On The Absence Of Fierceness

by bennett himmel

For all my life, I’ve loved pop music that makes you feel a little bit stupid. I love the loud, buzzing synths, I love the booming bass, and I love the lyrics that truly mean nothing. Therefore, it makes sense that I would be so in love with music by artists like Slayyyter, COBRAH, Kesha, and Ayesha Erotica. They each have their own brand of lobotomized pop, but the reason it works is that they all, on some level, seem like smart people. Each of them have a unique take on the bimbofied aesthetics that inform their music, and in interviews, they all have an incredibly wide frame of reference. (Who would’ve thought “Daddy AF” chanteuse Slayyyter’s favorite song would be “Surf’s Up?”)  I truly believe that Ayesha Erotica’s tongue is planted firmly in her cheek when she purrs lines like “McNasty princess double patty sippin on a matcha frappe.” But as this subgenre has gotten more and more popular over the years due to platforms like TikTok, I’ve noticed something…sinister…hideous…just deeply unchic.

“Crazy how the very first sin was a woman who ate,” goes the opening line of “artist” Jane Bell’s truly insipid single that is nauseatingly titled “MOTHER ATE”. The song, to me, is everything wrong with pop music in its current form. It is an abomination, a pile of slop that is being fed to me as something in between high art and a joke. I can’t stand it. I’m not saying that a song which proclaims that the original sin is cunt is bad as a concept. But, the throbbing, 99 cent store house groove that it’s built upon mixed with the Apple earbud microphone quality mixed with the fact that the track is designed to please 15-year-old squealing bleach-blonde twinks on TikTok just makes me sick to my stomach. 

Pop music should be stupid, but stupidity can only be done well if it is done with intention and care. The fact that I see mostly positive feedback on the song only fills me with more mirth.

It’s a pattern I’ve been noticing in pop music lately: so many artists are desperate to recapture the glory days of the 2000s and early 2010s. A recession is happening, and people are ready now more than ever to go out and gyrate on top of club couches in their heels and bandage dresses. But the issue at hand is that very few artists actually have the fierceness it takes to pull off the sounds from this era. Model and alleged sex pest Britney Manson’s single “F/\SHION,” on a surface level, has what it takes. However, the lyrics are delivered with no panache; none of the Mariah-inspired vocal runs of Slayyyter, none of the delicious, bubbling vocal fry of Ayesha Erotica. “Screaming Dolce And Gabbana while she’s having anal sex” should be a fierce lyric, but it’s preceded by “her life is the biggest flex.” No lyric in a cunty electropop track should also sound like it could’ve been in “It’s Everyday Bro.” The songwriting on so many of these songs is just simply not there, and neither is the delivery.

I believe part of the problem is that we may have simply reached a point of overload. Maximum cuntiness, if you will. So many people are trying to get in on this sound. However, this aesthetic and general vibe runs much deeper than many can see. The reason people loved Britney Spears was because she seemed uncanny, that she was so fake that it wrapped back around to being authentic again. But none of these amateurs know how to do it. There’s a fierceness plague. Everyone is trying to eat, but there were already no crumbs left on the plate.