Born This Way: The Birth of Little Monsters From The Spirit Of Music
In my previous post about Gaga’s BTW, I argued that the song’s ultimate position on identity—whether sexuality is genetic/biologically determined, or socially constructed—was hard to determine. There was a tension between the general spirit of the “born this way” rhetoric…
Good Girl Gone Melisma: the racial politics of Avril Lavigne’s “What the Hell”
Avril Lavigne’s newish single “What the Hell” offers us a quick, clearly defined lesson about racial signifiers in American pop music. It all has to do with the one little arpeggiated melisma in the chorus of an otherwise vocally minimalist…
Deconstructing “Born This Way”
Some prefatory remarks: (1) I really, really wanted to like Gaga’s new single. (2) Musically, it’s a pretty fun dance pop track; I’m sure it will make its way in to my workout playlists. In fact, I prefer the music…
How to subvert biopower? (on Foucault, Butler, and subversive repetition)
Monday night in my Critical Race Theory class, we were discussing the second half of Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended. Here, he argues that 20th (and, I think there are good reasons for also claiming 21st) century State racism/racist discourse…
This Is A Cold War, Society Must Be Defended: Janelle Monae as Reader of Foucault
Yesterday, I was prepping both a talk on Janelle Monae, and a class on Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended, when I realized that Monae’s “Cold War” single is more or less a condensed, poetic version of Foucaut’s concept of politics…
Further proof that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” is about NOT getting married
It’s more like a negative proof, or an argument ad absurdam…This “All the Christian Ladies (Put a Purity Ring On It)” sort of demonstrates all that “Single Ladies” could have been (patriarchial, misogynistic, etc.) but actually isn’t.
Cinderella Ate Hip Hop: Nicki Minaj vs. Peggy Orenstein
Or: If she ate, then let her ate and watch the money pile up… So, white feminists are all upset about “princess culture”: “ONOES, what is it doing to our girls, encouraging them to succumb to outdated stereotypes about femininity,…
What everybody doesn’t seem to know about Kanye West’s “Monster”
UMG is being quite strict about policing copies of the video, so your best bet is to google for the most recent and reliable stream. I finished up a few things over winter break, so I’ve had some time to…
Fascinating 2010 Music Trends That I Will Examine Further If They Continue In 2011
This is just a quick round-up of some trends I noted in the past year’s mainstream commercial pop. I’ll say a bit about them below, but these analyses are definitely in beta. It will be interesting to see if they…
Further Thoughts On Kelis
I’ve posted briefly about work from Kelis’s “Flesh Tone” before, but here I want to follow through several quick but interesting observations/questions about her recent singles. 1. Afrofuturist feminism in “Acapella,” this time with some theory: I’ve posted about this…
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