Mixtapemotions

  • “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama, Friday, July 21, 2023 (repost)

    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.”

    Read “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama on Genius 

  • “American Clouds” by Paper Route, Thursday, July 20, 2023

    I have many fond memories of my first Cornerstone in 2007, seeing a lot of the bands that I loved for the first and only time. There was a lot of effort to see as much as possible–looking at the pamphlets mailed when you purchased your tickets, trying to synchronize them with friends, and inevitably being unable to see everyone you wanted to see because of scheduling conflicts. But there was one stage that took the least effort–The Gallery. 


    SCATTERED IN AMERICAN CROWDS. In the back of The Gallery stage was the coffee shop, or I should say the coffee canteen. Depending on the year, it was hot and dusty or wet and buggy, but cheap refills if you bought that year’s mug early in the festival before it sold out and the music in the mornings just quiet enough to have a conversation made the stage my favorite. The evenings got a little crowded with some of the mellower hippy crowd or sometimes a CCM band that wasn’t quite big enough for the main stage. But in the morning, crowds were small and the emphasis was usually on the coffee. Sometimes the morning music was forgettable, but in the case of Paper Route in 2007, the music was anything but ordinary. While not many people were at the early morning show to see Paper Route, they quickly drew the audience in with how each band member played multiple instruments. Sometimes they would incorporate electronic elements, and that’s when they got more and more radical, pushing the acoustic instruments to the limit to compete with the electronics.  After the show, I bought all of their music, which at the time was a combined 2-EP set of Paper Route and A Thrill of Hope. I also started following the band on MySpace, and sometime between Cornerstone ’07 and ’08, Paper Route changed their sound from acoustic Americana to electronic Americana. 


    FASTER THAN THE FALLING RAIN. I can’t remember the timeline to be sure, but sometime before releasing their 2008 EP Are We All Forgotten Paper Route released the title track and “American Clouds” on MySpace. These tracks sound much more like the band that would go on to release three LPs between 2009 and 2016 before taking an indefinite hiatus. In fact, Are We All Forgotten begins the band’s streamable discography. Cornerstone had introduced me to Paper Route before this shift in sound and before their peak –touring with Paramore on one of the legs of the Riot! tour appearing on Seth Meyers. And while they never got the love that I think they deserve, they certainly are a band’s band. Perhaps one of the reasons they never got big was because of JT Daly and Chad Howat‘s involvement in many other projects whether in production or graphic design. While it may be easy to dismiss Paper Route’s music as another electronic ’80s-influenced band, today’s song and “Are We All Forgotten” maintain elements of their original heartland Americana. The jamming on “American Clouds” gives way to a harmonica at the end of the song. The band frequently played their songs from Are We All Forgotten acoustic with guitarist Andy Smith playing harmonica in the introduction and Howat playing accordion. I think that the sounds that Paper Route recorded for Are We All Forgotten and Absence were based on experimentation from processing the instruments that they used to play in acoustic shows like Cornerstone. I base this on the videos (now lost or deleted) that I watched from before Paper Route signed to Universal Motown. Please don’t take this as fact, but just a fanboy theorizing about one of his favorite bands. 




  • “Hot N Cold” by Katy Perry (repost), Wednesday, July 19, 2023

    Around 2007 Internet bloggers started sharing a song by an edgy new pop star called “Ur So Gay,” a song in which Katy Perry complains about her metrosexual, emo boyfriend who is more feminine than she wants in a man. The song was one of many cringe-worthy homophobic, sexist, or otherwise problematic songs that could exist only in the noughties, the UK pronunciation for the time period of 2000-2009. I think that it’s apropos when talking about this era of music. While “Ur So Gay” never impacted radio, other head-scratching lines littered Perry’s major label debut One of the Boys.  
    YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND LIKE A GIRL CHANGES CLOTHES. Katy Perry broke through with the single “I Kissed a Girl.” After the 2004 Super Bowl incident involving Janet Jackson‘s wardrobe malfunction, the Bush-era FCC heavily censored the television and radio waves. While there were edgy hits from that time, “shock pop” seemed to abound at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. And who better to lead in the new era than former CCM singer, Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, better known by her stage name, Katy Perry. Born to Maurice Hudson and Mary Hudson (née Perry), Pentecostal ministers, Katy Perry’s transition to fame involved both embracing the showmanship of a Pentecostal service and shedding the rigid morality associated with the Evangelical denomination. From 2008’s One of the Boys until 2010’s Teenage Dream most of her sugary pop singles weren’t heard on your mom’s light rock station–the lyrics were to overtly sexual. But then something happened around the time of her 2015 Super Bowl halftime show that didn’t involve Left Shark–her songs were even on mom’s radio stations. The shock value had worn off, and Perry’s singles focused more on her voice than her sexuality. Looking back at Perry’s “shock pop” from her first two albums– kissing girls, complaining about male PMS, “freaking in a jeep,” looking back at being a teenager and remembering her fantasies, a video with fireworks shooting out of her breasts, a song about freaky alien sex, and finally a song about getting drunk in a “blacked-out blur“–we see a playful, comedic side rarely seen in pop stars today.

    GOT A CASE OF LOVE BI-POLAR. But does it hold up? If Setlist.Fm statistics are to be trusted, Perry last performed “Ur So Gay” in 2012. She also hasn’t performed today’s song much lately either. There are certainly one-hit-wonders with novelty songs, some of whom have loyal fans and large music catalogues, but they are forever attached to that one embarrassing song. Katy Perry, however, is a singer with many hits and she can easily bury her more embarrassing songs in her catalogue, even if said song was one of her biggest early hits. But just because she doesn’t play it live, doesn’t mean millennials have forgotten that these songs exist. But what made me feel old was last year was when I was talking about the temperature in the school, and I said, “You know it’s hot then it’s cold,” and my high school student said, “Just like that Katy Perry song my parents used to listen to when I was little.” So, yes, the erratic weather we’re having inspired the song of the day. So could a song with lyrics like “Hot N Cold” or other early Katy Perry songs be released today?

    Rock version: 

     

  • “Ice Box” by Omarion ft. Timbaland, Tuesday, July 18, 2023

     

    After a successful career with the ’90s boyband B2K, Omari Ishmael Grandberry, known by his stage name Omarion, began a solo career. Omarion’s career was at the center when R&B and Hip-Hop started dominating Billboard‘s Hot 100. The podcast Hit Parade discusses this phenomenon when looking at how three artists helped to create the hip-hop sound from 2000 to even today in the episode “Flip It and Reverse It.”


    I GOT MEMORIES. THIS IS CRAZY. Chris Molanphy described Virginia-bast artists Pharrell, Timbaland, and Missy Elliot as three nerds who “added quirk” to the modern hip-hop sound. These talented musicians didn’t just work in hip-hop, but also helped to craft pop and R&B. Take for example Timbaland‘s contribution to pop music. From creating a mature sound for former *NSYNC leader Justin Timberlake to reinventing Nelly Furtado, to introducing the world to OneRepublic, Timbaland’s production skills in the ’00s were like no other producer’s at the time. Omarion’s first two releases, O and 21 contain some of the singer’s most famous songs, and the jointly-produced “Ice Box” is Omarion’s highest charting song to date. Peaking at number 12 on Billboard’s Hot 100, “Ice Box” highlights Omarion’s smooth vocals. Produced by The Royal Court, a production team founded by Timbaland and Solomon “King” Logan. Lyrically, the song deals with becoming numb to love, but the speaker is at a critical moment realizing that he has become numb. 

    I’M SO COLD. I know “Ice Box” not from Omarion’s 2006 hit, but rather from Punk Goes Pop, Vol. 2, released in 2009, though I didn’t listen to the album until years after that. I had listened to the first Punk Goes Pop record years before trying Volume 2, mainly for all of the Tooth & Nail bands featured on the record, but I was disappointed by the lack of quality. Then I tried Punk Goes Metal and Punk Goes Acoustic, Punk Goes ’80s, and Punk Goes ’90s, and Punk Goes Crunk. Punk Goes ’90s was the best, I thought with a few fun songs on Punk Goes ’80s. Punk Goes Metal was boring because I didn’t know the original songs or care about the bands covering them. The worst, though, was Punk Goes Crunk. The compilation was full of punk bands ruining classic hip-hop tracks from the ’90s. Sure, The Secret Handshake’s cover of Skee-Lo’s “I Wish” was enduring, but other tracks with the mostly gentrified genre of pop-punk covering songs by black artists, sometimes not changing the lyrics when a white artist really should have, definitely wouldn’t have been recorded today. But as for Punk Goes Pop, there was a drastic shift in production quality between the first installment and the second. While many of the bands on the later Punk Goes compilations never really made a mark on the scene, there are still some interesting arrangements. Take for example, a cover of today’s song by There for Tomorrow. Keeping the R&B beat and the slow guitar, singer Maika Maile sings the song with the conviction like he wrote it (fortunately, he changed the lyric to “friends”) and the band makes the song their own. While There for Tomorrow is no longer together, Maile’s pipes live on as a solo pop act. So today, I post both versions of “Ice Box.” I love both of them.

    Music video:

    There for Tomorrow Cover:

  • “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals, Monday, July 17, 2023

    There are numerous examples of Indie bands getting big and the fan crisis of how to label the formerly “indie” band. R.E.M., Modest Mouse, Mumford & Sons and today’s band, Glass Animals, have had major hits that propelled a niche sound intended for smaller audiences to festivals, arenas, and pop radio. While the English band Glass Animals had enjoyed some success from even their first record Zaba, it wasn’t until their 2020 sleeper hit “Heat Waves” became a TikTok hit that took the band to the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for five weeks two years later in 2022. 


    SOMETIMES ALL I THINK ABOUT IS YOU. Dave Bayley, lead singer of Glass Animals, both wrote and produced “Heat Waves.”The melancholy tune has been interpreted in a number of ways in its path to reigning as the number 1 song of the year in 2022, according to Billboard. Was it a break up song or a song about a death? Was it a song about missing the old days? Was it a song about missing a pre-Covid world. Bayley explained to Apple Music that the lyrics of the song deal with a friend who started dating someone and slowly starts to change. Bayley wonders “‘Where did my friend go?’ Well, this song is about realizing that it’s happened to you, that it’s you that’s changed.” Originally slated for a July 2020 release, the band decided to delay the album Dreamland‘s release in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests happening around the world following the brutal murder of George Floyd. The band decided to release the album in August in order to “Keep focus on the Black Lives Matter movement and the discussions taking place around racism and police brutality around the world,” according to NME. 

  • “Christian” by Zior Park, Sunday, July 16, 2023

    There are some general rules about music that gets consumed by Evangelical audiences in the United States. Except for the very conservative fundamentalist Christians, Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) can take any genre from Doo Wop to Hip Hop, from Folk to Death Metal. As for the content, though, Christian music usually refrains from using profanity and tends to shy away from anything that is grotesque, though metal albums certainly pushed the envelope in the ‘90s and ‘00s. While releases from progressive bands on Tooth & Nail and competing record labels started including less theology in lyrics, for the most part, the theology on a CCM record was in line with the dreaded televangelist on every cable channel on Sunday mornings. 

    I’M STILL FUCKING CHRISTIAN. Every blanket statement I wrote in the introductory paragraph has been challenged by one band or another in the ‘90s or ‘00s Christian bookstore, and when the evangelical gatekeepers of the Christian bookstore closed in the ‘10s, a flood of “Christian” music created by different voices entered the market, from Emery’s BadChristian Label to Tooth & Nail Records releasing explicit to Internet campaigns sending openly queer artist Semler to the number 1 spot on Billboard’s Christian albums. What has been considered part of the “Christian” label has been an interesting evolution and debate, especially in the age of self-publication and bedroom pop. But as my personal politics started leaning left of my upbringing, I stopped paying attention to the center of evangelical Christianity. And by losing sight of the center, I didn’t realize that Christianity was also evolving in another way. But this became so clear in 2016 when evangelicals elected President Trump, a “baby Christian” who was the antithesis of every value I was raised with. 

    SEX MAKES ME FEEL BETTER. HOW COULD YOU JUDGE ME?  I’ve talked a lot about 2016 and Trump and it’s getting pretty old, but still, I wonder, what’s Christian about withholding rights from others? Christianity has turned into a culture war more set on withholding rights from certain communities rather than about personal piety. And that’s happening internationally. The branding is now “have as much straight sex as you want” “curse like a motherfucking sailor” and “earn money and support the culture war,” but people of the LGBTQ community are so much more immoral than the life of excess they are leading. This oppressive form of Christianity has brought draconian laws to Africa and is empowering the religious minority in South Korea to oppose the free speech of the LGBTQ+ community. But that may or may not have anything to do with today’s song. Honestly, I don’t get “Christian” by Seoul-born, California-based rapper Zior Park, who is part of a new TikTok voice of Korean Hip Hop. I’ve heard the song maybe twice in public—in trendy brunch restaurants. The English lyrics are disgusting. The video is hilarious and grotesque. Park appears androgynous, which in the Korean market is not necessarily LGBTQ+ friendly, but I don’t know what statement the rapper is trying to make when he talks about being “still fucking Christian.” Is it satire about hypocrisy? Is it pride in Christian identity? Is it re-copting the label on his own terms? The song makes me think about the episode of The Other Two in which Chase Dreams (an obvious Justin Bieber parody) joins a mega church that seems to be based on Hillsong. The episode shows many celebrities joining the church without any kind of character transformation, but rather a new sanctification of their previous “sinful lifestyles”—and a new hatred for gay people. I worry that this is what the Korean Hip Hop scene has done with millennials and Gen Z—turned up the “Christian Pride” as a bullying force. That’s the impression I get from the translated lyrics of “Christian rappers” like BewhY and C JAMM. But perhaps I’m judging too much.

     Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “I Should Just Go to Bed” by ROSIE, Saturday, July 15, 2023

     

    ROSIE is a singer-songwriter whose song “Never the 1” became a TikTok hit in 2020. The singer began posting music on Spotify in 2018, and this year she released EP 5 Songs for Healing, which includes today’s song “I Should Just Go to Bed.” It’s a song about the intrusive thoughts that come when fixating on a relationship late at night. The song has ROSIE featured on Spotify’s Next Generation Singer-Songwriters, Chill Pop, and others. Today, I decided to make a playlist related to insomnia. These are songs about not sleeping for both positive and negative reasons. This playlist is certainly different from my Sleep playlist from last year. In summer, I often have a hard time sleeping because it’s too hot or I’m too wrapped up in something that I can’t wind down. So that’s today’s soundtrack. You should go to bed, but if you’re up, enjoy!


  • “Runaway” by 3 Doors Down, Friday, July 14, 2023

     

    We’re firmly in the territory of “butt rock” today. According to Houston Press, the origin of the phrase comes from a radio station in the ‘90s that had a programming slogan, “Nothing but Rock,” and listeners dropped “nothing” from the tagline. Loudwire points out that there are two distinct eras of butt rock: the ‘80s hair bands and the post grunge and nu metal of the late ‘90s and ‘00s. 


    HOPPIN’ ON A TRAIN, WE’LL BURN UP THE TRACKS. What, then, is the characteristics of “butt rock”? Like any musical sub-genre, especially if it is named more as a slur for the sub-genre not even used by the bands classified by the sub-genre, associations in the label are loose. Just as The Doobie Brothers & Daryl Hall and John Oats may be classified or contested alongside Christopher Cross and Kenny Loggins in the now so-called sub-genre of Yacht Rock, association with “butt-rock” seems to be more about music listeners disdain for certain characteristics. For the sake of today’s song, I’m only going to discuss second wave “butt rock,” music classified by  unimaginative, sometimes toxic masculine lyrics and boring melodies droned by a white male lead singer with a limited vocal range. It’s a copy and paste of the sound of grunge without any progressive politics—butt rockers tend to be nihilistic or even lean to conservative politics—or any of the novelty that made the the original sound of grunge unique to the music scene. Now that we have a loose definition of the label, music snobs start casting your favorite bands from 2001 into the pit. 

    AS LONG AS WE’RE TOGETHER, FOREVER IS NEVER TOO LONG. Creed is perhaps the first band that gets cast into the “butt rock” collection. There were a ton of bands in the Angsty Aughts who fit the definition from Three Days Grace to 3 Doors Down. Mississippi-based post-grunge band 3 Doors Down was huge from their first hit, “Kryptonite.” They had a string of hits both on rock and pop radio and even a few big movie placements like their massive hit “Be Like That” appearing in the film American Pie 2. For me, 3 Doors Down albums sound mostly the same except for their 2008 eponymous album, which feels like the most refined version of their southern blues rock with elements of gospel. The guitar tones are well recorded and add a longing sense that I think is absent in their earlier work and singer Brad Arnold’s voice plays on the guitar tones in a satisfying way. From the bluesy opening “Train” into the “support the troops” anthems of “Citizen/Solider” and “It’s Not My Time” the album are balanced by introspective tracks like “Let Me Be Myself,” “When It’s Over,” the R&B-drumbeat closer “She Doesn’t Want the World” make 3 Doors Down the best that the band has to offer. My favorite song, though, has to be “Runaway” for the meditation it presents on the rock ‘n’ roll theme of escape, which becomes escapism for those of us rooted to a job. It’s a simple song, but production is key in the delivery. If only the band stopped while they were ahead. But there had to be the 2017 presidential inauguration, which is certainly a topic for another day. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "Adore You" by Harry Styles, Thursday, July 13, 2023

    There are not many songs that get the promotional treatment that Harry Styles‘ “Adore You” received when Columbia Records released the second single from Fine Line in 2019. Before the single was released, a Twitter page title “@visitedora” appeared.  Then a website for the fictional tourist island appeared, though it wasn’t advertised as a fictional location. There was no place to book a ticket and Google Maps wasn’t able to find the location. 


    WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? Harry Styles released a trailer for “Adore You” on December 2, 2019 and then dropped the single and music video on December 6. In the music video, Styles treats viewers to a storytelling video about a boy (played by Styles) who is rejected by the residents of the small island, Edora. The boy befriends a magical fish, saving the fish from a fish market. Along the way, the “Adore You” music video introduces viewers to a number of colorful characters who live on the gloomy island.  The experience of watching “Adore You” feels like watching a film adaptation of young adult novel you didn’t read: you don’t expect to get so drawn into the story, but something about it keeps you engaged. The themes of the video about feeling like an outsider and looking for love, even if it is in the form of a magical pet are well executed that viewers forget for a moment that the story is fiction. Furthermore, the moody setting of the Eroda, filmed on several Scottish islands, though far from what many of us want on a summer vacation, but by the end of the video, I’m looking at tickets to northern Scotland.
    WALK IN YOUR RAINBOW PARADISE. Musically, “Adore You” blends a futuristic synth with throwback disco. It’s upbeat, but it’s longing due to the minor key. As Fine Line‘s second single, “Adore You” has a tone of introspection, although the song’s upbeat nature feels a bit contradictory in the emotional arch of a break up album on a first listen. It’s not a tearful track, but it is a reflection on potential one-sided love. On Fine Line, “Adore You” directly follows “Watermelon Sugar,” which is a much more upbeat song and precedes “Lights Out,” which is a substantially slower song. I generally think of Fine Line as a summer record, but the release of “Lights Out,” “Adore You,” and “Falling” in the colder months as well as the album’s December make me reassess my judgement on the record. And even though “Adore You” mentions “summer skies,” it feels cold. But with the rainy season in Korea, the weather reminds me of the music video, damp, sticky, but somehow a little upbeat because it’s not so cold outside. So, however your summer is shaping up, revisiting the many moods of Fine Line is never a bad idea.

    Live on Graham Norton:

  • “Boyhood” by The Japanese House, Wednesday, July 12, 2023

    Last month, The Japanese House released their long-anticipated follow-up album to 2019’s Good at Falling. The solo project of Amber Mary Bain, The Japanese House collaborated with a number of musicians from Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon and The 1975‘s Maty Healy and George Daniel to MUNA and Charli XCX on their latest project, In the End, It Always Does. The English singer-songwriter Amber Bain offers a hybrid between the acoustic and highly processed, like if Bon Iver recorded and produced Joni Mitchell. It’s simple. It’s zen. It’s nice music for a rainy or slow humid summer day.

    I’M STILL LOOKING OUT FOR ME. Before releasing In the End, It Always Does, The Japanese House released the lead single, “Boyhood.” The instrumental direction of In the End, It Always Does feels less processed than The Japanese House’s earlier work. Singer Amber Bain had talked about using The Japanese House to mask the person behind the music. I’ve written about many solo artists who take on a band’s name. Some groups started as a band but eventually, all members drop out until one member is left, like in the case of Years & Years. Some artists use a band name to give the illusion of a band. Some genres respect band names more than solo acts. I think of Washed Out and Anchor & Braille as these artists. In this case, other musicians may join for a time, like the local musicians who joined Stephen Christian on his first two records with Anchor & Braille or how Ernest Greene‘s wife sometimes performs with the singer. Still, other solo acts take on a name to distance themselves from a potential “Fame Monster” they create. The Weeknd and Lady Gaga as well as Lana Del Rey feel like they were curated singers to have a life much bigger than the singer. These artists hold publicity stunts to distract from the low-key life of the artist.
    I SHOULD HAVE JUMPED WHEN YOU TOLD ME TO. When Amber Bain invented The Japanese House, the singer talked about wanting anonymity and figuring out her gender expression. I must note that I using the pronouns she and her because that seems to be the singer’s current expression of gender. I will try to update the post if I find out that I am mistaken or if the singer wants to change pronouns. Androgyny was the singer’s original artistic expression. While Bain was hiding from the spotlight, fans of The 1975 saw Maty Healy’s involvement in the project and even speculated that that it was Healy singing with processed vocals. Of course, this is false and Bain eventually revealed that she was the sole member of The Japanese House. Today’s song, “Boyhood,” also plays with gender expression. Bain told BBC1 about “Boyhood”: 

            “I was thinking a lot about how I don’t really feel like a woman or a girl, and so it’s
            strange [be]cause I grew up as a girl and I didn’t have a boyhood. I was sort of
            thinking about that and how different I might be if I’ve had some sort of boyhood
            or I’ve had some different things happen to me in my life. The song itself had a
            hundred different versions of it and I feel like I’ve had a hundred different version         of myself that could’ve existed and it’s about like accepting some of those.
    Today, gender expression is so controversial. It feels as if conservative society is pushing for a binary uniformity, pushing people to embrace a primal archetype. And that’s not even how I grew up in what was supposed to be a more conservative time. What is the threat of people expressing the gender they feel is true to them? I think a song like “Boyhood” offers the first-person narrative that is always left out of the conservative straw-person arguments.