music

The obsession I used to have for boy bands and heart throb actors (mostly just Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, see: collage I put in my Juicy Couture wallet), has been reborn into a deeper romance with female indie pop rockers in part because they mirror me. It’s still a love affair, but it’s one I’m having with myself, reflected in these women.”

I don’t play the guitar but I’ve been keeping my fingernails short so I can learn. I bought a mahogany wall mount to hang it , a three-quarter-scale Taylor, a gift for my last birthday. Sometimes I lie in bed after having just woken up, thoughts gently seeping but not yet permeated into that pink matter, and I gaze at its sanded curves, surely, dusty, and see myself on stage, back lit with red lights, in an oversized t-shirt, a mini skirt, leather boots, and glittery makeup. I’m an amalgamation of all my favorite indie pop rock girl band leaders – my current musical haven.

I’ve never met a demographic form that has let me check off “attracted to some androgynous women and the occasional woman that just seems familiar in some way… like that girl I got lunch with after group therapy” or “went on a date with a girl that I met at a Halloween party who was dressed as Bradley Cooper’s character in A Star is Born and we went to second base” or “kissed a girl in a pool at night and felt the water between us become warmer than the air around us” or ” asked if I listen to a girl in red” (I do), which is, I only just learned, years later, code for asking someone if they’re gay (I’m not). And yet the one thing all of the artists I’ve been enjoying as of late seem to have in common is that they’re queer. Sexuality is a spectrum, we know this, so while I tried “she/her/they” pronouns and that didn’t feel quite right and I’m to gay enough to fill the “bisexual” box, I sometimes hesitate over “straight” and feel the urge to invoke my go-to anthems which happen to feature WLW (women loving women) lyrics.

Questioning one’s sexual orientation as a result of the music they listen to sounds just about as fanatical as saying listening to gay music will make you gay. But if you’re are any amount of plugged into online coversations around bands like boygenius, you’ll have come across calls for artists, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus in this case, to prove their queerness or do what they call ‘[turn] in their gay paperwork.” Fans, too, are sometimes subject to the same scrutiny. Isn’t it possible instead to say that what is going on here is a sonic trend characterized by polished, accessible melodies and introspective lyrics that touch on female experience and expression beyond binaries or spectrums.

I’m relatively sure of this because I don’t feel that deep sense of longing I used to feel when I’d watch One Direction music videos on repeat as a fourteen-year-old, and I haven’t set my phone’s lock screen wallpaper to a photo of Miya Folick. The obsession I used to have any boy bands and heart throb actors (mostly just Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, see:collage I put in my Juicy Coutre wallet), has been reborn into a deeper romance with female indie pop rockers in part because they mirror me. It’s still a love affair, but it’s one I’m having with myself, reflected in these women.

orchestrated and experiment in an effort to try and understand what is about the sound of my favorite songs and bands that lights me up- records by artists like MUNA, Miya Folick, Soccer Mommy, girl in red, boy genius and the work of the latter group’s members, Bridgers, Dacus and Julien Baker:

I listened to “Silk Chaffon” by MUNA, the original band and a cover by Mia Wray, part of triple j’s Like A Version. MUNA’s has that feeling of being young and free, on summer break, with your whole life in front of you. The time before you realized that no one was going to notice your potential and take you by the hand and usher you to greatness.

Back then, my friends and I were generating our own suburban narrative of nostalgia in the moment, hot boxing my 1998 Jeep in the library parking lot. Wray’s cover is the worst part of the drive home; it’s hopeless, it’s saying goodbye, it’s sad girl folk. The piano is featured prominently; I see languid fingers pushing down on the keys. Her voice is distant, like you can

In these records, there’s an added layer of being HOT and feeling the static between your body and your crush’s and the bliss in that moment when you’re pretty sure he likes you too. I did feel free and that greatness would be easy and inevitable, but the closest I got to that staticky euphoria was wrapped in the arms of my college love the first and only night we kissed. But by then I knew too much about loss.

see her in front of the microphone recording the song. Kate Gavin, the lead singer of MUNA, on the other hand, feels like she’s right in your ear. It ‘s so intimate. This original version fills the gaps that love impressed but never stayed, in the form of soft serve that somehow doesn’t give you a brain freeze, spiraled with whipped cream, and topped with maraschino cherry, nestled, slightly off kilter, on top.

It’s nostalgia.

More specifically, it’s a flavor of nostalgia that represents an era I never experienced, but wished I had. It’s this that I willingly suit up in; it makes me glow.

On a technical level, a musician friend of mine told me that many of my favorite indie rock pop songs employ Jesus chords. He texted me:

Jesus chords are a style of playing

where the ring finger and pinky

remain on the same two notes

while the pointer and middle finger

move around the fretboard,

creating a high droning sound that

pairs with a moving melody. Think

“Wonderwall” and “Crash Into Me”

hahaha

Whatever it is, that’s me.

Sabrina Tenteromano –

Sabrina Tenteromano’s work explores identity through familial legacy and the human condition. When she is not writing, she enjoys taking too many photos, training her heart through Tibetan Buddhist practices, and training her body through strength conditioning. She’s a first year student in the MFA Creative Writing program in the nonfiction genre and a nonfiction editor of the Inquistive Eater (where the essay she submitted for this issue was rejected and her fellows editors asked to publish “Cherry on Top”).

Once again, the unstoppable machine of pop music invites us to a tasting of a sweet and – not incidentally – black body. This time Rihanna entices listeners to join her in a celebration where the main course is herself. As a matter of fact, a popular remix seems to point to her ex, Chris Brown, as guest of honor to the party the song refers to. The live performances do not leave many doubts as to what part of Rihanna’s body the word “cake” refers to. No need for winking, no double entendre: the song is a suggestive road map that guides the willing listener to blow the candles, lick the icing, and put his name on the artist’s cake, described as “sweeter than a rice cake, cake worth sipping.”

I am not trying to pass any moral or aesthetic judgment. Rather, I’m drawing attention on how popular culture, and in particular music, has compared female bodies to sweet substances that are there for the taking. “Honey,” “sugar,” and “sweetness” are common terms of endearment, without any explicit connection to oral pleasures and devoid of specific racial connotations. However, pop music draws more direct correlations between edible matters and female bodies. Lady Gaga hinted that she was an object of consumption when she showed up at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards wrapped in a dress made of raw meat. But these connections are particularly interesting in what many identify as African-American pop culture, although produced by the entertainment industry for all kinds of audiences.

Starting from the 1930s, culinary themes were especially common in blues music. A desirable young girl was called a “biscuit” and a good lover was called a “biscuit roller” (If I Had Possession over Judgment Day, by Robert Johnson, 1936). The complexion of a black person also played a role: “honey ” referred to light-skinned persons, while “coffee” referred to darker ones, resulting in expressions such as “honey dripper” and “coffee grinder” as metaphors for a lover. Having sex was “grinding” (Grinder Man Blues, by Memphis Slim, 1940) or “squeezing lemons” (Dirty Mother for You, by Memphis Minnie, 1935). Jelly is an edible matter that denotes softness and sweetness, with connotations that point to childhood, comfort food, and satisfaction of primal drives. Peanut butter and jelly are often referred to as a quintessential treat for children and adults alike. The jelly metaphor, in which the physical consumption of food somehow mirrors the enjoyment of sexual pleasure, is not new, but originates in the 1942 song It Must Be Jelly (‘Cause Jam Don’t Shake Like That.

However, in recent years black female artists have started using these metaphors in ways that assert their power and control over their male counterparts. In her hit Milkshake, singer Kelis flips the stereotype from negative to positive to affirm the woman’s control over the man’s appetites. Realizing that her stuff is better than anybody else’s, she refuses to share her skills and wisdom with other women. Otherwise she should charge a fee. Destiny’s Child taunted listeners by reminding them that “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly ’cause my body is too bootylicious for you, babe.” In her song, Rihanna teases an imaginary male who wants her cake “in the worst way,” positive about her control over him: “Don’t try to hide it, I’mma make you my bitch.” Who is the artist talking to? Just heterosexual males who find her come-on lines arousing, or also women who might identify with the sexual power and the assertiveness exuding from her?

Young black female performers might seem to have found, in the triangulation of their flesh, food, and sexiness, the key to affirming their commanding womanhood and their agency. Yet this phenomenon does not happen in a void, but as part of a massive showbiz industry that by commodifying minorities still allows mainstream culture to find new and discrete ways to reaffirm its power. At the same time, models of beauty that reinforce the preference for thinness turn female bodies into an object for entertainment.

“CHERRY ON TOP” by Sabrina Tenteromano

Tasting Rihanna’s Cake: Sweet Bodies in Popular Culture