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Right to Breathe
I posted this over on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
poptimists, where ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
meserach was asking if any blogs focused on pop lyrics:
Girls Aloud would be interesting to explore because, even though I sometimes like them quite a lot (made my P&J ballot last year with a song that most Brit critics didn't seem to like), I'm sure I don't get them. There seems to be a Brit tendency to simply declare control over style, as if to assert you're using fashion rather than following it. Not that most Brits do this, just the ones who make a point of manipulating style. Whereas their American counterparts - Warhol, Madonna - are much more contentious in their manipulations, which I think is a tacit admission that they're not in control, that one has to fight for style. So naturally I tend to identify harder with the Americans. Back forty years or so I recognized that the Stones were the best rock group, and I identified with Jagger's mind, and with Ray Davies', and his distance from the gorgeousness of his own music, but my heart was with Dylan and the Airplane and the Velvet Underground.
(Not that there aren't counterexamples. John Lennon always seemed to be fighting for his very right to breathe.)
poptimists, where meserach was asking if any blogs focused on pop lyrics:Girls Aloud would be interesting to explore because, even though I sometimes like them quite a lot (made my P&J ballot last year with a song that most Brit critics didn't seem to like), I'm sure I don't get them. There seems to be a Brit tendency to simply declare control over style, as if to assert you're using fashion rather than following it. Not that most Brits do this, just the ones who make a point of manipulating style. Whereas their American counterparts - Warhol, Madonna - are much more contentious in their manipulations, which I think is a tacit admission that they're not in control, that one has to fight for style. So naturally I tend to identify harder with the Americans. Back forty years or so I recognized that the Stones were the best rock group, and I identified with Jagger's mind, and with Ray Davies', and his distance from the gorgeousness of his own music, but my heart was with Dylan and the Airplane and the Velvet Underground.
(Not that there aren't counterexamples. John Lennon always seemed to be fighting for his very right to breathe.)
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* If one was looking for a lyrical theme with Grils Aloud, I'd start with looking at femininity and feminism and How OT Be A Woman In Modern Society etc. . With that band name they can't help but have something to say about women, and they definitely do.
* There's also going to be some interest in negative space: what DON'T Girls Aloud sing about?
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I would indeed enjoy such an exploration. With them on a break that may last quite a while or perhaps forever, it's more practical to look back on their catalogue as a whole.
Shoulda hung around the kitchen in my underwear, acting like a lady
OK, I don't understand how the kitchen verse relates to the rest of the song (theme of the rest being I won't sleep with you until I love you). Is she saying she should have kept the underwear on rather than being lazy (and presumably acquiescent, by taking them off)? And "you" i.e. the guy shoulda made her not take them off, shoulda instead held out for her to be feeling true love for him? That would fit with the theme, but it'd be a rather oblique way of saying it - but it's also very funny (putting aside the sexual politics of equating being a lady with not having casual sex), that she's being a lady while being all sexy and steaming up the joint in her underwear.
(But like, once they're in official l-o-v-e, and having sex, and a regular life, then what? Is the chase over and the couple makes babies and holds jobs and they - their concerns - exit pop music?)
Re: Shoulda hung around the kitchen in my underwear, acting like a lady
The song is post-breakup. Perhaps the guy broke up with her (or they just agreed to quit it), because she didn't "put out", to which she explains that her heart wasn't into it and she didn't want to force it.
Not being particularly sorry about the breakup she throws in a bit of bile. "To keep you, I should've hung around the kitchen (where women belong) in my underwear (always ready for sex), like 'a lady should'" - with all the other signals of classic femininity, fluttering her eyelids, jumping when he says 'jump'. This guy was a bit of a dick and now he gets a woman scorned. That could explain the cheesy video where they're doing all sorts of bad things to a series of guys.
This doesn't fit very well with "since you went away the other rushes feel so wrong", does it? Maybe she is sorry and just pissed off. Or maybe that's sarcasm as well. Damn it.
Re: Shoulda hung around the kitchen in my underwear, acting like a lady
for me the theme of all girls aloud songs is 'chicklit', the question is isolating the trope.
i always assumed 'the show' was about contradictory impulses: 'i won't go unless you want me to' vs 'get in the queue', which is also 'if it's not you... i won't do that' vs 'nobody sees the show until my heart says so'. i.e. 'i want you but only on my own terms'.
hung around kitchen in underwear acting like a lady, fluttered mascara like a butterfly = being seductive, being in control, being the one who makes themself wanted rather than the one who wants, the one who survives dating w/o loss of pride.
Re: for me the theme of all girls aloud songs is 'chicklit', the question is isolating the trope.