationship but doesn’t have the confidence that’s in “sugar at the bottom” or “someone else’s problem.” She wonders what’s wrong with her, why things in reality didn’t play out as what played in her head. The track “underground” starts with Kiyoko admitting “it’s hard enough to wake up” and she’s been “avoiding conversation.” Though these are raw and soft moments, Kiyoko still manages to shine bright and connect with listeners.

“Found my friends”, released as a single over a year ago, is my personal favorite song on PANORAMA. Instead of beating herself up and being her own enemy, Kiyoko makes peace with herself and becomes her own friend. It’s a sweet message that inspires us to treat ourselves with patience and kindness, which is especially important during a pandemic and constant political chaos.

There are moments where the album feels repetitive. Songs like “flicker start” and “underground” take on a far too similar sound and have the common themes of loneliness and internal struggle. The similar sound makes it difficult for songs to stand out and, after listening to the album a second time, I felt the need to skip some tracks. However, none of the songs are bad individually. They’re good to listen to on a walk to the grocery store, at a dinner party with your chosen family, or during a solo dancing session in your bedroom.

All of Kiyoko’s discography holds a special place in my heart. With the iconic song “Girls Like Girls” back in 2015 alone, she paved the way for so many queer artists and helped a whole generation of young queer people feel seen. Music is still dominated by songs of great heterosexual romances; Kiyoko’s songs of lesbian love, heartbreak, and joy disrupt that. As an adult, I still get all giddy inside just from Kiyoko singing about loving other women, because it’s refreshing to hear her lyrics after listening to all the straight love songs on the radio. I can’t stress enough her impact and the importance of her music. PANORAMA, filled with passion, vulnerability, and heart, is the newest contribution to that.

MUNA Songs Ranked by Their Song-of-the-Summer Potential

For a while there, I felt like “Silk Chiffon” was everywhere. The first single off of MUNA’s new self-titled album (which is the first released under their new label, Saddest Factory, run by the queen of sad white girls Ms. Phoebe Bridgers) went viral on TikTok, paid homage to But I’m a Cheerleader and generally just infected a few months with a little earworm. Having worn OUT the Repeat 1 button on Spotify listening to the song Number One Fan off the band’s previous album, I feel qualified to say: MUNA knows how to make a song of the season.

Silk Chiffon was extremely cute or whatever but MUNA straight up put designer drugs in Number One Fan

— analyssa (@analoca_) March 24, 2022

If “Silk Chiffon” was the song of the spring (winter?), then I’m here to encourage you to find your song of the summer from the rest of the tracks.

“Silk Chiffon”

Y’all already know this one, and so does every TikTok queer for miles. If it’s not broke, etc. You want to stick with a classic, this one’s for you.

Blast when: you’ve got the sun on your face and the wind in your hair, whether that’s rollerblading, driving in the car, or sitting on the porch.

“Loose Garment”

One of a few breakup songs on this album, this is not about regretting the breakup itself or wishing that you were still with an ex, but just being sad about the end of a relationship that ultimately couldn’t work and not quite able to shake it. That’s gay culture! I’m all about pretending sadness doesn’t exist this summer, but for my saddies (combo sad grrl/baddies) out there, maybe this is your hit!

Blast when: you wanna wallow a little bit, but ONLY a little bit.

“Kind of Girl”

One for my contemplative girls and gays! A song about resisting boxing yourself in, loving all your flaws and wanting more. It’s more downbeat than most of the other songs on the album, the only reason it’s not higher on the list, but one thing I love about this album is none of the songs are content with just being sad: they’re hopeful and lilting and most importantly, still bangers.

Blast when: you want to emote while singing. In college, there was an “acting through singing” course (yes I was a theater major) — this is a perfect song for that class.

“Shooting Star”

I wish this song was…louder? That’s truly my biggest criticism on the album, is this one song’s volume. Pretty good, I think!

Blast when: driving home from a party where you chatted someone up but didn’t get their number.

“Home By Now”

Another post-break up anthem, this one about wondering whether a relationship might have worked out if you’d stayed in it. Gorgeous deep vocals, and real insight into that feeling when you know you broke up for a reason but aren’t yet used to the space by your side that an ex used to occupy.

Blast when: you want to ruminate on all your past relationships (don’t lie, we all do it!).

“Solid”

In their New York Times feature, MUNA talks about recording this song and how the chorus kept sounding like “She’s a salad,” which will be how I sing this song forevermore. I anticipate so many imminent couple montages to this song on TikTok!

Blast when: you and your partner are bopping around together.

“Handle Me”

Okay, a bottom anthem!!! Haha jk…unless…? This song begs a partner to not be shy. It’s sexy but if you weren’t listening to the lyrics you might not notice just how sexy.

Blast when: you’re with a person you wanna kiss for the first time!

“Runner’s High”

The lyrics question whether the singer is feeling fine after a break-up simply because they’re the one who left. Truly some very clever lyrics in here, ripe for captions and quoting.  Croony and introspective, this still has a propulsive beat, turning a potentially sad song into one that you still want to jump up and down to.

Blast when: you wanna belt something sad but not depress yourself.

“No Idea”

Another very sexy jam! I wanna see a bunch of thirst traps set to this song ASAP, or watch it score a scene in a movie where the lead locks eyes with a hottie at a bar and then one cut later is grinding up against them.

Blast when: you’re feeling flirty or feeling yourself!

“Anything But Me”

Is there a more iconic opening line on this album than “You’re gonna say that I’m on my high horse, I think that my horse is regular sized?” This vibe, wishing an ex well but removing yourself from that relationship very firmly, that’s the wave for this summer. No lingering confusion, no mixed signals. Let’s want the best for each other and just admit that it’s not us.

Blast when: you’re trying to get over someone, it’ll help for sure.

“What I Want”

Maybe it’s just sonically similar to “Number One Fan” and my obsession is kicking in, but the second this song starts, I’m shaking ass! “I spent way too many years not knowing what I wanted, how to get it, how to live it and now I’m gonna make up for it all at once.” Is this a post-pandemic song? A post-break-up song? A post-coming out song? Applicable for any and all situations where you’re ready to let loose, this is a certified banger and I can’t wait to hear it in a room full of sweaty queer people.

Blast when: you wanna listen to the song of the summer, babe! This is it!

070 Shake Is Free In “You Can’t Kill Me”

Remember those kids that were just too damn cool back in school? These are the kids that don’t even need to fit in – they belong to a category outside of the social hierarchy. That’s Danielle Balbuena, AKA 070 Shake. She barely has a presence online, many people know her either for her collaborations with Kanye West or her relationship with Kehlani, and interviews with the artist are sparse. However, she doesn’t need to be in the public eye to shine. Her music emits a light that brights more than anything could. 070 Shake’s most recent album, You Can’t Kill Me, proves it.

You Can’t Kill Me succeeds 070 Shake’s debut album, Modus Vivendi. If I could describe her sophomore album in one word, it’d be freedom. Describing the meaning behind her album title in an interview with High Snobiety, she states, “I see life as if it already happened. Whatever happens, it happened. I can’t change it.” 070 Shake embraces the infinite; she stands up to all the right and wrong she’s done and what others have done. She doesn’t bound herself to a single genre and pushes the envelope of rap, alternative, and pop. Her instrumentals are subject to bold shifts, from synthetic to acoustic, to fully encapsulate the complexities of the relationships and emotions she’s conveying.

In “History,” 070 Shake contemplates human collectiveness and transcending the physical world:

“The stardust in me/

In my DNA/

That makes me a star/

That means we all are/

And when we reunite/

We become the sun/

The world becomes one.”

One of her leading singles, “Skin and Bones,” is arguably one of her most vulnerable tracks because it’s a declaration of love. She bares her soul to her partner:

“Reminisce ’bout back when our spirits used to dance with each other/

[…]

You treat me like I’m more than a pair of skin and bones/

And that really made a difference in my story.”

Mistakes and faults are owned up to in “Come Back Home.” 070 Shake apologizes to her mother and tells her that she has sinned. She’s fucked over people and she’s fucked over herself. Instead of wallowing, laying out the multiplicity of her character is exactly what allows her to be unrestrained.

My favorite song is “Cocoon.” It’s a high-energy, frenzied track that demonstrates 070 Shake’s fearlessness when it comes to her production. She sings about flowers blooming, smoke rising, and coming out like she’s “nine months pregnant” (that’s also one of my favorite lines in the album). This is who she is, and everyone has no choice but to deal with it. This is her world, we’re just visitors in it.

You Can’t Kill Me also experiments with the erotic. In “Body,” a track featuring Christine and the Queens, 070 Shake sensually tells her lover, “Talk to me with your body.” I don’t know about y’all, but that line alone traveled through my entire being. 070 Shake has always been casual about her queerness and isn’t boxed into “the traditional gender binary” and heterosexuality. Her queerness is simply a fragment of who she is, and displaying her sexual side is a dimension of the freedom and openness established in You Can’t Kill Me.

You Can’t Kill Me does exactly what it intended to do, show how unstoppable 070 Shake is. She saw the far universes that music can take us and went beyond. Yeah, she doesn’t belong to any particular categories. But that’s the best part about her artistry.

Listen to You Can’t Kill Me now.

Kehlani’s New Album “Blue Water Road” Is a Sensual Exploration of Self

Blue water road is Kehlani’s first album since affirming their use of “they/she” pronouns and coming out as a lesbian. You can hear it throughout the album, although one could argue that Kehlani has never shied away from their queerness in their music. Maybe it’s the knowing that they are leaning into this shift in their sexuality that makes it much more apparent that the object of their affection is very likely a woman.

Sensuality is the overarching theme of the album, even in songs that are not explicitly about romantic entanglements. You can find it in bass lines, or just the overall vibe. Of course, it’s more obvious in songs like “any given sunday,” where they sing lyrics like “Call me daddy in front of all your bitches in the lobby.” The lyric (and the song as a whole honestly) also shows how they straddle the gender line — there is a certain kind of masculine energy that just permeates in the most delicious way.

While sex is often played at and alluded to, it’s most explicitly explored in the song “tangerine.” Full of fruit and garden metaphors, it doesn’t sound cheesy or inauthentic. In fact, all the metaphors blend together in a way that just allows you to get lost in the moment. Am I adding it to my sexy time playlist? Absolutely.

To accompany the release of the album, Kehlani did a short video documentary series. Kehlani explains that “little story” is the first song to start the album “…with a confessional, and then we’ll get into it.” It’s a song that examines loss of a relationship that clearly meant something but also acknowledges that they are at fault for what went wrong.

“Wouldn’t say I’m a lie, but I’m not always honest,” she sings. This is literally the first line, so you know what you’re getting right off the bat.

“You got a face I can lie to,” they croon, mentioning the ambiance of blue light in a white room.

“I want you to love me again, and complete our little story. We got one hell of a story” sounds like there is unfinished business there that may be hard to let go of.

While it’s hard to know for sure if all of the songs are about the same person referenced in “little story,” it’s safe to assume at least some of them are.

The track “wish i never” definitely sounds like it could be related to the longing they confess in the opening track. Clearly it’s a song that is about regret.

“Wish I never did it, from the bathroom to the kitchen. Wish I woulda kept it pimpin’, shoulda never took that mission,” they sing, and you can feel those emotions are still right there in the front of their mind. This mystery person is someone Kehlani can’t outrun, but it doesn’t seem like they want to, which transitions perfectly into the next track.

“Up at night,” which is the next track, features Justin Bieber. It was the first song from the album I heard but is actually the third single released. A total bop (do we still say that?), it has a groovy melody and a memorable hook. There’s something incredibly relatable about it, too. “Thoughts of you keep me up at night…” Who hasn’t been there? Personally, I’m ambivalent about Justin Bieber, but having him on the track really does give it a little extra something I enjoy.

From start to finish, you can tell how deeply personal and cathartic blue water road is for Kehlani. Beyond the admittance of regret, there are songs like the lead single, “altar” that is “dedicated to all those [they]’ve lost” during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Shooter interlude” profiles some of the stressors fame have on you by outside voices, and perhaps the most beautiful is the last track, “wondering/wandering.” At the end, you can hear a little voice saying “it’s blue water,” that belongs to their precious daughter. It’s the most perfect ending.

It’s Chika 1, Rap Industry 0 With Her Debut EP “Industry Games”

“I’m about to change the world/ … I hope this music makes you think,” begins Jane Chika Oranika, better known as CHIKA, on “Intro,” the first track from her debut EP, Industry Games, out today. It’s a provocative mission statement, to be sure — and the six songs that follow genuinely bear it out.

Chika’s sonic and lyrical mainstream peers are J. Cole and Chance The Rapper, and to a lesser degree Rapsody and Kendrick Lamar. Like them, Chika toes the line between “conscious” and “corny,” (more successfully than Cole or Chance, in my opinion), attempting to inspire over bombastic, maximalist beats, chopped-and-screwed gospel and oldies, and pleasantly arranged strings and bells. She has the typical boasts — title track “Industry Games,” for example — but it makes sense to me that, in my opinion, it’s the weakest track on the EP. Not coincidentally, it’s also the trappiest. I don’t feel like that’s Chika’s lane.

Her first viral fame came from a hard-as-fuck freestyle takedown of Kanye West. He’s clearly a major influence, especially on songs like “Crown,” which could have easily fit on The College Dropout (and it’s about … dropping out of college but still having self-respect and chasing success). The biting, incisive commentary of that freestyle — her rapid-fire, chameleonic flow, and her thoughtful, critical, uplifting lyricism — are where she shines and stands out. And that’s not just among the women in the field. Much of mainstream rap right now seems to be mumblers riding the trap wave and/or rhymes written exclusively in couplets and punchlines, and that’s not Chika’s style (though she does have excellent ones: “They doin’ shit I ain’t fonda/ It’s like my name isn’t Jane“. I gasped audibly at that one.)

She’s at her best when she’s rapping about real-ass shit. “Songs About You” and “Balenciagas In The Bathroom” both temper boasting about her success — which is fair — with an honest takedown of her struggles with handling that success and fame. On “Balenciagas”:

“The whole world is conversating ‘bout your waistline/ And mental health days make you guilty ‘cuz you waste time/ I’m fighting everybody demons but can’t face mine/ Baseline use all that pain and anger and just make rhymes/ How I’m uplifting your whole life but still I hate mine?/ How I get rich but still get pissed about the money?/ Now everybody wanting me to wear a fake smile/ How I’m supposed to fake a laugh when ain’t shit funny?”

Chika’s other lane? Lovely songs about women. Chika’s lesbianism is, refreshingly, both simultaneously front and center and incidental. I put her “Can’t Explain It” on my Best Lesbian Love Songs of 2019 list. But I didn’t know about “Want Me:”

Neither of those delightful love songs is on Industry Games but “On My Way,” a heart-filling piano and soft drumbeat ballad, is:

“I wanna thank you for being my person/ You say that you need me/ and that feeling is mutual/ I’m so glad that you see me as beautiful/ I think you one of a kind/ I promise all day you done been on my mind/ … I love your energy/ you and I we got synergy/ And it’s like we the same/ They don’t fuck with you?/ Then they just made two enemies.”

There are no pronoun games here, but Chika doesn’t make being gay a big deal. There aren’t any songs about homophobia or lesbianism to be found here. There are many schools of thought on this; some people want queer artists to be super out and to explicitly discuss sexuality in their music, while others feel like normalization is the key. I think Chika rides the latter wave, and that’s her right.

And while Chika’s songs can be sexy — see “Want Me”— she’s never objectifying or disrespectful. There’s a time and place for lesbian fuckboidom (well, Young M.A’s got that lane pretty occupied) but that’s not Chika’s speed.

Overall this EP is excellent. Taken along with her singles — “High Rises” and “Can’t Explain It” especially — this is an incredibly auspicious start. Chika has announced herself with a major bang; with luminaries like Erykah Badu, Cardi B, and Missy Elliott counting themselves as fans, she is about to blow up big time.

And I can’t wait. We’re in a golden age of women in rap right now, and Chika adds a much-needed conscious, thoughtful, craftsperson-ly lyricism and return to blustering, pre-trap positivity that the industry needs. I hope she leans even further into what she does best, and that the industry doesn’t play any games with her.

Industry Games dropped today, stream it now.

Tegan and Sara are Just Like You on Their Excellent New Album

“So what if…” *hits blunt* “…you went back to high school, but with all of your current memories and all of the lessons you’ve learned still intact? Would you do it?”

While you can learn a bit about someone’s experience of adolescence by measuring the fear and anxiety that registers in their eyes upon hearing this ubiquitous modern koan, it’s a pretty meaningless hypothetical — unless you’re Tegan & Sara.

That’s because while researching their new memoir, High School, by excavating and then presenting for consumption their teenage lives as young lesbians in Calgary, Canada, they came across a sizable archive of old demos they’d written and recorded at the time. Those songs form the basis of their excellent new album Hey, I’m Just Like You.

It’s full of adolescent heartbreak, teenage angst, and nascent queer identity exploration — not too distant from the themes present in all of their music, to be honest. And it’s also exactly what you’d expect musically — harkening back to the acoustic folk-rock of their classic first few albums, but with the shiny veneer of the pop rock they’ve perfected in the years since.

But in a crucially unique opportunity — like finding one’s old diary and reinterpreting long-forgotten memories with the wisdom of the present or, of course, getting high and imagining how, via some sort of time travel, you’d re-do high school if you had double or triple the life experience and its concomitant wisdom — they’re able to grapple with their own selves, in the form of those old demos from decades past, and warmly examine, process, and then reinterpret them. For our benefit!

I first heard Tegan & Sara’s music when I was about 16, and for some reason remember exactly where (this is incredibly unusual for me; I do not have a vivid memory). I was in a high school friend’s spare room with another friend, and they were listening to a mix CD she’d made for him. “Check this out,” he said, “it’s two lesbian twin sisters.” He put on “Walking With a Ghost.” This was about 2004, so So Jealous must have just come out (one of these friends was that “cool alternative friend” in high school who knew all the cool bands; I aspired to be just like her). I didn’t like it, though; I thought it was repetitive (it is).

It wasn’t until way later, during my emo years, that I discovered The Con in between Bright Eyes marathons, and then went back to So Jealous, which is now one of my favorite albums of all time. Whenever I want to bask in the nostalgia of those days, now 15 or so years later, So Jealous and The Con are some of the first albums I cue up (Bright Eyes is virtually unlistenable to me now; go figure).

Nostalgia is almost always popular, but maybe never more so than now: retro-style and classic remake video games are currently experiencing a renaissance on platforms like Nintendo Switch and PC, many of us who lived through the ’90s are seeing its fashion make a comeback, and the synths and gated reverb-heavy drums of the ’80s are the foundation of music by current pop queens Carly Rae Jepsen and Taylor Swift.

But Hey, I’m Just Like You doesn’t feel like nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Sure, it’s a cute and buzzworthy project, especially in conjunction with the pair’s new book. But they’re refreshingly candid about what they’re doing: “[W]hen you think back to the things you did 20 years ago, you imagined you’d cringe,” explained Tegan to Apple Music. “But the more I listened to the songs, the less I cringed and the more I thought, these melodies are great!”

While I’m not a famous lesbian pop star duo, I am a lesbian who’s been casually writing and recording acoustic guitar songs since I was a teen. I was curious about their experience, because I cringe at the things I did 20 minutes ago, let alone 20 years. So I did some soul- and some internet-searching. I wanted to see if Tegan & Sara’s experience could be similar to my own.

And, reader, I found recordings of my teenage folk pop songs. Much to my simultaneous delight and chagrin, they were hosted on MySpace, and you can find that MySpace account here. But before you get too excited about the potential schadenfreude, or whatever the feeling is that allows people to enjoy the secondhand embarrassment of watching the first few episodes of reality TV singing competition shows, I lucked out — MySpace “lost” 50 million songs during a 2018 “server migration,” and these songs are now gone. I scoured through old hard drives and found recordings of songs going back to 2013 — but nothing from my teens.

No, “Eric” is not my deadname. I don’t know why my “band” was called that. It’s very disorienting looking at those song titles; I remember that they were all actually written in college, when I was about 18 or 19. I remember what some of them referenced: “She Joined the Army” was about my high school girlfriend, who broke up with me almost immediately upon meeting the boys in her college dorm, and also briefly joined her school’s ROTC. While I don’t remember the lyrics or chords to any of these songs, I do remember the chorus of this one: “She joined the army/ for the red, white, and blue/ she’s stomping and marching/ like she’s always wanted to.” I really want to not cringe, y’all. I hope the melody was great, but I have my doubts.

The rest are mysteries to me. I know that “Coffee” and “Audrey” were both written about girls I met in college. Audrey was a toxic “friend” who refused to define whether we were an “item” and constantly pined to me about her long-distance, equally toxic maybe-ex-boyfriend, and convinced me not to study abroad in Buenos Aires my second year of college because she’d be lonely — one of the biggest regrets of my life, to be honest. And I have no idea what “The Trees in Aberdeen” was about. I don’t know what the trees in Aberdeen are like — or honestly, where Aberdeen even is without looking it up. I also am sure I didn’t at the time. I assume it’s another sad song.

Honestly, I hope those songs are lost forever and I can remember them with fond nostalgia — as better than they likely really are. Reality has a way of delegitimizing the rosy fantasy with which we can, from a safe distance, observe the past – which is the whole point of nostalgia anyway, right? The past is better left where it is. We’ve learned from it, grown from it, and hopefully processed it in therapy. The lesson for me in this is: this kind of project is better left up to the experts. Tegan & Sara clearly are.

Imagine finding out, twenty years later, that you once wrote a song about how much you love your best friend, bandmate, and twin sister, and how that relationship guides and sustains you. And to find that it still rings true enough to revise and record it, together with that person!

Tegan and Sara have mined through their pasts, found the gems, like the one above, and put together a poignant ode to their past selves. And for that I’m thankful; it’s like they went through it so we don’t have to! We can just live vicariously through their public vulnerability and imagine — without evidence — that if we did the same, we’d be charmed, rather than horrified, by what we found.

Because I’d never go back to my teens, especially with what I know now. It was a very difficult, confusing time, and the blunders I committed then have laid the foundation for all of the progress I’ve made since. Except, maybe I’d have said goodbye to Audrey and flown to Buenos Aires for a year instead of sticking around, being miserable, and writing a song about it. Because I wish I had those memories instead of the song. But I don’t have the song! Just the title. Because of this album, I can enjoy Tegan and Sara’s process — and progress — and see myself in it without having to mine my own past for my own skeletons. I think that’s a blessing.

ROOM 25: I Swear Noname Look So Regal

feature image via The FADER/Chantal Anderson

You got different people you go to that raise you up in particular ways. I go to Toni Morrison when I need family explanations and usually family curses. I got to Beyoncé for the the little black femme in me that I gotta smush down. I go to Noname when I want to be powerful and overflowing and strong enough to look my memories straight in the face. I go to Noname when I don’t want to pretend like institutional racism and the constant violence against and death of black people hasn’t fucked me over. I go to her to to learn how to tell the truth in all its messy, often bloody glory.

Fatimah Warner’s aka Noname’s new album, ROOM 25, is BLACK black blk blackity black and we are blessed. Two years after her first album, Telefone, (listed in Carmen’s 7 Albums By Women That Got Me Personally Through 2016), Noname brings an independently created project that was announced earlier this week on Instagram and Twitter and linked to a site that unlocked around midnight last night.

from noname’s instagram

a few days before the album this is what nonamehiding looked like

In Telefone, we were getting an introduction to Noname; in Yesterday she raps:

Who am I? Gypsy rap, Gypsy need her dollar back
And all of that, my devil is only closer when I call him back
[…]
Everything is everything, me Noname, you n*ggas doin cocaine
Me missing brother Mike, like something heavy
Me heart just wasn’t ready, I wish I was a kid again

— knowing that even though she’s being vulnerable with us, she knows she’s got to keep her guard up (“And I know the money don’t make me whole / magazines drenched in gold,/the dreams of granny in the mansion happy / the little things I need to save my soul”), and with the way people have come at her expecting her to ride on the coattails of friends who happen to be famous, she was right to do so.

ROOM 25 brings a Noname more sure of herself, secure in the knowledge that she can’t be anything other than who she is, and if you don’t rock with the first few lyrics, you’re more than welcome to leave. In the first song off the album, Self, she raps:

“My pussy teach ninth-grade English
My pussy wrote a thesis on colonialism
In conversation with a marginal system in love with Jesus
And y’all still thought a bitch couldn’t rap huh?
Maybe this your answer for that good pussy”

SHE STARTS THE FIRST SONG TELLING US WHAT HER PUSSY IS ABOUT AND WHAT HER PUSSY DOES. She doesn’t even do it on a purely pleasure level (which is still cool), she’s showing us her pussy got life in all kinds of places and we gotta respect the work it does everywhere. If that is not an anthem we all need then I can’t help you here. She got me so hyped about this I’m trying to write odes to my own pussy (which isn’t easy for a black nonbinary butch).

The rest of the album follows suit, calling Noname nothing but herself and that kind of honesty convinces the listener they’ve got to try to do the same. She questions whether anyone will remember her especially the best parts of her, berates the systems holding her and her loved ones captive, tells us about a love she wanted but understands doesn’t want her anymore and how she knows she’s got to stop looking outwards for someone to take better care of her.

With Noname, all the instruments lull you into a place where you’re in easy listening mode, but her lyrics make listening anything but easy. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s an amazing thing to have listeners studying your Genius page to get their own lessons in internal rhyme, clever wordplay, and fire delivery. Fans of Telefone will be happy to know that the lyrics and rap delivery get even better, possibly even faster.

As I said before, it just feels so black. With artists who seem to tiptoe around issues pertaining to race, Noname doesn’t jump in, she’s already wading in the water, waiting for you. You know this is for black people because there are only things you get if you grew up like this. With samples from The Spook That Sat By the Door in Blaxpoitation to the verses covering colonization, prison, police brutality, and God in No Name, the last song off the album, the entire work feels like sitting in your uncle’s backyard during the barbeque. Your aunts are dancing to Prince, uncles are telling you “you don’t know nothin bout this right here!”, your dad and his buddies are cursing each other out over cards, and you and your cousins are trying to catch gossip since they called you in from riding bikes so late. Your cousins wanna check out the new game you got and you tell your mom you’re leaving, your house isn’t far away. You’ve got one foot out the door when someone related to you (probably) grabs you back, tells you “You really shouldn’t be out by yourselves after dark like this.” You try to tell them you’re not alone, you got family with you. And they shake their head, and you want to tell them you’re not stupid, that you know what they mean. But they buried their son a few years ago. You and your cousins were told he died in the army, but it turns out he made it home. It was the cops that killed him You listen to this probably family member and sit outside to listen to the crickets, the smoke from the day funneling its way towards the sky.

This album feels like all that living, some of the best of living, but the something you can never forget like thunder overhead. Noname doesn’t make that feeling go away, but she sits with you while you talk through it. And if you don’t wanna talk, she lets the music do enough of that for the both of you.

Listen to the album here.

Sad Enough Songs: On Julien Baker and Depression

Sometimes I need music that’s as sad as I am, and 2017 has not delivered. It’s been a paralyzing, grotesque year on both a macro and personal level, and I keep waiting for the art to measure up.

Maybe I’m expecting too much, but even a long-awaited new album from saddest sad band The National didn’t bum me out much, though it’s an excellent record worthy of the band’s legacy. I needed music that could reach me in the depths where I have been comfortably trapped all year.

So I was elated when I found out Julien Baker would have a new album this year. Her debut Sprained Ankle was an anchor for me in 2016, and she and I became pals when I wrote about it for this very website. I knew that whatever she did next would be special, and it is.

On Turn Out The Lights, out now on Matador Records, Julien takes up more space. She adds instruments, piano, electric guitar and winds, to create a fuller sound while still maintaining the clarity and simplicity that made Sprained Ankle so special. Her voice continues to be the star, and she’s not afraid to balance gentle refrains and frantic climaxes to get her point across. The songs have a deeper sense of story, both in lyrics and music, and across the album they weave a rich narrative about the decision to keep showing up even when it seems futile.

Julien wrestles — with God, with friends, with herself — on every track. She pleads for both sides of arguments, like on lead single “Appointments” when she wonders if it’s going to turn out all right and concludes I know that it’s not, but I have to believe that it is. The queer Christian songwriter from Tennessee writes from her own truth of addiction and sobriety, suicidality and survival, and believing in God whether she wants to or not.

All those contradictions might add up to a net neutral if Julien weren’t so adamant about actively choosing to try to get better. It’s not a hopeful record, exactly. It doesn’t promise that anything at all will be okay. Turn Out The Lights is about showing up to therapy and wearing seat belts.

Julien sings: There’s a comfort in failure, in singing too loud in church/Screaming my fears into speakers ‘til I collapse or burst, whichever comes first (“Shadowboxing”);

sings: Grit my teeth and try to act deserving/when I know that there is nowhere I can hide from Your humiliating grace (“Happy To Be Here”);

sings: I think I can love the sickness you made, because I take it all back, I changed my mind, I wanted to stay (“Claws In Your Back”).

When her voices crescendos, crashes and breaks, I believe her. I want to stay too.

I learned to be sad when I was 10 years old. My dad died very slowly and all of a sudden. He had colon cancer, and everyone knew it would kill him except me. It wasn’t just my heart that broke, but something more cellular. I cried for a whole day and then I went back to school. The grossest of all the 4^th grade boys came up to me and asked, “What are you doing here? Isn’t your dad dead?” I granted him a narrow-eyed glare before my best friend whisked me away. I was not ashamed to carry my sadness into the world of normal people.

I listened to the music Daddy loved, Tom Petty and Elvis Costello, and tried to find the messages he might have left for me there. My dad was an audiophile with eclectic taste and a very confusing CD player. As the shockwave of grief crystallized into trauma, I sought out my own music. I had just started self-harming when I listened to Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory because of a boy I had a crush on, and I heard Chester Bennington talk about dying in a way that resonated. It lived in my Walkman for weeks at a time, and I never hurt my own body on purpose again.

The thing about losing the most important person in my life when I was very young is I move through the world knowing it could happen again. A few years later, my big brother burned me CDs of Modest Mouse and Radiohead. Then he went to rehab and never really came back to me. I listened to “Third Planet” and tried to keep my heart open (I’ve never closed it, but these days I leave rooms when “High and Dry” comes on).

Around that time I started having panic attacks any time my mom wasn’t where she was supposed to be when she was supposed to be there. I’d stand in the car line after musical rehearsal until all the cars drove away, and my body would know she was dead before my brain had any say in the matter. She always turned up, and I never found the words to tell her how badly I wanted her to get a cell phone.

I was 15, exactly the right age for the Fueled By Ramen-led resurgence of emo pop. I loved Fall Out Boy, Brand New and Panic! At The Disco fiercely and spent the money I made working at the mall on concert tickets, albums, and, of course, the t-shirts that helped me telegraph my devotion. I added Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens to my list of mp3 therapists and posted their song lyrics as Facebook statuses in a transparent attempt to externalize my sadness while maintaining some degree of plausible irony that I could leverage if anyone ever tried to actually connect. Being sad was part of my self-concept, but I had long ago stopped dealing with my actual grief.

MySpace selfies -or – I still own both of these t-shirts, but I do not make necklaces out of guitar picks anymore.

I was consumed with schemes for keeping the people I loved alive while also preoccupied with my own death and all the ways it might happen. I never wanted to end my life, especially not after I talked two friends through suicide ideation, but I didn’t really want to be alive either. It wasn’t until I got into Elliott Smith in college that I appreciated the irony.

Elliott! After my first A-Camp I stayed in L.A. for a couple days and went with Maddie and my internet friend Alvin to the Figure 8 wall and I played “The Biggest Lie” on my cell phone and Maddie laughed at me warmly and I had a lot of feelings. Junior year of college when I almost forgot I didn’t want to die, Elliott Smith was the only music sad enough to make anything seem coherent. He sang his aches and pains in clear and precise terms, and to hear him name a depression that seemed familiar was deeply grounding. There at the wall, I took the chance to say thank you.

I had never heard anyone else sing about sadness like Elliott until Julien. I owe a disclaimer here that I never got into Ani DiFranco, and I know there is a vast legacy of sad queer music that I should be citing in this essay. As allegations of sexual assault against men in entertainment industries breaks, including Brand New’s Jesse Lacey, I realize how vulnerable I was in the teeny tiny emo bubble I used to live in. (Jessica Hopper’s 2003 essay on this topic is essential reading that I wish I had found when I was a teen.) I’m more grateful than ever for Tegan and Sara, Billie Holiday, and all the other artists that helped me find new ways to excavate my feelings that didn’t center fragile masculine egos. Still, singing along to sad white boys so earnestly for so long is part of the story I have to tell. I hope Julien won’t mind being counted as part of Elliott’s legacy, too.

I got Turn Out The Lights on a press advance in September and listened to it obsessively in our study with all the lights off, as commanded by the title. It absorbed me like a sponge and I was happy to surrender. Here, finally, was music that felt like a match for the depression that had been paralyzing me since May, when bad allergies turned into a sinus infection turned into an unending fog. I’m not saying the allergies made me sad, but some summers it doesn’t take much to tip me off the cliff.

On release day, I impulse-bought new headphones with my side hustle money and sat on my couch in pajamas and ate Spaghetti-os while the songs played again. They felt different now that they were mine instead of coming to me through a very finicky online media player. They felt different with the lights on, even as the story had become profoundly familiar because I had heard it so many times, and because I’ve been humming my own version since I was 10 years old.

Depression is not forever because it always ends, and depression is forever because it always comes back. I was G-chatting with my friend Kelsey recently and we were making jokes about how when we don’t take our Wellbutrin it feels like we might literally be laying on the floor even when we’re not and I realized that it’s always going to be like this. It will always get worse again. It will always take a gasping, vomit-inducing sprint to get back out. There will always be spells of respite.

It won’t work if I only want to stay on the days when my brain breaks through the muck and has a creative streak or wants to have sex or feels a sense of unfettered accomplishment. Turn Out The Lights is a meditation on wanting to stay on the very worst days. It offers no promises and makes no assumptions. It has an internally consistent theology that posits staying is better than being extinguished. It does not justify or verify that claim. Sometimes, like with God, you simply choose whether or not to believe.

Well Damn, Kesha’s “Rainbow” Is a Complicated Reclamation of Pride and Strength

Kesha is an artist known for her wild and raucous party anthems and her neverending positive spirit. More recently, she’s also become known as an artist who has the strength and courage to stand up to the man who abused and sexually assaulted her. Last year Kesha was fighting her producer Dr. Luke in court, trying to sever ties with him after years of what she called an abusive relationship where he belittled and insulted her to the point of developing an eating disorder, threatened her and her family and drugged and raped her repeatedly. That she could come back with such a triumphant album in Rainbow and first single is amazing, especially after she lost in court. With Rainbow, Kesha is positioning herself to join artists like Rihanna, Carly Rae Jepsen, Lorde, Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez in the top level of female pop artists making music this summer.

Obviously a huge highlight is her first single since the Dr. Luke trial, “Praying.” Clearly referencing the tribulations she’s been through and where she wants to go from here, it’s not just a pop anthem, it’s a manifesto.

In “Praying” she’s singing for everyone who’s been emotionally, physically, mentally and sexually abused. She’s owning the truth, she’s owning herself, she’s taking back her life from the man who tried to take it away from her. It’s forgiving, vindictive, proud and optimistic at the same time. It’s complicated, like the singer, like healing from trauma. This is a comeback album for Kesha, and she’s not ashamed of that. There’s always been a theme of refusing to be ashamed of who you are in her music, and with this album and songs like “Praying” she continues that theme and brings it to a deeper level. She’s above the abuse that Dr. Luke spewed at her, as much as he made her hate herself, she loves herself so much more now. She wants us to be able to say the same thing.

There are plenty of great upbeat classic Kesha songs, including the two songs right after the opening track. “Let ‘Em Talk” has driving drum beats and the lines “Shake that ass/Don’t care if they talk about it,” “life is short and we got only one shot/so let’s go balls out and give it all we got” and my favorite, “I’ve decided all the haters everywhere can suck my dick!” My personal favorite of the more rowdy songs, “Woman,” features the Dap Kings Horns and will probably become my new karaoke song. All I want to do is sing “I’m a motherfuckin woman!/baby that’s right/I’m just having fun with my ladies tonight/I’m a motherfucker!” The song that perhaps sounds most like her older music is the dance punk track “Boogie Shoes,” a song about shaking your ass and having a great time.

The album also has plenty of great country pop songs, like the Dolly Parton duet “Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You),”  the opening number “Bastards,” “Hunt you Down” and one of my other favorites, the sexy, fun and supremely danceable “Boots.” I love that Kesha has been able to find her voice on this album; you can see clear influences in her music and songwriting, like Parton and punk rock, that weren’t necessarily as obvious in her previous Dr. Luke-produced hits. Kesha is a brilliant songwriter and a brilliant artist and this, her first album without Dr. Luke, is the highlight of her career so far.

My number one favorite song on this album is absolutely the title track. The first time I heard “Rainbow” I was sobbing. As women we so often are told by society and the patriarchy and by our abusers that we’re not as good as we were before, that we’re ruined, unworthy. Kesha’s songs are a direct challenge to that; they’re a rallying cry for survivors and victims and all of us. From a lesser artist the lyrics “I used to live in the darkness,” “now I see the magic inside of me,” “darling, our scars make us who we are,” would be cliché and trite. I mean, there’s already a song that famously asks “why are there so many songs about rainbows?” But what Kesha brings to this song elevates it to another level. It is schlock, but it’s the best kind, the kind that brings us to tears and makes our hearts swell. She’s not singing about hypothetical scars and pain; she’s singing about finding strength and love inside and outside of herself after years of working with a predator and years of him controlling her career and life. She’s not subtly hinting at where she’s been or where she’s going, she’s being open and up front about it. It’s got the desperate earnestness of a confession, the tenderness of sharing a secret with your best friend and the raw emotion and heart of a bridesmaid’s speech, graduation speech and eulogy put together.

There’s this thing that pop culture critics and people who are much smarter, wiser and more knowledgeable than me say. They say that pop stars and media and products aren’t our friends, they aren’t feminists, they’re things being sold to us, they’re the result of marketing and capitalism. And that’s true. But I also do think that a pop song can be feminist and an album can be your friend, and I think that Kesha’s Rainbow is those things. I’m embracing the things that make me feel strong and loved and special and empowered. I think it’s important that we focus on being genuine and open and full of heart, especially right now. While Kesha is dancing around the stage, she’s not dancing around her feelings or pain or struggles or desires. She’s laying her heart bare on the floor with this album, and her heart is the most beautiful rainbow I’ve ever seen.

Vivek Shraya’s New Album “Part-Time Woman” Is a Binary-Breaking Love Letter

“I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to be a woman. I just want to be me. I want to be Sylvia Rivera.” Sylvia Rivera, trans feminine activist and icon, co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries

I wonder if it’s bad for the trans women’s movement to admit that I don’t always feel like a Full-Time Woman™. While I generally present exclusively in ways that conform to a stereotypical understanding of femininity – long hair, skirts and dresses, makeup, what in queer community is sometimes called “femme” and in trans community is sometimes called “fish” – the nuances of my gender identity, my internal sense of being, have always been more complicated than that.

And even as I write this, I can feel an old anxiety rising, the fear that I am betraying something or someone – my trans sisters? My self? – by expressing a personal truth that diverges from the simplified narrative that both politics and community so often demand.

So when I meet Vivek Shraya in my apartment on a rainy evening in Toronto to discuss her new album, Part-Time Woman, I am struck by how graciously she engages the charged subject matter of race, gender and representation. Shraya, a quadruple-threat trans girl art star who has garnered wide recognition in literature, film, photography, and music, is on her way to becoming a Canadian icon. Her work delicately troubles the boundaries of identity, eliding the usual political slogans to reveal rich shades of emotion.

“I really want trans girls to know that some of us don’t always have the right words or the powerful political declarations … in response to transphobia,” Shraya says with characteristic candor. “Some of us are struggling. Some of us are unsure. Some of us are slow to grow into who we are. I hope it brings comfort knowing that there are other people thinking about these things and singing about them too.”

Part-Time Woman is a deep and tender dive into that place of internal struggle and slow metamorphosis – giving lie to the misconception that pop music, Shraya’s chosen genre, is necessarily shallow or superficial. Shraya’s crooning vocals, set to the backdrop of original compositions performed by Toronto’s Queer Songbook Orchestra, ponder the meaning of “woman” and the experiences of those whose right to the word is contested terrain. In its six brief tracks, the album covers an impressive amount of thematic and musical ground; tracing an emotional arc from the balladic disappointment of “SWEETIE” and “I’M AFRAID OF MEN” which excavate the hypocrisy of the male gaze, through the contemplative longing of the titular number “PART-TIME WOMAN,” to the triumph of “BROWN GIRLS” and the final track “GIRL IT’S YOUR TIME” (a 1960s send-up which Shraya jokingly refers to as “the selfie of the album”).

Yet even triumph acquires new, complex dimensions in Part-Time Woman. Rather than attempting to replicate the anthemic, oversimplified (though admittedly delicious) feel of, say, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” Shraya goes for something more textured, more grounded in the insecurities and resiliencies of day to day life that every girl – trans or cis, racialized or white – will recognize.

“For me, it was really important to end in a sort of celebratory way,” Shraya muses, “but the bridge [of “GIRL, IT’S YOUR TIME”] is like:

“GIRL, IT’S YOUR LIFE
BUT IT’S NOT YOUR WORLD
YOU’RE NOT ALWAYS SAFE
SO WHENEVER YOU’RE AFRAID
JUST KNOW YOU’RE ALWAYS MY GIRL

“So there’s this pain there too,” Shraya continues. “My reality as a trans girl isn’t this one, easy walk through life. It’s not always feeling desirable or feminine or safe or any of those things. And yet there is a celebratory tone in the album, because it moves from male gaze to self gaze and affirmation.”

Listening to Shraya muse on the way her life inflects her art, I think about my own mixed experience as someone whose life has arced through the identities of Chinese gay party boy to anarcho-punk non-binary femme to trans woman of colour writer. There are aspects of each part of that journey that I loved and mourned and missed. The increased confidence and sense of self that accompanied each shift has never negated the fear and loneliness and trauma. And yet I wouldn’t give up any parts of my past.

The juxtaposition of subtle joys and private grief is a theme that weaves throughout the album. Shraya’s strength is in her ability to take the listener with her to the edge of some very dark emotional places and then pull us back with a burst of unexpected insight.

Take, for example, the stark contrast of the final verse of “I’M AFRAID OF MEN,” in which she sings:

“ARE YOU HITTING ON ME?
ARE YOU HITTING ON ME?
OR ARE YOU GOING TO HIT ME?”

Followed by a beat of silence, and then the chorus

“IN MY HOUSE
IN MY HOUSE
DONT EVEN TURN THE LIGHTS ON
CAUSE I SHINE SO BRIGHT”

The song closes on a meandering brass solo that leaves the listener on the edge of their proverbial seat.

Shraya’s lyrics tease apart the ways in which trans girls’ emotional lives are drawings rendered in chiaroscuro, the play of light and shadow: The power and relief of discovering one’s identity in private intertwined with the pain of objectification and sexual violence.

This complex interplay is most evident in my favorite song in the album, the enigmatic “HARI NEF,” which is Shraya’s ode to the eponymous trans femme model and co-star of the hit sitcom Transparent. She sings:

“IS THE LEGACY OF BEING A GIRL
WANTING TO BE HEARD
TO BE HER

SHE’S SO PRETTY BET HER LIFE IS PERFECT
SHE’S SO FUNNY BET HER LIFE IS FLAWLESS

I WONDER IF SHE’S HAPPY BEING HER
OR IF LIKE ME SHE WANTS TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE”

There is something achingly resonant about this glimpse into the envy, longing, and empathy that exists between girls – something that takes on even more layers in the context of being trans and racialized. Trans girls of colour spend our whole lives either invisible or in the spotlight – it’s one or the other, never between. And so our womanhood either goes unrecognized or objectified, co-opted to satisfy someone else’s story about who we are.

In this polarized context, there is no room for ambiguity, for softness, for uncertainty or exploration. There is no room, in other words, to be human.

“I think that the way that people think about trans women is that [we] have to be totally confident or defiant all the time or that we all have similar politics and personalities,” Shraya confides. She goes on to describe the ways in which trans girls are sold a particular, restrictive mode of womanhood that is tied to normative ideals of beauty and race. “This [album] is a love letter to trans girls and a love letter to brown girls.”

This is a love that breaks through binaries and flowers in the margins. Lounging on a sofa with Shraya, talking and listening to the rain, I can feel tiny cracks opening in the walls of the labyrinth of labels, identities, and ideals in which we live.

Shraya, like all the best artists, is a storyteller whose vision both captures the world and in so doing, envisions a new one: A world in which you can still be anything. In which every person – man, woman, non-binary, all or no gender, or constantly changing – is exactly enough.

Steven Universe Soundtrack Vol 1 Delivers Cool Jams and Good (Gay) Messages

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If you haven’t seen Cartoon Network’s Emmy nominated children’s series Steven Universe, you haven’t seen one of the best designed, animated, acted and written shows ever on television, and possibly the queerest. Focusing on a young boy who sings about wanting to be a giant woman, performs onstage in a crop top, skirt, heels and makeup, and fuses with his best friend to form a non-binary person, as well as his friends and adoptive moms, the Crystal Gems, Steven Universe is constantly opening audiences’ eyes to new ways of thinking about gender, love, queerness, family and self image. Now you can enjoy another integral part of the show whenever you want by buying the Steven Universe Soundtrack Volume One. With songs composed by musical duo Aivi & Surasshu and Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar, this soundtrack features 37 songs from the show featuring all the main voice actors, and can be purchased through online retailers like iTunes or Amazon or streamed on sites like Spotify.

Steven Universe isn’t just one of the best made shows on TV today, it’s also one of the most important. Because of that I’ve talked before about the amazing characters and storylines and relationships, but I’ve never focused on the music even though it’s absolutely one of the things that makes this show everything it is. While not every episode is a musical one, many episodes do incorporate the characters singing songs and it’s never a waste of the show’s time. Instead, the music reveals things about the relationships, thoughts and feelings of the characters and gives listeners a brilliant new way to think about the things the show is talking about. In a summer where we’re constantly facing tough times and tough news, this soundtrack is delivering songs full of love and hope and happiness and healthy ways to deal with emotions, and that’s exactly what we need.

Many of the songs on this volume are some of my favorites. Of course it includes the theme song (both regular and extended editions), which we all love, and other great songs like “Cookie Cat,” and “Let Me Drive My Van into Your Heart,” but you’re at Autostraddle. Let’s talk about the queer songs for a bit. I think we all remember where we where the first time we heard “Stronger Than You,” which may be the ultimate gay love song of all time. Seriously, when Ruby and Sapphire fuse back into Garnet and create the ultimate being of lesbian love and relationships and strength and then she sings a song about it, it’s amazing. I mean, come on, “I am made of love and it’s stronger than you,” that’s perfect. Ugh, and “Something Entirely New,” the song Ruby and Sapphire sing after the first time they fuse? I love how cute it is!!! If your queerness is more along the lines of Steven getting femmed up, they’ve got the pop version of “Haven’t You Noticed (I’m a Star)” sung by Marceline voice actor Olivia Olsen, so that way you too can practice for the big talent show. If you’re a sad lesbian or bisexual trying to move on from the last love of your life, what better song to sing than “It’s Over Isn’t It?”

Other songs that deliver important messages include “Be Wherever You Are,” “Do It for Her,” “Peace and Love on the Planet Earth” and the brilliant song “Here Comes a Thought,” where we finally get to hear what Stevonnie’s singing voice sounds like. “Be Wherever You Are,” a song Steven sings to Sadie and Lars, his two human friends, is ostensibly a song about him wanting the two of them to become closer and fall in love while they’re all trapped on an island, but it’s also a song about being mindful and present in the place you are. “Do It for Her” is a song that, when paired with another Pearl-singing-about-her-love-for-Rose song, “It’s Over Isn’t It,” shows how you can go from an obsessive relationship to developing healthy feelings and boundaries. “Peace and Love on the Planet Earth,” the first song Peridot sings when she joins the Crystal Gems, is all about learning how to be a person and a good guy. It’s about opening up your heart to new experiences and feelings. One of the most important songs on the soundtrack is “Here Comes a Thought,” the song that Garnet has Stevonnie sing to practice mindfulness, which I know is something I need to work on, and maybe you’re interested in it too.

Steven Universe continues to be one of the best and queerest shows on television and this soundtrack does a great job of showing off many of the reasons why. The soundtrack ends the way the show does, with the song “Love Like You” — a song that encompasses the entire show’s themes, all about love and learning and trying to become a better, healthier person and learning to love yourself and your friends and family. This show is doing good and vital work. I’m so thankful for this show, these songs and the people who made this music.

Please Let Me Take A Seat: Solange’s New Album and Healing My Black Femme Self

I’m weary of the ways of the world

It’s difficult to start the process of healing. We grow accustomed to holding onto our anger, jealousy, or sadness; it starts to feel like a comfortable baseline. As a black femme, this year has been particularly difficult. I continue to see my people shot and killed in the streets. My social media feeds are still filled with videos of horrific murderers. Each day feels like an uncertain battlefield and I never know what armor I’ll need to survive. As a black queer femme, these fears are magnified to an even higher degree. There have always been few spaces where I feel safe and even fewer spaces where I feel safe to be my black, gay self. But 2016 feels different — the realities of the boundaries I exist within as a queer black woman feel even more constricting. The dangers of my existence are clear; I see the evidence every day.

I’ve grown accustomed to that fear; to the anger I feel. As I watch this year’s political proceedings or see Kylie Jenner wear cornrows, I can’t help but feel anything else. How can healing take place when I’m still trying to convince the world that my negative feelings are valid? That I’m more than an Angry Black Woman? I don’t know that I can answer that completely, but I do know that A Seat At The Table represents a starting point for healing my black femme self.

Artists like Beyoncé, Jamila Woods and Noname have created beautiful musical depictions of black girl magic and empowerment this year. Lemonade made me demand space for myself. It made me proud to exist as a black woman no matter how flawed or trying that existence may be. The childhood hand games prevalent on Woods’ HEAVN reminded me of my connection to generations of black female unity and my right to love that young, black girl inside of me who prayed she’d wake up white one day so the taunts about my hair would finally stop. Noname’s Telefone helped me realize that I have every right to grieve over my losses and difficulties.

These albums created a beautiful narrative exploring the variances and common ground between black women. They spoke openly a coded language that I’d only been accustomed to sharing in knowing glances and nods when I came across other black femmes. I felt connected and empowered in my blackness, but it didn’t change the fact that I was still tired, angry and sad. While I could now give voice to those feelings, it didn’t change the fact that I was weary and hurt by the world. I still felt a need to fight, to defend myself. It wasn’t until I listened to A Seat At The Table, that I finally felt like I could put my armor down. While Solange gave voice to my anger and sadness, A Seat At The Table asks us to look forward to healing and acknowledges that the journey isn’t easy.

“Cranes in the Sky” reads like my own troubled journey of realizing my own need for self-care. She tries to drink it away, sex it away, run it away. She tries to be alone, she tries to keep herself busy. These are all tactics we as black women use because we’re not supposed to show weakness. The Strong Black Woman trope is one that acts like a burden as much as it is empowers. I looked at my own ever-growing to-do list; the looming deadlines. I started to see them as the distractions they were — accompaniments meant to make my armor seem more appealing. In order to take a seat at the table, I needed to put these things away.

The very title, A Seat At The Table, hints at a place of acceptance. It asks you to put down your baggage and take a seat at the table; you can finally stop shouting for your place and allow yourself to be served — it’s safe here. It felt unlike anything I’d ever experienced to finally hear someone acknowledge what I was going through and wholeheartedly accept me for it. It felt like one of those embraces that lifts you up, straightens your spine. It felt like my mother gently detangling my hair while roughly pulling at my kitchen; oiling my scalp and asking me, “doesn’t that feel better?” It does.

This album is for us black, weary and tired women. It’s a place for us to celebrate our blackness rather than defend it. In a world that thinks anyone but us invented our cornrows, box braids and bantu knots, A Seat At The Table is a quiet shared side-eye among black femmes. We know the truth and in this space we can embrace that truth. Solange has created a space where healing can happen. “F.U.B.U.” makes Solange’s intent was entirely clear. While Beyoncé hinted at “Formation” being for those of us with negro noses and Jackson 5 nostrils, her status as a superstar made it easy for white audiences to gloss over those points and embrace the song as another “feminist” anthem. Solange doesn’t give those audiences the chance.

“All my niggas in the whole wide world,
play this song and sing it on your terms.”

Her use of nigga is at once aggressive, communal, and joyful. I broke down when I heard her sing, “When you feeling all alone and you can’t even be you up in your home,” because someone was finally giving voice to my entire lack of a private sphere. So much has been appropriated and reprimanded that even in my home, images that glorify whiteness and white standards seep in; to acknowledge this felt at last like catharsis. It felt ok to slow down, to mourn, to acknowledge my pain; an album had never made me feel this way before.

Then my inbox started to fill up again with requests for immediate hot takes and perspectives on the album. As though white audiences demanded I make sense of this work for them. It felt overwhelming when all I needed was time to process, to heal. It’s not easy to find the words that explain what A Seat At The Table means for all black women or all black people. I only know what it means to me; it’s entirely personal and holistic. I decided to take my time. I sat with the album every day since its release. I tried to think of a way to present this work to people outside of my experience and I still couldn’t find the words. Then I realized I didn’t want to find them. I didn’t want to be assigned media translator for something that required explanation for white audiences. I know that A Seat At The Table is for me and if it’s for you, you know it too. You know it incalculable ways that unify and diversify us. If you can sing along, you are singing along joyously, proudly. If you’re not, don’t be mad; you’ve got the rest of the world. But for us, we’ve finally been given a seat, please give us a moment to put our feet up and enjoy it.

Tegan and Sara Explore All Types of Queer Intimacy in “Love You to Death”

Tegan and Sara have always been excellent at reaching into our chests and tugging at our queer heartstrings in an excruciatingly beautiful way. Their eighth full-length album, Love You To Death, out on June 3, branches out into new layers of emotional and musical depth, and stands up to their heart-wrenching standard.

It seems important to note up-front that I loved Heartthrob and it’s what really got me into Tegan and Sara. I’m entirely here for their pop era, and though I love their old stuff, too, I’m not pining for it. If Heartthrob represented a bold definitive splash into new musical territory, LY2D shows Tegan and Sara hitting their stride in creating music ready to find a home alongside today’s Top 40. LY2D is more refined than Heartthrob. The sound is cleaner and simpler, making room for honest and direct lyrics, some of which represent more mature and removed takes on their earlier angst, and some of which dissect the twins’ sibling relationship — a dynamic they’ve yet to deeply explore in their music.

Love You To Death cover art via Twitter

Lyrically, this is my favorite Tegan and Sara album yet. As a writer, I’m a hell of a lot more comfortable deconstructing their lyrics, and I’ll do that in a moment, but first, let me put my new music critic hat on for just a second. LY2D sounds great. The belabored social media lead-up to the album’s announcement and the somewhat kitschy name “Love You To Death” made me nervous that the album was going to lean too heavily on a shallow and gimmicky sugar-pop feel, but I’m happy to say that my expectations were far surpassed. Despite some overdone distorted background vocals here and there, the choruses are catchy and the verses drive the narrative of the album. Since the head-bopping highs are matched with interesting emotions, LY2D retains a depth that keeps it interesting beyond a few listens — it’s excellent driving music, especially for when you have an existential relationship question to think through. On LY2D, Tegan and Sara kept up the “soaring synths” of Heartthrob‘s electro-pop feel, though they also stripped down to a single piano on “100X.” The twins didn’t touch their guitars to record this album, and I don’t miss them.

OK. Now the for the lyrics: LY2D is Tegan and Sara’s most identifiably queer album yet. Despite having been out queer artists since they first arrived on the scene almost twenty years ago, they’ve often shied away from making their music explicitly queer, partly because of homophobia and sexism in the music industry, which they recently discussed at-length with Buzzfeed. This isn’t to say LY2D is “queers-only” — a lot of people all over the sexual orientation and gender spectrums are going to be able to relate to and enjoy these songs — but the themes are ones I see repeated in my life and my queer communities over and over. In LY2D, Tegan and Sara wrote to queer experience, and were able to trust their audience to buy in.

In many ways, LY2D is about the desire to be seen and understood, which caught me like a baseball bat to the gut more than once. The opening track, “That Girl,” begs, “So recognize me, so recognize me,” which will resonate for anyone who has gotten lost in a relationship, and asks “When did I become that girl?” The album continues, examining the struggle between trying to be the person you feel you are and trying to be the person who you think other people want you to be.

Tegan and Sara explore that tension in all kinds of relationships: In “Boyfriend,” which I think is their queerest song ever, they wrestle with the confusion of unspoken attraction in supposedly platonic relationships: “You call me up/like you would your best friend/You turn me on/like you would your boyfriend.” In “Faint of Heart,” they describe the disorienting frenzy of falling hard and fast for a person, even though the rational voice in the back of your head and all your friends are telling you the relationship seems inevitably doomed. They deconstruct the complexities of their identical twin sibling artist relationship in “White Knuckles” and “100X”: “Doubled like a couple we stood, stood out in the light/ …breaking each other like/ knuckles in a fight.” They vent about the frustrating erasure of queer love when it doesn’t conform to heteronormative standards in “B/W/U.” The album’s final song, “Hang on to the Night” answers the lingering question from “That Girl,” in an ’80s-esque ballad with soaring synths: “Hang on to yourself/no good will come from being untrue.”

photo by Pamela Littky via Twitter

While the twins’ on-stage and public image has always featured their ability to collaborate alongside some entertaining on-stage teasing, behind the scenes, things haven’t always been so relaxed. In 2008, they even got in a physical fight while on tour with Neil Young. They spent several years living in different cities, in part to have space from each other between tours. Though the dust has largely settled as they’ve aged, in an interview with Time, Sara also discussed how part of the reason they’ve avoided writing about their sibling relationship in the past to was to keep people from making comments “borderline suggesting [they] were incestuous.” She continued, “writing a song like ‘100x,’ which everyone will think is about a romantic relationship, that would have made me so uncomfortable even five years ago. I would have been afraid people wouldn’t underestimate how truly intimate and like a marriage my relationship with Tegan is.” In LY2D, the Quins took a chance by offering up vulnerability about their relationship, and it pays off.

It’s amazing to see a queer artist comparing her relationship with her sister to a marriage. It’s amazing to see the intimacy of a non-romantic relationship examined and picked apart. As queer people, we are often critically aware of how complex and many-layered our relationships are, across the board. It takes hard work to maintain any partnership — whether it’s between lovers or friends or the person you shared a uterus with. Ending or shifting a relationship with a friend or family member can feel exactly as dramatic and difficult and painful as breaking up a romantic relationship, and we don’t usually get to see that reflected back at us in songs.

Tegan and Sara’s opening up about their sibling relationship adds a profoundness to LY2D that takes it from a collection of songs about various stages of romantic love, which would have been fun and relatable, to a deep and complex exploration about sharing any kind of intimacy, be it romantic or platonic or familial, which I felt in the deepest and rawest pieces of my heart.

Love You To Death is out today, June 3. Buy it HERE, through our affiliate link and support Autostraddle while you listen!

Breaking Up and Making Out With Julia Nunes’ “Some Feelings”

I. Self As Unreliable Narrator

Long term relationships that eventually end tend to end gradually, and then suddenly. It’s only when it’s over that you realize the “gradually” part, though. At the time it just seemed like your life. And in the months following that final, absolute break, you find yourself questioning whether or not you still exist, what else you might be lying to yourself about. You wonder if the heart-chambers you shut down will ever re-open and also when, exactly, did they shut down? Had you even noticed, at the time, and how did you rationalize it, then? When did they fall out of love with you or you with them. When, precisely, did the sex slow down and then cease. You wonder about things you described as “comfort” that you now realize were “boredom.”

I’ve been tired
I’ve been boring
Another sign you’re ignoring
And it’s been so long
since I wrote a song

-“Better Than This“

Sometimes you might wonder when, exactly, something toxic became too routine to examine, let alone name, acknowledge or confront. Is it them or is it you or is it what you have become to each other? (Who are you?) You have all these cute inside jokes, all these memories of when you first fell in love, all these things you can only understand together, so maybe everything is just too wrapped up to come undone. (WHO THE HELL ARE YOU)

There is photographic evidence of how we used to be
But that was us and now it’s you and me

-“That Was Us“

Then it ends: you end it, or they do. Your heart breaks or you realize it’s been broken all along. All this time! I mean sometimes you just feel stuck in a thing and you can’t imagine life any other way but was that really life, anymore, at the end? It doesn’t make sense that someone like you — someone so self-aware, maybe even somebody who’s been around the block a few times — were not self-aware enough to see the blinding reality of your own life.

It’s like I took a break
Years with nothing to say
Now I know that my mistake
Wasn’t loving you
It was letting that get in the way

-“Don’t Feel“

Sometimes your brain does you a small favor (but it’s really not a favor, not really) by sticking to the script, by closing the door to any possibility besides the one you’re stuck in. It keeps you from being jealous of something you’re not sure you can have. But it also just keeps you.

and if you sit on your feet
don’t be surprised when they fall asleep

-“Something Bad“

Julia Nunes “Some Feelings” is two main stories, really, sort of out-of-order, if we’re getting down to the brass tacks of ordered tracks, and the first is that story — the one about the ends of things, which is less about the break-up or the relationship itself and more about the part right after when we’re not sure who we are anymore and all our essential organs are basically so much smoke. 

I remember New York fondly enough
If I refuse to look at myself
Pathetic and comfortable in the abuse

-“Fondly Enough“

“Something Bad,” which has been floating around the internet for a while, is somewhere between story one and story two. Julia Nunes describes Something Bad as her “self-destruction anthem.” She has said the song is “like when you just buy into all of the relationship-ending cliches, stalking your ex on Facebook, seeking out meaningless hookups, looking at yourself and saying “what am I doing” and you just don’t care and go with it.”

I wanna make so many mistakes
that you’re lowest on the list
I wanna make mistakes
and I want you to hear about it

– “Something Bad“

The second story is about the tentative and eventually exuberant beginning of something new, something the girl from the first story never imagined possible. It’s about saying, “I don’t have any feelings for me or for you and I am dead inside” right before kissing so hard your heart expands in tandem with your mouth. You don’t trust your love-related human-parts any more because THEY’RE LIARS. But this is different than that, right? (Right?)

II. Some Feelings

I’m not qualified to sit here and talk to you about instruments or instrumentals or what this or that sounds like or which artist to compare a person to because I’m not a music writer, or a music player. I can’t even dance! I’m just a girl in love with an album and I’m pretty sure you’ll love it too so I’m trying to convince you to buy it because everybody deserves a chance at falling in love with this album. I’m new to Julia Nunes, I should tell you that straight off the bat. I met her last summer through a mutual friend and looked her up afterwards. It turns out she was kinda famous! So I tried to catch up then, and I donated to the kickstarter so I got to download the album last week. My girlfriend, Abby, loves it too, even though she usually just listens to Drake.

Like a lot of musicians who got their start on YouTube, Julia Nunes first made her mark as a singular person with a singular instrument — or, in her case, multiple instruments, but still, it was her playing most of ’em. After her first self-released album, she worked with other musicians and producers but even so, none of those tracks sound like these tracks, which quite consistently sound like they involve a band. (Right?) Like recently Julia took down a bunch of her old beloved YouTube videos because “I don’t want what I’m doing now to be lost amongst what I’ve done for the past 8 years. I don’t want the best thing I’ve ever done to be 10% of what you can find if you’re looking. I want anyone who is just finding me now to see who I really am. Later, they can dig deep into the internet and find my nose ring but until then I wanna greet the world as I am now.”

Here, somebody who knows better described it like this: “Some Feelings is a big leap from the head-bobbing, sing-into-the-mirror music that her fans are used to–in fact, this new record has full blown dance songs with intricate, unexpected rhythms and voicings.”

With “Some Feelings,” Nunes wanted to “raise the caliber” of her music, give it “the same quality as anything a record label might put out.” With producer Joanna Katcher, Nunes has gamely achieved that goal. It feels impeccably produced. Not a single moment or word is wasted. Nunes smacks some acoustic singer-songwriter feelings atop stylish indie-pop productions and the transition from the old stuff to the new stuff probably feels for longtime fans like longtime Dar Williams fans felt when they popped in “Mortal City” and heard “As Cool As I Am” for the first time. Like; OH I CAN DANCE TO THIS, NOW? and it feels weird for second but then makes perfect sense.

This past spring, while the kickstarter campaign that enabled her to make this album was in full swing, Nunes talked to Autostraddle and said we could expect this:

“Stuff you could hear on the radio, full blown pop/dance songs, and then the last song on the album is just me and a ukulele, and it is like the most gut-wrenching song I have ever written. Then there’s everything in between. There are songs that might sound like my old YouTube stuff, just with a real drummer.”

If I tell you this is already one of my favorite albums of all time, I don’t know what that means to you, due to my lack of expertise. Do you trust me more or trust me less if I say the last time I got this excited about an album was “Hearthrob”? (And that I didn’t like “Sainthood” very much but I did love “The Con.”)

Do you like Tegan & Sara? You will like this album. There, I said it.

III. Last Summer in California

When Julia’s album went out to Kickstarter supporters, Abby and I texted each other at basically the same exact moment: “Make Out” reminds me of last summer. Have you heard it? I hope it reminds you of something old or gives you hope for something new. This is the second story on “Some Feelings”: the love story.

I got shit to do
I know you do too
But I won’t let go of you
‘Til you push me away

-“Make Out“

I’m going to talk about last summer now. When Abby and I got to the hotel for the blogging conference I was presenting at last July, I texted Dannielle, another presenter I kinda knew, to meet up and I said something like, Also my girlfriend is with me! She texted back: Oh, also my girlfriend is with me! Later we’d laugh about how for both of us it was actually the first time we’d referred to our respective humans as our “girlfriends,” which had felt both weird and right, like a new outfit we were trying on. Like we suspected this was gonna be a primary-circulation t-shirt because it was so soft and fit just perfect but we didn’t want to jump the gun. Weren’t ready to go public. Still, we didn’t really know each other that well so who cares what we wore, let’s just see how it goes. It went.

See when you get into somebody and you kinda knew each other for a while beforehand but nothing really ever sparked (like you were both with other people, maybe) and then suddenly everything sparks at once and you let yourself fall hard lickity-split, people don’t really take you seriously about your new thing. You must be crazy! You’re doing something bad. You’re making mistakes. Surely you surely you of all people should know that love is a lie and we’re all going to die alone! Remember that thing you were just in? Remember that other thing you almost got into, you idiot? Maybe you’re just rebounding.

I jump in feet first like I forget that I just keep getting hurt
I think you’re coming to save me, so I grab your hand
You pull me out of the tarpit and into the quicksand

-“All The Same“

So when you’re all wrapped up in that kind of thing, it’s better to keep it to yourself. Wait a few wash cycles.

I am trying to be realistic here
I am dying ’cause I know I can’t resist if we’re
Gonna be so sorry soon
I can’t keep my hands off you
And I don’t want to
If we’re careful maybe this could be alright
You are caffine and I’m staying up all night
I’m not stupid enough to believe
I could just kiss you and leave
There will be prices to pay
What are we gonna do
I just wanna touch you

-“Then Okay“

But for two or three days in the valley of silicon we had a Safe Space For Four where it was okay to be head-over-ankles elbow-crush-song in love with our humans, giddy and grabby and self-absorbed, obsessed with each other in a way that offended exactly zero people. We could tell our stories without fearing judgment, like they were heroic stories right off the bat. The fact that Julia Nunes is actually Dannielle’s girlfriend in this story is just gravy, honestly.

Of “Make Out,” Julia Nunes has said, “I feel like maybe I didn’t eat anything for the first few months I was making out with Dannielle. I could have gone days without water without noticing.” There really should be science on this because it’s true. Is it true for you? I become downright skeletal which’d worry my friends were it not for the frequent appearance of those teeth-bones, they ones that shimmer when you can’t stop smiling. You can feel Julia smiling on “Make Out” like you can hear her crying on “Fondly Enough.” I almost start crying just thinking about “Fondly Enough” and I almost start itching my teeth thinking about “Make Out.”

Getting to the love at the surface takes a lot longer when that muscle’s caved in like a crater. You have to fill that all up first before you can even start building on top of it again. But you’ll be surprised, in the end, by how much you can still grow there. OH, I CAN DANCE TO THIS NOW?

Yes! Yes, you can.

pre-order Julia Nunes’ “Some Feelings” now. and if you’re in the los angeles area, you should go to her record release party at 8:30 pm on the 25th.

Punk Will Save Our Hearts, and Worriers’ “Imaginary Life” Is Proof

Feature image by Mars Ganito

Gather round, folks. Lauren Denitzio has a story to tell. It’s their story, and yours, and mine, and it’s exactly loud enough for us to hear it.

On Worriers’ first full-length record, Imaginary Life, Denitzio uses 12 songs to capture their heart — their rage, their love, their adulthood, their politics — and offer it to the world. In the process, they found the pulse of queerness in 2015 and turned it into a drumbeat.

The record covers a lot of ground, tackling police violence, gender, men who can’t use the public transit properly, personal relationships and homecomings. Great punk music catalyzes personal struggle to examine the political and social context it exists in. Imaginary Life is great punk, and people have responded. Denitzio said they didn’t realize the impact that single “They/Them/Theirs” would have on those who heard Denitzio’s vulnerable, powerful commentary on the gender binary. The track has resonated with people around the world who saw their own experiences reflected back at them.

“When I see other people’s responses and other people with all sorts of different gender identities relating to it, it’s been really intense,” they said. “I don’t necessarily tailor how I’m writing a song to getting a specific reaction… It was something that was important for me to talk about for myself, but it’s been a really interesting experience and intense” to see other people reacting to the song.

Photo by Kenneth Bachor

Denitzio is more concerned with being true to themself and making music than coming out in ways that fit other people’s expectations. In daily life and on tour, they said many people are willing to accept the self they aim to project into the world.

“I try to be an authentic person and hope that people will read me the way that I want. And when they don’t, we talk about it,” they said. “I try to to expect that people will react positively because there is nothing wrong with anything that I’m being.”

Denitzio has been working in bands for a decade, but this is the first time they’ve been the sole songwriter for an entire LP. It was an emotional process, and that shines through with songs that are emotionally vulnerable and authentic. Denitzio grew up on country and folk along with punk and rock genres and learned to play guitar with songs by Ani DiFranco and The Indigo Girls. These diverse influences all come into play to create a texturally rich album.

“I definitely think about being in a band as at least partially being a singer songwriter,” they said.

Worriers’ sound has grown into itself since their 2013 EP Precarity Rules. These four musicians are telling a story together with cohesive sounds that range from the pop of “Plans” to the beachy rock of “Life During Peacetime” to the tight, grungy punk of “Yes All Cops,” a political anthem that takes racist and violent police to task and calls us all to action. “Sometimes silence is a loaded gun in the hands of all of us; nothing hurts like doing nothing, and they’ll only give it up when we rip it from their cold dead hands,” Denitzio sings — and you’ll feel it in your guts.

For production, Worriers turned to Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace, who definitely leaves her fingerprint on the record. You can hear traces of last year’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues in the way these songs layer together, but it never sounds like a rip off. Instead, we see the ways in which Denitzio and Grace were cut from similar musical and political molds, and in their work they balance each other wonderfully.

Punk occupies the precipices between survival and resistance, rage and anguish, hope and giving up, love and nothing. PUNK IS ABOUT LOVE. I believe this strongly. In “Advance Notice,” Denitzio takes to task a culture that makes survivors of violence and those dealing with micro aggressions afraid to speak out for fear of impinging on group rules. It implores us to bear witness to those who need to speak and receive support. It made me cry. Crying is so punk.

Imaginary Life is out August 7 on Don Giovanni records.