At that click, a teenage Mimi lifted from her own nine-year-old shoulders to gaze at the arhats from high up and years away. Out of the gazing teen rose another, even older woman. Time was not a line unrolling in front of her. It was a column of concentric circles with herself at the core and the present floating outward along the outermost rim. Future selves stacked up above and behind her, all returning to this room for another look at the handful of men who had solved life. (The Overstory, pg 55)
Wide hips/tooth chipped/’96 skin scarred, looking forward // wide hips/soft lips/my mama’s trauma/since ‘96
Is Justin Bieber the voice of a generation? No. Maybe?
I think it’s interesting to grow up with an artist. Justin Bieber is only 3 years older than me; Lorde is barely a year. The first time One Less Lonely Girl premiered on the radio I thought it was sung by a woman and thought it was refreshing to hear a lesbian on the radio. Sorry Justin. Pure Heroine naturally was a significant soundtrack to my suburban youth. Lorde frequently speaks to different checkpoints in life in such a way that I knew Virgin was going to be personally topical.
Last summer I fell and scraped my knees; there are now two sets of scars on my legs, the more recent ones beneath the remnant of my scraped knees from 3rd grade. Lorde and Justin Bieber dropping albums within the same month somehow feels like this, imploding now that we’re all moving away from adolescence.
Since I don’t have a lot of social media and apparently all my friends hate me I found out about Swag’s sudden release from the girl I’ve been talking to. She also failed to mention the title. My first impression was just that this was a Mk.gee album that also wants to be the 1975 in some places. I stand by this, and think it’s good. I don’t understand all the R&B references, but the 90s vibes the album gives come through pretty strongly. The album ranges from sweet to corny, to insanely horny. My favorite review so far has called it God-fearing and hypersexual. Aside from some of the more graphic lyrics I think the album is pretty tender; at face value, the relationship he’s describing is tumultuous but loving, devoted. I remember reading when they first got together Justin and Hailey had to undergo quite a bit of couples’ therapy in order to develop a healthy dynamic. This makes sense to me, given that Justin Bieber has had a crazy life. Musically, I can’t decide if this is a derivative or at least heavily inspired record or if Justin is actually making something he likes. I definitely like it, but he’s not flexing his voice as much as he has in the past.
Is it weird to anyone else that Justin Bieber is a dad now? My best friend is married with a ring and everything. We aren’t quite kids anymore.
Virgin on the other hand, deals more with being the adult that was once a child, amid a relationship heartbreak and the heartbreak of fully separating from the parent. You’re on your own kid. Self actualized and it sucks.
I’ve been listening to it sparingly; it is quite beautiful and painful. Another notch in the list of records about crashing out over an ex. But, I think it’s mostly about realizing both that your parents are People and that you are like them in some capacity. Unfortunately you did learn things from observation, whether you understand it or not. Virgin is a raw wound, though; Clearblue is my favorite track both because I love a layered vocal ballad and because it’s so sad. The singing in the background becomes both a frustrated howl and a baby crying to communicate, because that’s all there is to say in both cases. The theme of generational trauma is the thread tying everything together in a way that’s less about the romantic relationship and more about the formation of Lorde in the world. There has been a lot I want to say about the complex mother daughter relationship, how generational trauma exists in the way that my mother told me her worst fear that my therapist described as a phobia I seem to display that the dream I had about my grandmother revealed about her. I listened to Virgin on a train ride while children laughed nearby and I saw a couple gently interact and another family’s little boy go between laying on his mom’s arm and his dad’s arm and almost started weeping. There seems to exist within each of us the mother and the child, like in Simmer by Hayley Williams (”if my child/needed protection/from a fucker like that man/i’d sooner gut him/cuz nothing cuts like a mother”) and in The Agonized Face by Mary Gaitskill, in which an author is making observations on a feminist author while thinking about her daughter’s adolescence and questioning her own judgements/the things women must perform. There’s another short story too, from Fruiting Bodies by Kathryn Harlan, in which the main character deals with physical versions of herself at younger ages, which appear in her home as her mother writes a memoir about her life and struggle with (the mc’s) mental illness; at some point she realizes the ideas of her her mother is publishing are not actually who she is. This is maybe all nonsensical but Virgin seems spherical to me, a 3D rendering of the complex emotions a woman has and where the mother wound shows up.
Both Swag and Virgin deal with being afraid to be unloveable, I think. Lorde is simply more straightforward about it (David is another favorite of mine. The buildup to then quiet outro of am I ever gonna love again? gets me right in the GUT. This is so true of grieving anything, a romantic relationship, the death of my grandmother, the immense disappointment I feel toward some people, the loss of the earth). I think she’s also exploring more of her identity, which she’s talked about and which I think is really cool and important stuff. Justin’s being a little more coy with it; so much of his record is about how he supports his Wife (and the worst Sexyy Red verse I’ve heard in my life) BUT, surprisingly enough in one of these Druski skit interludes, he says something really insightful:
It's feelin' like, you know, I have had to go through a lot of my struggles as a human, as all of us do really publicly
(Yeah)
And so people are always askin' if I'm okay
(Yeah)
And that starts to really weigh on mе
(Yeah)
You know? 'Cause I'm— ….
It starts to make me feel like I'm the one with issues and everyone else is perfect
I don’t know how seriously these interludes are supposed to be but that felt so intense in the context of the other spoken parts. Obviously this isn’t new, poor celebrity boohoo, but I don’t know, that has to take a toll. I have been sensitive when people meet my vulnerability with judgement or shock, and I’ve hurt others when I react to their vulnerability with anything but softness, so I can’t imagine having to deal with that on the scale of thousands and thousands of people since I was 12. I do not have a man’s perspective but I do wonder if some male artists can only be vulnerable while projecting to the women they’re attached to, the way non-famous people might jump from vice to vice to feel their grief through others. There’s a tinge to each love song on Swag that leaves an aftertaste of please don’t leave me.
Who’s gonna love me like this? // and every time you don’t say my name/I’m reminded how I love when you say it
I don’t have anything sweeping to say about being in your late 20s/early thirties (I mean, I do, but not here). I think the reason we don’t have a song of the summer (even though the opening tracks of Virgin and a few off Swag are strong contenders imo) is because, on top of um the uneasy mundanity of this fascist episode, everyone is miserable. Socially, we are not back from lockdown, from breakups, from the heat, from the lack of money. Last summer we were in the club this summer we are checking our bank account. Nothing is quite meeting the moment, except maybe Superman, which everyone should go see immediately (I’m being so serious to those who like to laugh at my taste in movies!!). But maybe Virgin and Swag are representative of the way we are actually feeling.