Mixtapemotions

  • "Problem" by Ariana Grande ft. Iggy Azalea and Big Sean, Thursday, August 11, 2022

    The first single from Ariana Grande‘s second record, My Everything, in 2014, “Problem” established Grande as a pop power force. Grande certainly has talent. While appearing in the Nickelodeon teen show Victorious, Grande uploaded covers to her YouTube channel, which landed her a deal with Republic Records in 2011. Her debut record, Yours Truly, was released in 2013 and featured a few modest-charting hits. Listeners could feel a similarity with Mariah Carey from Yours Truly, and for some reason, Republic Records went bigger with Grande’s follow up, My Everything, the next year.
    EVEN THOUGH I HATE YA, I WANNA LOVE YA. Rock bands typically have one producer for an entire record. The goal is to produce a cohesive record that is to be enjoyed in one play. Pop records used to be produced like this, and sometimes indie and major pop albums still are. But in order to get a hit, record labels often turn to multiple hitmakers to diversify a pop record. Ariana Grande’s second record My Everything is a prime example of a record label throwing everything at it an album to produce a hit. Working with everyone from Ryan Tedder to Zedd to David Guetta to today’s song’s producers the power team of Max Martin, Shellback, and ILYA. Grande’s lyrics on “Problem” are minimal but memorable with Australian rapper and the featured artist of the day to have on a track, Iggy Azalea, does a lot of the heavy lifting for the song. The Swedish production team then adds Big Sean‘s whispers as an effect in a kind of Timbaland production technique.

    I KNOW I SHOULD NEVER CALL BACK. Republic Records investment in the 5’3″ Boca Raton native certainly paid off. Although the singer wouldn’t score a #1 Billboard Hot 100 hit until 2018’s hit “thank u, next,” Grande became a consistent hit maker. Listeners might pick up that today’s song, “Problem” the second in Grande’s Hot 100 canon, plays by the Max Martin rule book. The podcasters from Switched on Pop tried to map out some of the Max Martin principles in a 2021 episode of the series titled “Searching for Max Martin.” Multiple hooks (from a funky saxophone to Ariana’s soaring vocals on the bridge to Big Sean’s whispering, genre changing), “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus,” a repetitive, memorable chorus, and use of “Blank Space” as an anti-hook hook seem to apply in this case. The mid ’10s seemed to spark a revival for the saxophone. Later that year, Grande would release her collaborative hit with Nicki Minaj and Jessie J, “Bang, Bang,” also co-staring the saxophone. South Korean girl group EXID would release their biggest hit later that summer “Up & Down” (위 아래) and the next year’s hit “Ah Yeah,” featuring gratuitous sax.  And of course we’re not forgetting M83’s 2011 hit “Midnight City” or how Carly Rae Jepsen took us emotionally back to the ‘80s with the sax on her 2015 record Emotion. A Max Martin track is all about giving listeners exactly what they want. And in 2014, sax sells!

     

  • “Eye of the Tiger” (Theme from Rocky III) by Survivor, Wednesday, August 10, 2022

    Survivor formed in 1978 when the lead singer and guitarist of the band The Ides of March, Jim Peterick, joined with bassist and guitarist of a jazz-rock fusion band called Chase, Dennis Keith Johnson and Gary Smith, guitarist Frankie Sullivan, and c0-vocalist/keyboardist Dave Bickler. The Chicago-based band played local gigs including at a local pizzeria called My Pi and released their self-titled debut record on Atlantic Records in 1980.

    JUST A MAN AND HIS WILL TO SURVIVE. Survivor scored a minor hit on their second record, Premonition with the song “Poor Man’s Son.” The band had begun to hone their sound by replacing the jazz-based drummer and bassist, Johnson and Smith, relegating Peterick to backing vocals and focusing Bickler as the lead singer of the band. The band’s 1981 hit may have faded into obscurity along with the band but actor/writer/producer Sylvester Stallone approached the band to write an anthemic disco-based rock song to be the theme of the actor’s third installment of his Rocky franchise. Stallone had the idea to use Queen‘s “Another One Bites the Dust” in the film but was unable to secure the rights. Hearing “Poor Man’s Son” on the radio, Stallone found a template in an up-and-coming band, and he was able to commission the kind of song he wanted for his film. Survivor was keen to every suggestion Stallone had for the song, rather than trying to cling to every artistic decision. 

    FACE TO FACE, OUT IN THE HEAT. Sylvester Stallone’s defining role as Rocky Balboa came with its own fight. Stallone had to insist that he play the character after writing the screenplay and presenting it to United Artists. Stallone wanted to make his film his way, starring himself rather than the studio’s pressure to cast an established star, not an actor who had only been cast in supporting roles. Stallone and his agents won and Rocky was a major success. Six years later, listening to Stallone was a canny decision, and Survivor scored a number-one hit on Billboard’s Hot 100 for six weeks with “Eye of the Tiger.” While it’s easy to say that the song’s success hinged on the phenomenon of Rocky III and continues to live on as a meme, I think today’s song is a sold rock anthem every bit deserving of its popularity. The ’80s was a time of cheesy rock anthems from Europe‘s “Final Countdown” to anything produced by Jim Steinman—Meat Loaf to Bonnie Tyler. You seriously can’t take ’80s rock too seriously, and if you do, it won’t stand up to more serious decades. And there’s something about these 40-year-old songs that has 2022’s pop culture missing the summer blockbusters us middle and younger millennials and Zoomers never got to experience. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Listen to the story behind the song.

     

  • “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama, Tuesday, August 9, 2022

    Bananarama formed in 1980 when childhood friends Sara Dallin and Keren Woodword moved from Bristol to London and met Siobhan Fahey. Dallin and Woodword lived in the WYCA and were out of money until Sex Pistols’ drummer Paul Cook offered them a place to live above the band’s old rehearsal room. Bananarama took their name from the Roxie Music song “Pyjamarama.” The trio were fans of the punk rock and post-punk scene in London and ultimately became a New Wave hit making machine lasting from 1982 with their breakthrough hit as a featured artist on Fun Boy Three‘s “It Ain’t What You Do” (It’s How You Do It) to the early ’90s.

    IT’S TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT. Bananarama were on the pop side of New Wave along with some of their friends in the music industry Wham! and Duran Duran. In 2020, the remaining members of Bananarama, Sara Dallin and Keren Woodword wrote a book about their experience throughout their almost fifty years of friendship and nearly forty years as a band titled, Really Saying Something: Sara & Keren – Our Story. On the Talking Success podcast the duo talked about the process of writing this book, being autonomous women in a music industry that preferred female artists to submit to the direction of managers and labels, and their reconciliation with the band’s third member, Siobhan Fahey, who left the group in 1988 to form the alternative band Shakespeare’s Sister. From this interview, listeners, especially us not alive or cognizant for the early crashings of the New Wave, can get a sense of what it was like to be an ’80s pop star when MTV was still young and exciting, when the band’s fashion was whatever they could afford from their day jobs. We can experience what their Top of the Pops success looked like and whaat it was like to be a self-curated fashion icon when it didn’t matter how cheesy the video was as long as the song had a hook.

    THE CITY IS CROWDED, MY FRIENDS ARE AWAY. Bananarama’s debut record Deep Sea Skiving produced several hits in the U.K., but it wasn’t until 1984 that they made an impact in the United States. The song was “Cruel Summer,” which was the opening track on their sophomore eponymous release. “Cruel Summer” was a #8 single in the UK in the summer of 1983, and due to a key placement in the 1984 film The Karate Kid, the song reached #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984. Bananarama shot their music video in Brooklyn, and according to singer Siobhan Fahey in the 2011 book I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution by Rob Tannenbaum there is quite an interesting story behind the video. Fahey explains that the video was “just an excuse to get us to the fabled city of New York for the first time.” True to the nature of the song, the video was shot during a 100-degree heatwave. The group set up base in a bar under the Brooklyn Bridge, shot all morning, returned for lunch at the bar only to make friends with dock workers who shared cocaine which was their lunch, and they got back to shooting the video. “Cruel Summer” is not the typical feel-good summer anthem. Dallin said of the song in a 2018 Guardian interview, that the song is about the “darker side: it looked at the oppressive heat, the misery of wanting to be with someone as the summer ticked by.” 



  • “Summer Lover” by Until June, Monday, August 8, 2022 (Content warning: sexual content)

    Until June‘s self-titled debut record is still available on streaming services. The band released the record in 2006 on the Christian record label Flicker Records, then distributed by Sony Music. Six years later, the band released their follow-up, Young & Foolish on Madison Line Records. Then in 2014, the band ceased all activity, but never declared a break-up. Currently, Young & Foolish is unavailable on streaming services.

    IF YOU FALL FROM ME, WOULD YOU LOSE CONTROL? “Summer Lover” certainly isn’t the first song about wanting more than a summer fling. Songs about falling in love while on vacation as you slip away from the friends or family you are there with only to be excited by someone new and interesting and unavailable in your current life situation make us sweat those tepid summer evenings away. The speaker of the song wants more than just a vacation, there’s also more to it. In this very short song, there’s a vague spiritual urgency for the listener’s fidelity. Not only does he not want her to be only his summer lover, but also he wonders if she will fall from him if she “will lose control?” If this were just as casual as we were led to believe from the airy rock guitars, we would probably say something like, “Lighten up, dude. You probably should check your patriarchy at the front desk.” But is this the whiny voice of God in this song? I can just picture the sermon title, “He wants more than a summer lover.” He wants your whole heart. Let’s hope that this is a spiritual relationship because it kind of falls apart if it weren’t, but it certainly doesn’t go with a mujerist interpretation of scripture.  


    I WANT MORE THAN A SUMMER LOVER. It all started with a sermon. It was probably the last sermon that I let myself take too seriously when I thought that I could still fit into the stoic format. If I were faithful, somehow my life would feel fulfilled. I tried to fix things on my own, and held myself back by dating the best I could, and in my case, it was a guy who believed in God. I even insisted that we pray together on the phone at night, but was that before or after we jerked off together? But of course, I was dating a man, having sex before marriage, and if it even mattered, he wasn’t Seventh-day Adventist. And yet this relationship had become vapid as it was bound to become. A relationship based on physical touch when he had been put on an assignment that kept us apart for a long time. A language barrier. An age gap of about 15 years. A true lack of a sense of future. And yet he’s kinda sorta Christian. I wanted more. I wanted not to feel alone. I wanted to enjoy the last of my twenties, uninhibited by a restrictive religion that told me to contort myself into something that was so foreign to my body, and for longing for what was natural for me was unattainable? Yet I feared the consequences. The STDs, the shame. So if I could stay faithful to my man, to my God, and just delete Grindr. But it was just too addictive.

  • “Waiting” by Trapt, Sunday, August 7, 2022

     

    Trapt‘s breakthrough single “Headstrong” from their major label self-titled debut record had appeal to many musical genres. The song was massive, reaching number 1 on the rock and alternative charts, number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 4 on the mainstream top 40, or the pop radio chart. This was a unique time when a scream in a rock song didn’t necessarily disqualify it from hitting pop radio. But the band was never able to repeat the success of their debut record.  

    I’VE BEEN FOOLED BY ALL THE ILLUSIONS IN MY HEAD. Trapt’s followup record, Someone in Control was released in September 2005. The band’s debut album’s success helped their sophomore record debut at #14 on the Billboard 200 album charts. But lack of a major single and poor reviews plagued the album’s success. Two of the singles the band released chatted on rock radio. “Stand Up” even reached number three on mainstream rock. Today’s song, “Waiting,” though, only reached #20. A scathing review by Blender magazine attacked the singer Chris Taylor Brown’s (not to be confused with the R&B singer Chris Brown) vocals and lyrics about the singer’s claims to mental instability. This would certainly not be the last time the singer or the band would suffer attacks when in 2020 Brown took to Twitter with MAGA rants and eventually Trapt was banned from the platform due to Brown’s controversial stance on statutory rape. For most this was the final nail in the band’s coffin. Following Someone in Control, though, despite being asked to leave their label Warner Bros. Music due to low sales, the band still continued to get big tours and even score minor hits. Poor critical reception in 2005 seems to be due to the critics being no longer fond of the hard rock side of Nu Metal and Indie and Emo gaining their favor.


    I’D MAKE IT RIGHT IF YOU WANTED IT.  I cautiously offer up a recommendation of today’s song, “Waiting.” The band is problematic, and I don’t really want to support them. But Trapt reminds me of the angry white boys who hung out in their basements smoking cigarettes or pot cursing the women who wouldn’t date them and cursing the men who wouldn’t employ them. The funny thing is that Trapt’s lyrics weren’t the prime example of this anger. You could hear it in the Nu Metal of Korn and Limp Bizkit. But I remember it best from the post grunge, bands like Seether, Staind, Cold, Three Days Grace to name a few. Emo sounded uplifting compared to some of their dark lyrics. And the fact that many of these bands became members of the far-right is probably some graduate work waiting to be written or a fascinating book to read. Today’s song “Waiting” features singer Chris Taylor Brown’s urgent, not overwrought as Blender suggests, vocals begging the listener, someone he loves, “to get that feeling once again” right now if possible. The urgency in his voice makes listeners feel that he isn’t quite in tact with his emotions, unstable. It’s a believable persona that we hope is untrue. 


  • “august” by Taylor Swift, Saturday, August 6, 2022

    Someone once compared releasing an album on a major label to giving birth. They say it takes about nine months. There’s the actual making of the album, which in most cases, takes longer than the making of a baby, with preproduction, songwriting, and recording. The process before and in the studio is only half to two-thirds of the process. Then there’s the mixing, mastering, and promotion. But a lot of the process is waiting; waiting for the record label to pick the right day to release the record–to make sure Adele isn’t going to release a record the same day. And the promotion–making sure that the singles are evenly spaced for maximum effect on radio–something that major labels have failed at in the mid-’00s as we’ve talked about Mae, Acceptance, Copeland, and others.

    MEET ME BEHIND THE MALL. Taylor Swift certainly had been bullied by the music industry for much of her career. But with a fanbase of avid music buyers–millions of buyers at that–Taylor’s pregnancy with her eighth album didn’t need nine months. In fact, just releasing folklore on a lark was the best thing for the record. Taylor’s folklore was written and produced during Covid lockdown, yet the record does not reference the issues of the day, but rather features Swift’s most poignant writing.  Swift released a prologue to the record in which she says that the album “started with imagery.” The dusty old images and stories the singer had been sitting with for years. And while the album doesn’t tell a cohesive story, there are stories and connections within the songs. Swift is meticulous in leaving clues and Easter Eggs in her songs for her fans to find deeper meaning. The prologue references today’s song, “august” as part of the imagery that inspired the album. She writes, “The sun drenched month of August, sipped away like a bottle of wine.” Swift confirmed that there is a trilogy of songs on the record, and fans believe that “cardigan,” “betty,” and “august” make that trilogy.

    SALT AIR, AND THE RUST ON YOUR DOOR. Taylor Swift has talked about her love for numerology on several occasions, and her albums are often full of meaning in numbers. Today’s song is track 8, just like how August is the eighth month of the year. Furthermore, folklore‘s release seems to coincide with the timing of this song. Taylor surprised the public on July 24, 2020, and many listeners and critics called folklore a fall album. But what’s a fall album without something illicit that happened over the summer to talk about? Like a steamy affair or even a surprise indie record by a big pop star?  The story that fans have constructed of the “high school love trilogy” is that three high school kids, James, Betty, and Inez, are involved in a love triangle. Betty’s song is “cardigan.” The lead single from folklore is a sweet, dusty acoustic track that finds the speaker realizing her worth when someone discovers her worth. Today’s song is said to be when James cheats on Betty with Inez during summer vacation. According to the song, James takes Inez’s virginity, but she realizes that James was never hers. James then tell his regret in “betty” after the rumors circulate when school starts again. Today’s song revels for a time in young folly. It feels so real in the moment, but the summer dream abruptly ends when the setting of a seaside vacation town boards up its windows after the tourists leave. The song is clearly fiction, and in retrospect, probably “Blank Space” was too. But “Blank Space” is the kind of story for a Rory Gilmore who has been through far too many “august” situations and learned nothing from it. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Steal My Sunshine” by Len, Friday, August 5, 2022 (updated repost)

    In the summer of ’99, I was 12 years old. I spent the first half of the summer with my dad, a truck driver, as he crossed the U.S. delivering camper chassis and steel. A lot of kids would get bored looking at the Interstate for hours, but I always loved the journey. I loved maps and geography, and I was getting a firsthand experience of seeing what America looked like. Of course there were some boring parts. But what was best about the miles of cornfields was that the radio stations lasted quite a while– a lot longer than they lasted in the foothills of North Carolina. With my dad, I got to experience new (old) music that my mom didn’t approve of at the time. On the road I first listened to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of the Moon, Steve Miller Band, George Thorogood & the Destroyers, America, and so many others I could fill a whole blog post listing. We also listened to new music–Red Hot Chili Peppers, Goo Goo Dolls, and Sugar Ray. 

    IMPAIRED BY MY TRIBAL LUNAR SPEAK. One of the songs that was fun to hear on the radio stations across America was Len‘s summer hit “Steal My Sunshine.” Surfer-dude meets baby doll singing, with strange lyrics, and happy, vibey instrumentation that sound like it would make a dog happy, this song became quite an infection radio gem. Listening to this song again, it reminds me of a time when the radio was fun. You didn’t know what style of music you were going to hear next. The ’90s were a time when alternative rock had a place on the Top 40 along with Hip Hop and bubblegum pop. In the late ’90s rock started flirting more with Hip Hop and electronica, hence making unique tracks like this one. As the Canadian brother-sister fronted band failed to release a follow-up album to their 1999 hit You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, the band and their style remains a kind of time capsule of the summer before Y2K. It would have been interesting to see where they could have taken pop-rock, though, into the new millennium. 
    I KNOW IT’S UP FOR ME.  Unfortunately, Len was unable to capture the hooks in their only hit twice. In fact, the band kind of rebelled against hooks in the rest of their music, much to their detriment. It’s also worth it to check out why this was the only song we’ve ever heard from Len in the 8-minute documentary from True Rock N’ Roll Stories (see below). If you just take the song on the first listen, along with the embarrassingly awesome music video, you might conclude that it’s just a feel good song with some strange lyrics. However, on a deeper listen/read, you can see that the lyrics are about dealing with depression. The song talks about how other people can “steal [our] sunshine.” It also talks about feeling down when others are enjoying themselves. This is another example of a music/lyric paradox used in songs like “Rose-Colored Boy” and to a lesser extent “Float On.” “Steal My Sunshine,” is a pretty good pre-curser to Emo pop. So what does this song mean for today? It’s been a really rainy summer in Korea and extreme weather is taking over the globe. There’s so much to bring us down. Life is looking different every summer. So that’s kind of why we need to remember the good: those simple summer days when we didn’t stress about heatwaves causing wildfires that might burn down your home. Please don’t steal my sunshine–but also, don’t turn it up to 11!


  • "Midnight City" by M83, Thursday, August 4, 2022 + Dreaming Playlist

    After listening to the 2011 M83 record Hurry Up We’re Dreaming several times the last few days, I started to think about how each of the songs on the record seem to illustrate scary images in a way that makes the listener feel in control of those scary things. Take for example today’s song, “Midnight City.” The central image of the song is a car the speaker is waiting for in the middle of the night. The feeling of a dream can make this mysterious car a positive thing. But we all know that a dream can change in an instant, and that car could belong to a serial killer. Fortunately, M83 keeps the entire album on the positive side of mysterious. So, I wanted to curate a playlist about dreams, mostly positive and mysterious dreams. Enjoy!

  • “Grace” by Adoy, Wednesday, August 3, 2022

    “Grace” was one of the first hits for the South Korean electronic indie band Adoy. The song opens their 2015 debut EP Catnip. In a recent interview with Front Row Live lead vocalist Oh Ju-hwan and keyboardist Zee talked with Rob Herrera while they were on their first U.S. tour.  The two musicians talked about their writing process in Adoy. Although Ju-hwan is the lead singer and sings in English, he is not fluent in conversation, so Zee often handles the English questions and translates the interview questions and answers. So why then, would a band choose to write their songs in a language their lead singer wasn’t fluent in?


    WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME? At Cornerstone 2011, the year before the festival folded, Blindside flew from Sweden to sub-headline on Saturday, July 2nd, just before Anberlin closed out the main stage. The show was incredible. The band had just released their first album since 2007’s Black Rose EP,  With Shivering Hearts We Wait, an album that pushed the band into electronic and pop influences. One of the things I remembered from the show was that guitarist Simon Grenehed rather than lead singer Christian Lindskog introduced all of the songs. I wasn’t sure why. I’d seen interviews with the band and Lindskog had spoken. Now Adoy is not Blindside, nor is Korean Swedish, but I find it interesting when bands from non-English speaking countries make an artistic choice to sing in English, whether it’s A-ha or Scorpions or the Japanese pop-punk band ONE OK ROCK. And then you find yourself traveling, even just a few miles north of the border in Quebec, listening to French DJs playing American music with a few French rock bands that seem to be everything that’s missing in the American scene. 

    I WAS ALWAYS WAS DREAMING OF A DAY LIKE TODAY. In the interview with Rob Herrera, Zee explains that Adoy tried writing in Korean, but felt that sound of English better illustrated their lyrics and the concepts behind their songs. The concept? Zee explains that an Adoy song is about “lifting” and “floating in the air” because they feel that sound promotes a feeling of youth and vitality. Zee explains that he usually writes the lyrics, but sometimes Ju-hwan or other members will write in Korean and Zee will translate the lyrics. A few years ago, the band was on a radio show on a Seoul English K-pop/indie station talking about their upcoming record Love and performing songs from Love and Catnip. Before playing the song “Grace,” Zee told the listeners that the song was about an impending serious conversation in the car, when two lovers are about break up. But does the relationship still stand a chance? So that “floating in the air” feeling that Adoy’s music gives the listeners is contrasted with the melancholy of the fear of a break up. “Grace,” lyrically, is similar to “Bike” on the band’s follow up EP in that both the happiness and the inevitability of the couple’s breakup are told in a calm and positive tone in the nostalgic song. Still, the twinge of sadness in the lyrics aren’t intended to kill the vibe of the song. Played in a largely non-English speaking country in trendy cafes and restaurants, the smooth sounds of Adoy can serve as furniture music, music that sets a mood but not a conversation piece. Well, today, Adoy, you set off the conversation, and we’re all a litter sadder because of it!

    Live version:

  • “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” by Harry Styles, Tuesday, August 2, 2022 (Warning: frank discussion of specific sexual acts)

     

    grabs listeners with a funky ’70s-Jazz-influenced track, “Music for a Sushi Restaurant.” The avant-garde production, scatting, horns, and minimal (though somewhat complexly layered in meaning) lyrics are simultaneously the most and least pop way to start a record. Harry’s House is a record that jumps all over the place stylistically track to track, yet “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” is a bombastic-themed track–horns, ’70s-inspired tracks–to an otherwise laidback singer. But the imagery of a girl so hot you could fry an egg on her?
    What a bizarre way to open an album, and possibly a little unappetizing, but I have been suffering from diarrhea for two days and everything I eat quickly leaves my body. 
    MUSIC FOR A SUSHI RESTAURANT, MUSIC FOR WHATEVER YOU WANT. Last month, musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding talked about the horn themes on Harry’s House on their podcast Switched on Pop. The duo made the connection between Styles’ recent inclusion of horns on the record with Styles’ Peter Gabriel influence, particularly on his massive 1986 hit “Sledgehammer.” During an interview with Howard Stern, Styles said that the overall mix of the song made it one of his favorites of all time. Styles then performed a cover of “Sledgehammer” on Howard Stern’s show. What Sloan and Harding noticed, though, was how Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” was really about horns blaring when to heighten the melody. Then then proceeded to give a musical history of the zeitgeist of horns in ’80s music, starting with Lionel Richie‘s 1983 mega-hit, “All Night Long.” The difference between these two songs, though, is that whereas “Sledgehammer” has punctuated horns throughout the chorus, “All Night Long” is a slow build-up of momentum, each chorus building from a synth pad to synth horns to real horns and finally going all out on the final chorus of the original 6-minute non-single version of the song. Styles recorded some of his records at Peter Gabriel’s studio and seemed to take a cue from “Sledgehammer” by going all in on the horns on the album’s opener.


    IF THE STARS WERE EDIBLE AND OUR HEARTS WERE NEVER FULL, COULD WE LIVE WITH JUST A TASTE?  It becomes clear that Harry Styles has a bit of an oral fixation, at least in his writing. Later on the record in “Daylight” Styles says, “You’d be the spoon / Dip you honey so I could be sticking to you.” On “Keep Driving,” the second verse describes a breakfast. Sometimes, food and sex are interconnected, but not in a George Costanza way. Recall the oral pleasures Styles sang about on his last record, Fine Line, in “Watermelon Sugar.” “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” takes a more savory approach, but the idea of having “just a little taste” seems a little more actual than metaphorical in a Harry Styles context. In the introduction to Violet Blue‘s The Ultimate Guide to Fellatio, Mary Roach descriptively describes the unique flavors she experienced eating in a Chinese restaurant in Tokyo and she related the uniqueness to performing oral sex. In the first chapter of the book, Violet Blue reminds readers that “it’s an undeniable fact that my mouth is a sex organ.” The author goes on to explain that she, like many others, gets sexual pleasure merely from giving oral sex and that exploring why the act itself gives the giver pleasure is both healthy to understand and healthy to explore. And if we think about how sushi and fish are often euphemisms for female genitalia, the song makes a bit of sense. It’s an interesting discussion, but let’s not make it personal: four days of suffering from food poisoning have me desiring neither sex nor food. 

    Music video: