Kelis - C/D

Not sure they even need to be that strong, exhibit A being Kylie.

OK, maybe dismissed is the wrong word, but it is still ... odd to me.

It *is* something that needs unpacking, and obviously I come at it from a different side. (But these issues were raised by that massive Gaga interview by Caitlin Moran (sp?) this weekend so perhaps this is not the place.)

That said I'm not sure what "too gay to sell well" means at a time when the biggest pop star on the planet is Lady Gaga.

I'm not a big fan of Gaga except in the concept, but it's certainly going to be interesting to see what a post-Gaga pop landscape looks like.

And likewise while it might be fun to live in a world where people like Ms Dynamite or Lil Kim or No Lay are gay icons I don't see that happening any time soon.

Not sure they even need to be that strong, exhibit A being Kylie.

yeah this is something i posted on popular last week, the idea that someone like kylie codes gay, is a gay icon etc, actively offends me (never mind sodding dannii or sophie ellis-bextor) - wtf i feel no connection to these women, even if i like a few of their songs; the idea that there's some sort of intrinsic connection between being gay and liking what they do is so annoying. but then i've got pretty stereotypical gay love for madonna, mariah et al, so it's not as if the connection doesn't exist. it's just a lot more complex than it's usually presented as.

haha lil kim pretty much IS a gay icon though

and nicki minaj is well on her way to becoming one

Okay Trina then.

Also, listening to A Capella again, paying careful attention to the words, it irks me, in that it is almost the opposite of emancipation, in that it is a straight up hymn to the idea that motherhood is the perfect and ultimate realisation of Woman.

And while I don't necessarily have a problem with women expressing their joy at motherhood (though even Madonna had a hard time doing it without descending into schmaltz - Kelis certainly does it better than that) - this idea that it is somehow the paragon and ultimate destiny of Womanhood really REALLY winds me up.

(But this is one of the deep divisions even within Feminism itself, so it's not gonna get solved in a pop song, you know.)

I do like the song more and more the more I hear it, but for me, personally, even though I think the lyrics are good, as an accurate description of an emotion, they're not something I relate to at all in any way, and are so deeply related to a version of Femininity I find deeply troubling.

yeah it's a bit like on ray of light when madonna kept going on about how stupid she used to be (and here "i was super cool but now i'm super strong" is problematic despite being a pretty great line).

Hey, you know, I'm able to recognise that I actually *was* really stupid when I was 25 and I'm much Stronger at 39, but I didn't *NEED* to squeeze out a brat to realise that.

man that a capella video

I see u, Kelis

I've only just realised what a short album this is. Only 37 minutes.

And I'm sorry sorry sorry to say this but stand-out point is the lack of boring pointless ballads to pad out the album and make me skip them. (yes, I know, this is such a rockist thing to say and I do apologise for it, but still I can't not but feel it.)

loving this album but there is one part i don't love: the rap on "scream"

kinda feel like this is gay in more than a "hey its camp and disco u gais!" which always feels like a reductive and blank conflation that tbh kinda pisses me off. Feels more gay in its house classisism, and its aggressive sensuality.

Also, listening to A Capella again, paying careful attention to the words, it irks me, in that it is almost the opposite of emancipation, in that it is a straight up hymn to the idea that motherhood is the perfect and ultimate realisation of Woman.

I see what you mean here but i guess motherhood can be an exhilarating experience for some women, esp. like hormonal bonding etc. and I think its totally possible for a pop song to celebrate that w/o having to temper its joyousness in order to nabisco on problematic elements related to that. Just like it would be ridiculous if every love song started angsting over its part in consolidating compulsory heterosexuality or something.

I don't think that the comparison works, because love is one of those universals with which everyone - gay or straight, male or female - can identify, which is why love songs work across the lines of gender and sexuality.

This whole religion of the joys of Motherhood, however, is one of those things that is so specific - I don't think you can quite grasp the enormity of the pressure - mainly from the right wing "family values" types - that is placed upon women to perceive Motherhood as the sole paragon and sole crowning achievement of a woman's life to the exclusion of all else.

I'm sure there are lots of women to whom motherhood is lovely and wonderful and the be-all and end-all of their existence. Except for the fact that most of the women I know who have had children, it's one more thing they did in amongst a rich life in many other ways.

Although I'm not accusing Kelis of that kind of "family values" political slant, I do think that the song and the sentiments expressed in it play very much into a particular view of women that I find very problematic on many levels.

this is true but

before you, my whole life was a string quartet
now a quintet's the only song i sing

doesn't have the same ring to it does it

I'm sure there are lots of women to whom motherhood is lovely and wonderful and the be-all and end-all of their existence. Except for the fact that most of the women I know who have had children, it's one more thing they did in amongst a rich life in many other ways.

i would imagine that this is very true of kelis, the pop star

ehhm kate i think ur kindof countering my failure to grasp the complexity of the motherhood issue w/ ur own simplification there. I mean we live in a pretty narrow band of time and geography where being gay is accepted in mainstream attitudes. And yet the fact that institutions like marriage/going to the prom/etc. are still ones that elude the majority of gay ppl means that major signifiers in love songs can feel explicitly exclusionary in a way that might extend beyond those mere signifiers so that love itself as it is understood in mainstream pop lyrics is separate from "gay love" or whatever (which i mean "gay community" etc has had to find its own means of expression even if in our privileged place this has faded quite a lot)

im not trying to get all "my patriarchal oppression is more oppressive than yours" but I think there's an extent to which pop music makes its meanings apparent more in the introduction of new elements or something to the mix. Like I think there are representations of Papa Dont Preach lyrics that illustrate w/n the pop canon that babymakin isnt a completely unproblematised act, and that its ok w/n that landscape for Kelis to make big pop record about how being a mom has made her awesome if that is how she feels (its also worth noting that since she is no longer w/ Nas that she is a babymaker in a non-traditional makin-it-on-my-own type of way but I know that that isnot gonna put any feminist fires out, nor do i want to to, just worth bearing in mind that it is not exactly as easy to paint as a joy in acquiescing to traditional familial structures)

Also in terms of strong women, especially women who are strong sexually, being adopted as gay icons (altho yeah, to echo lex, blech omg) I suppose i kinda see it as an identification w/ a sexuality that chafes the kind of (lol) patriarchal structures that, like i said, might feel exclusionary for phags as well as powerful women who dont wanna quit their job to pop out babies. Although I guess its worth noting that a lot of strong women, and like Madonna is the canonical eg., have made quite a name for themselves explicitly appropriating elements of queer culture and making it mainstream in a way that at the time no out homo stood a chance in hell of, so its not exactly as clear cut as some insidious recoding of female desire as an element of homosex u kno?

tl/dr

I'm still waiting for, like, Aphex Twin's big concept album about how fatherhood has changed him and made him realise that his ultimate destiny in life was to provide genetic material for his babbies and how stupid he was before his kids and how awesome and amazing he is since he's bred because Fatherhood was the ultimate be all and end all of his entire existence, right.

Sorry - that sounded snarky and dismissive. I am in the middle of a huge chunk of work and can't take the time to unpack what you've written and address it properly.

There are a whole bunch of issues are that are tangled up together.

I'm just stating why I don't like a particular lyric and why I find the concept behind this whole sub-genre quite problematic.

More later if things calm down around here.

It's a shame there aren't any ballads on this because, well, Kelis is amazing at ballads. Get Along With You and Suspended are two of my favourite Kelis songs, the huskiness in her voice really suits them.

what did you think of the way madonna presented much the same attitude towards motherhood on ray of light k8?

(i pretty much agree with you on the issue as a socio-political thing, but i think both kelis and madonna framed it in such an intensely personal way that it was easy to overlook - on both ray of light and flesh tone there's a sense of euphoric revelation, which i can quite well believe they found in motherhood, but which i can relate to and enjoy in ways that have nothing to do with motherhood, obviously) (also both albums are actually pretty subtle - they don't really bash you over the head with the whole motherhood thing, you could easily believe "acapella" to be a straight-up love song if you didn't know the context - it's only at the end of the album that "song for the baby" throws everything into that context in retrospect) (ditto with "little star" and "mer girl" on ray of light, actually)

I love love love Ray of Light but kinda disliked the songs about her kid. I thought they were pretty much the weakest tracks on an otherwise strong album.

However, as Plaxico did point out, Madonna has such a history of writing about every aspect of the female experience (including the problematic aspects of pregnancy and Choice as noted in Papa Don't Preach) that I'd think it was odd if she DIDN'T write about her pregnancy and childbearing.

Sorry, again, have to get back to the stupid weekly reports, can't expand.

I don't think you can really blame recent mothers for writing about motherhood like it's the centre of the world, because, well, for them it IS. I don't think its meant to crowd out of devalue all other forms of femininity, it's just what babies do to people's lives.

Oh come on, don't pretend like this attitude isn't completely exploited by the whole right wing "family values" lobby who don't think that women shouldn't actually work outside the home, get back in the kitchen and make them a sandwich etc. etc.

Just don't go there.

And I mean it's not like there are women (thinking Kristin Hersh here just as one example) who are able to have kids without writing damn symphonies about how it's the total realisation of their entier life.

(And FWIW, I'm not "blaming the mothers" I'm blaming the culture that shoves this idea down people's (read: women's) throats that parenthood is the be all and end all of womens lives, yet the same does not apply for men and their relation to their progeny. Yeah, fair enough, it's not like men carry the fleshslug around in their gonads for nine months at a time, but at the same time, it's the endless cultural raising of *motherhood* above all roles in a woman's life in a way that it simply does not do the same for men, and in a way that is incredibly dismissive and damaging to women whom for one reason or another haven't spat some foetal genetic experiment out their pissflaps.)

Anyway.

Oh of course, I just don't think it's fair to criticise the artist for that as if their whole aim is to reinforce a right-wing viewpoint. And it's not as if the motherhood angle is that overt on here either, as Lex says something like Acapella could be read as a straight love song.

I'm not criticising the artist. I'm saying I don't like the lyrics to a song I otherwise think is A+ great. (Because of the attached cultural issues.) It is my right to not like a song for any reason, really.

"brave" is the monster on this

WORD TO JAMES FAUNTLEROY

NOTHIN I'LL EVER SAY OR DO
WILL BE AS GOOD
AS LOVING YOU

i love the beat switchup after that, too

"didn't think i needed you"

and that cut up piano sample

E MAN CI PATE YOUR SELF!!!!!!!

E MAN CI PATE YOUR SELF!!!!

i guess that's one interpretation

I'M A BRAVEHEART
SO COME AND PIN MY PURPLE HEART

LOL at the idea of the right wing family values movement appropriating Flesh Tone for their own nefarious ends.

Which of the following Kelis songs do people think is the most damaging to women's freedoms btw:

"Caught Out There"
"Get Along With You"
"Mafia"
"Milkshake"
"Blindfold Me"
"Acapella"

not feelin this really - Acapella, Emancipate (tho what's with such an abrupt fade-out?), 4th Of July are OK but nothing stands out and I guess I'm quite bored of her voice now.

My issues are mainly production ones - if you treat it like a DJ set then it's much better in the build-up than in the peak zone. The first three or four tracks that sound like Discovery outtakes are great, after that it gets bit scrappy. The exception is Scream, which is the best thing on here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9_JWxzXq0I

<3

i want to hear this in a hot club in the middle of summer when the sun is coming up

otm

RELIGION SCIENCE FICTION TECHNOLOGY

EVERYBODY'S DANCING

Okay "4th of July" is really really great.

Totally reminds me of Madonna's "Hung Up" but it's hard to criticize for that...

RELIGION SCIENCE FICTION TECHNOLOGY

― grin and ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ it (The Reverend), Saturday, June 26, 2010 1:00 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

otm. this is probably my favourite song on the album

Still lolling @ this:

http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h62/freshcrunkjuice/kelis-dog1.png

so edgy, so now

― r|t|c, Thursday, May 20, 2010 9:14 AM (1 month ago)

That said, I think the album's great. Kate OTM about the lack of skippable "ballad" tracks. This is a lot further into dance/house territory, and a bit further away from R&B, than I ever imagined she might go. But I'm enjoying it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqtZ7i1ToIQ

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