Madison Pike
In this week’s readings, we looked at issues of sex, gender, and race within popular music. Starting with the “Powers Spy in the House of Love” article, the idea that “American popular music has been the culture’s major vehicle for the free and open expression of erotic desire” was brought to our attention. As I have learned in this class as well as other studies in popular music, musicians are always trying to push the boundaries on the topic of sex in their music. For example, the song Louie Louie by The Kingsman rose an enormous amount of buzz due to their promiscuous lyrics. Although it doesn’t seem to racy in today’s standards, the sexual metaphors used created extensive buzz around the popular hit.
The article also talks about feminism and pop music saying, “because American sex is fundamentally sexist, so is American music.” This stood out to me because it seems to be a major issue in the genre that I am most familiar with; hip hop. However, the culture around this popular genre of music is so sexist that it is expected that the music won’t change until the culture around it changes. I think some musicians are wanting to do the opposite and make music change the sexist patriarchy around it. We can see this with musicians such as Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift and other proclaimed feminists in today’s industry.
Our other article, “The Right to Rock” by Daphne Brooks discusses the idea of “racialized musical encounters.” For me, this made me think about the way we categorized different races into different genres, most of the times unknowingly. We are surprised when people break the preconceived ideas.
Gatekeeper Jessie Reyez
In this song Jessie gives a big middle finger to the sexist, male dominant patriarchy in the music industry. She talks about the “gatekeepers” that they see women as objects for sex and control them with their money and power. She fights against these ideals and her strong values have not only given her much success, but also empowered other women to stand up for themselves.
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