100 Moments in Radio, #25 and #26: "When I Get There" and "Crazy" by Dream
This is a new segment I'm calling Album Interlude, where I feature tracks from formative albums betwixt actual radio moments. Because 100 is a really big number, guys.
I've been mentally toying with theme and purpose, and one of the things that keeps cropping up is gender and sexuality. I've already made comments about music as an expression of gender identity and how it impacted the kind of boys I was attracted to. I have big, important thoughts about rock and roll as a culture and the space it gives to non-normative little straight girls, but first, back to 2001.
Dream's debut album hit all the same points as Christina Aguilera's, but it came out when I was eleven, when songs about first love and blossoming womanhood were a little more relevant. The thing that strikes me now is how girly it is--everything about Dream was created and packaged by men, to appeal to men, but it was for girls. Girls were supposed to buy it and girls were supposed to connect with it. And connect I did--the virgin discovering her sexuality is a well-tread male fantasy, but it's about female power, too. It's about maturity and agency and choosing who to share it with. Then this happened:
Aside from being the most 2003 music video ever made (canned sitar riff! gratuitous hip popping! giant hoop earrings! pointless and terrible rap verse!) this is female sexuality as it's sold to men. "Crazy" is the textbook definition of performative sexuality, a by-the-book, PG cocktease that's all about how great the guy is and how horny it makes her.
Thing is, I liked "Crazy" when it first came out. But thirteen-year-old girls are a very different animal from eleven-year-olds, and my focus was less "someday I'll be pretty and grown-up like these girls" and more "well, sex sure is going to be a thing now."
2003 was also the year of the world's bluntest dick joke and "You don't need money with a face like that, do you honey?" Some would say that my awakening feminine sexuality was in tension with my masculine sense of humor and rebellion. I say that thirteen-year-olds have out-of-control hormones and a terrible sense of humor, full stop. Maybe I was drawn to rock because it didn't make me choose--it was sexual without being simpering, naughty without religiously prescribed gender roles. Or maybe I liked "big black boots" and a "get back stare" better than writhing on the ground like strip club Barbie.
I've been mentally toying with theme and purpose, and one of the things that keeps cropping up is gender and sexuality. I've already made comments about music as an expression of gender identity and how it impacted the kind of boys I was attracted to. I have big, important thoughts about rock and roll as a culture and the space it gives to non-normative little straight girls, but first, back to 2001.
Click to viewDream's debut album hit all the same points as Christina Aguilera's, but it came out when I was eleven, when songs about first love and blossoming womanhood were a little more relevant. The thing that strikes me now is how girly it is--everything about Dream was created and packaged by men, to appeal to men, but it was for girls. Girls were supposed to buy it and girls were supposed to connect with it. And connect I did--the virgin discovering her sexuality is a well-tread male fantasy, but it's about female power, too. It's about maturity and agency and choosing who to share it with. Then this happened:
Aside from being the most 2003 music video ever made (canned sitar riff! gratuitous hip popping! giant hoop earrings! pointless and terrible rap verse!) this is female sexuality as it's sold to men. "Crazy" is the textbook definition of performative sexuality, a by-the-book, PG cocktease that's all about how great the guy is and how horny it makes her.
Thing is, I liked "Crazy" when it first came out. But thirteen-year-old girls are a very different animal from eleven-year-olds, and my focus was less "someday I'll be pretty and grown-up like these girls" and more "well, sex sure is going to be a thing now."
2003 was also the year of the world's bluntest dick joke and "You don't need money with a face like that, do you honey?" Some would say that my awakening feminine sexuality was in tension with my masculine sense of humor and rebellion. I say that thirteen-year-olds have out-of-control hormones and a terrible sense of humor, full stop. Maybe I was drawn to rock because it didn't make me choose--it was sexual without being simpering, naughty without religiously prescribed gender roles. Or maybe I liked "big black boots" and a "get back stare" better than writhing on the ground like strip club Barbie.