Mixtapemotions

  • “Lucky Girl Syndrome” by ILLIT, Friday, June 7, 2024

    I’ll-It, later known as ILLIT, was formed with the winning members of the 2023 South Korean survival competition show R U Next? The show was broadcast JTBC and streamed on Netflix and Wavve beginning June 30, 2023. Along with JTBC, the show was created by Belift Lab, a sublabel of Hybe, the label responsible for introducing the world to BTS and NewJeans. Six winners were selected by the end of the show and those members became ILLIT, a K-pop girl group who just scored a Billboard Hot 100 entry on their first single–an accomplish-ment, a first of its kind. “Magnetic” is one of the biggest K-pop songs now, and other songs from Hybe Corporation are charting high in Korea and other countries. But as the label has brought K-pop to its imperial phase, ILLIT has come under fire as an imitation of the label’s other successful girl group, NewJeans.


    I DON’T NEED ANY GOLDEN TICKET. Hybe Corporation began as Big Hit Entertainment in 2005. The label signed their first act, 8Eight in 2007. Big Hit’s first big hit came in 2013 when BTS debuted. After several other idol groups, some of which were embroiled with scandal, Big Hit signed Tomorrow X Together in 2019 to a runway success. With the growing success of K-pop in America, in February 2021, Big Hit made a deal with Universal Music, to market music in both America and Korea. Then, in March, Big Hit announced that they would rebrand as Hybe. The label’s new strategy was multiple sub-labels. Each sub-label was run by its own CEO, but all were under the leadership of Hybe founder Bang Si-hyuk(방시혁). The company had been making headlines this spring because of an issue with the CEO of sub-label Ador, Min Hee Jin (민희진). Min was hired after working for SM Entertainment as she was responsible for the branding of some of the label’s biggest acts including Girls’ Generation, Exo, f(x), SHINee, and Red Velvet. When she began work for Hybe, Min demanded that she be named the CEO of her own label, and that label released NewJeans’ music.  Now, this spring, Bang and Min are in the middle of a legal battle which is still unfolding, with accusations between Bang and Min at the forefront of the case. Min claims she raised concerns about Bang copying her signature style, which was applied to Belift’s ILLIT. Bang claimed that Min was seeking independence of Ador and ordered an audit of the sub-label. 


     THE WORLD IS CHOCOLATE; LET’S SAVOR IT. The details of the case are quite intriguing; I wouldn’t be surprised to see a documentary or a drama with a plot heavily borrowed from the allegations—specifics changed, of course. The case of ILLIT, though, raises the question about how much a company can take from its workers. I’ve been blogging a lot about K-pop the past few months, and I’ve taken more and more interest in the corporate structure of the industry. K-pop seems to be somewhat based on a pre-2008 understanding of American record labels, and the art of K-pop is as much visual and merdandizing as it is about the music itself. That makes Min Hee-jin one of if not the primary artist for NewJeans. But can the parent company take Min’s ideas and apply them to ILLIT? And what about the listeners? Will they tolerate a clone of another group? The member’s personalities have to be a driving force of the groups moving forward. As for ILLIT vs. NewJeans, both groups offer a similar subdued catchiness. Often when I first hear a NewJeans song, I think it’s not that good, but catch myself humming it all day after just a cursory listen. The same goes for ILLIT’s “Magnetic” and today’s song, “Lucky Girl Syndrome.” As a former hipster, indie snob, it was the earworms of K-pop that made me start taking the industry seriously. In a time when Western pop music is shedding melody for monotonous simplicity, K-pop leaves an impression due to how easily it’s stuck in the listener’s head. And that’s a “Lucky” place to be. 


    Check out the English translation.


    Check out the lyrics on Genius.




     

     

  • “Ojos Marrones” by Lasso ft. Sebastián Yatra, Thursday, June 6, 2024 + Música Española Favorita Playlist

    Venezuelan-born, Mexico-City based artist Andrés Vicente de Jesús Lazo Uslar goes by the name Lasso. He’s been recording since 2009, releasing four studio albums. His latest, Eva, was released last year. Teaming up with Colombian singer Sebastián Yatra on a re-recorded version of his hit “Ojos Marrones” as a bonus track on Eva. I instantly connected with the song’s forlorn guitar which plays throughout the song. The atmosphere of the song reminded me of both Deas Vail’s “Wake Up and Sleep” and Taylor Swift’s Speak Now Vault version “I Can See You,” on which Jack Antonoff plays a guitar in a similar, mysterious way. The slight rasp of Lasso’s voice brings the melancholy romantic lyrics to life. This is the first Spanish language song I’ve blogged about. I’ve been getting into some Spanish songs lately, so today I’m going to make a playlist of some of my recent finds. I hope you enjoy them too. 


    Check out the playlist on Spotify.



     

  • “Loser” by BigBang (빅뱅), Wednesday, June 5, 2024

    BTS’s international success didn’t happen without precedent. One of the biggest international Korean pop successes before the boys in  Bangtan Sonyeodan topped Billboard’s Hot 100 was YG Entertainment’s BigBang. The group has been called the “Kings of K-pop” especially with the hit singles following their 2006 debut album BigBang Vol.1. The group has had 11 number 1 singles in South Korea. The group has taken several lengthy hiatuses; however, each comeback proved the group’s lasting impression on Korean popular music. Throughout the group’s career, though, the members have endured scandal, from drugs to an infamous case of prostitution. 


    HONESTLY, THE WORLD AND ME DON’T MATCH.  BigBang’s status right now is uncertain with all members fulfilling their contracts with YG Entertainment and being removed from the label’s roster. Seungri (승리)retired from music following his scandal in 2019. T.O.P (탑) left the group when he fulfilled his contract with YG. Remaining are Taeyang (태양), Daesung (대성), and band leader and chief songwriter G- Dragon(지드래곤). With only a single released in 2022 following the group’s finishing conscription and scandals, the group has experienced a fallow period far beyond any of the group’s previous multi-year hiatuses. The second longest hiatus lasted between 2013 and 2015, when G-Dragon said that he experienced a “career slump,” unable to write material for the group’s next project, which resulted in a delayed follow up record. But in 2015, the group was ready to make their comeback. The group hadn’t released a full record in 9 years, and had decided to release their third album in a series of singles. Eight of the eleven songs on MADE were released two songs at a time. These singles were called M, A, D, E— each one released a month apart starting in May 2015. 


    LIKE SAD CLOWNS IN A SCRIPT.  “Loser” was the first single released on M, the first series of singles from MADE. The full album was delayed to December 2016 because the single series called the group back to touring and promotion. The songs on the group’s third album bend genres in ways that the group had become famous for. The group always identified with hip-hop more than teen pop. But MADE was a mature effort by a group of Korean mid-twenty somethings, outgrowing the last notions of squeaky-clean teen pop. Songs like “We Like 2 Party,” “Bang Bang Bang,” “Sober,” and 2016’s “Fxxk It”dealt with mature themes of drinking, sex, and shedding innocence. Musically, the album flirts with pop, rock, trap, and acoustic styles. The first single, “Loser,” feels like a 2015 evolution of emo. It’s a self-loathing song for the often optimistic group. It mimics a schoolyard bully’s chant, though the speaker is singing it as self-deprecation. Fortunately, BigBang doesn’t stay in this theme for long, touching on emo before picking back up with upbeat songs. 


    Read the Korean lyrics on Genius.

    Read the English lyrics on Genius.

     

  • “Like Water” by Wendy, Tuesday, June 4, 2024

    On Christmas 2019, Shon Seung-wan (손승완), better known by her stage name Wendy, fell off the stage when rehearsing for a solo performance on SBS Gayo Daejeon. Faulty stage design and alleged lack of safety measures were blamed, causing the Red Velvet singer to fall over 8 feet, sustaining injuries on her right side–a pelvic fracture, a broken wrist, and a broken cheekbone.

    Not only did this fall cancel the upcoming event, but it left her in the hospital for two months. Fortunately, the accident didn’t end Wendy’s career but forced her to take a hiatus for most of 2020 from her role as singer and dancer in SM Entertainment’s one-time fifth-most steamed K-pop group on Spotify. 


    I WANT YOU TO LOVE ME. Wendy debuted with the group Red Velvet in 2014. The girl group is known for a dualistic sound signified by their name, Red implies the group’s frenetic energy they apply as dancers and singers to musically complex song structures. Velvet refers to the smooth sound of the group’s ballads. Much of Wendy’s solo work falls into the velvet side of the group. Coming from a wealthy family in Seoul, Seung-wan received a middle and high school education in the United States and Canada, where she adopted the name, Wendy Shon and became fluent in English. She played sports, learned several instruments, and participated in choir. After high school, she returned to Korea to try out for SM Entertainment. Although she was talented and came from a music-loving family, her parents didn’t want her to pursue music professionally at first. Wendy started releasing solo singles and collaborating with other artists in 2015. Most of the singles were soundtracks for dramas. In 2018, she sang an English duet with American singer-songwriter John Legend. Wendy released her first EP or “mini album” Like Water in April 2021. In the title track, Wendy sings in English “I just wanna thank you for believing in me.” In this line, she shows gratitude to her fans who remembered her as she was recovering from the frightening, potentially career-ending accident.


    I NEED YOU TO HOLD ME. Red Velvet had plans to tour their 2019 record, ‘The ReVe Festival’ in 2020 without Wendy. The tour started in Japan but was postponed due to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the tour postponement, the group decided to go on hiatus and would return with Wendy in January 2021 as a full-time member. She contributed vocals for drama soundtracks with the group when she could.  But before Red Velvet came back with their August 2021 EP Queendom, Wendy released her debut solo EP, Like Water.  The EP wasn’t a huge hit; an album of ballads usually isn’t a huge commercial success in Korea compared to an idol’s electropop. Still, the short record reintroduced Wendy and left listeners with a sentimental feeling for the singer who was back in K-pop. And pop music wasn’t the only venture she came back to pursue. She was a cast member of Saturday Night Live Korea in 2021 and hosted a radio show from 2021 to 2023. Last year, she was also cast as the wife in the musical Rebecca, a German music translated into Korean based on English novelist Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name. Today’s song is for Wendy’s fans. The fans sustained her “like water” during a career drought. What’s next for Wendy? A talent like hers certainly is bound to give the fans something incredible. 



  • Siren” by Taeyeon, Monday, June 3, 2024 (repost)

     Two summers ago, Taeyeon released her first single from the album she released on Valentine’s Day last year, INVU. The disco-infused lead single, “Weekend,” wasn’t completely indicative of the album’s style. With a variety of ballads, house, and dance songs, INVU is a solid third record from the now legendary former Girls’ Generation vocalist. Today’s song, “Siren,” is a power ballad located as track 6 of a 13-song album.  It’s a song about an unhealthy relationship that beckons the speaker to stay in it. Ultimately does she dive in or get out of the water?

     

    An ancient painting of sirens in 
    The Odyssey. Source.
    CRUEL FANTASY. Today’s song, “Siren,” uses the image of a mythical creature from ancient Greek and Roman legends. Creatures with beautiful songs that lure sailors to perilous shallow, rocky waters appear in Homer’s The Odyssey. In book 12, Circe advises Odysseus not to listen to their “honey-sweet tones” that “bewitch everybody who approaches them.” But the cunning Greek epic hero takes the warning as a challenge. He asks his crew to cover and plug their ears with wax and to tie him to the ship’s mast so that he won’t take the ship to land. From those lines in the epic poem and from the mythology itself, sirens seem to be a symbol of sexual pleasure that is the final step that takes a “reasonably good man” into sexual depravity. In antiquity, sirens were depicted as either bird-like or mermaid-like creatures. Some have said that the myth of the sirens was really the low visibility at sea and the yelps of sea-lions, and a bit of hallucination, seeing something on the rocks through the mists. 

    Starbucks logo depicts a double-tailed siren. 
    Image source.

    EVEN IF WE KISS EACH OTHER FOREVER. Siren myths appear in literature and culture throughout the ages. Starbucks’ logo is perhaps one of the most common examples in our everyday lives. Siren mythology appears in Anberlin’s “Take Me As You Found Me,” a song about a divorced couple who are still love each other. A siren (or mermaid) appears in Copeland’s video for “I Can Make You Feel Young Again,” dragging the fisherman to the bottom of the lake. But the word siren in English doesn’t usually bring the mythical creature to mind in everyday conversations. Instead, we think of the mournful, high-pitched sounds related to an emergency: a fire, a bank robbery, a tornado, missiles launched. Are the two words related? It seems that we started using siren to describe the sound of steamships as late as 1879. The usage of the word migrated to land and it now sounds like the intro to Anberlin’s “Hello Alone.” Plugging the etymology back into today’s song, Taeyeon describes a magnetism to an unhealthy relationship. He’s a siren beckoning her to the dangerous rocks. She hears the warning siren, and others can see that there’s danger. What happens? Is there an ambulance chase? Is it a fifty-car pileup that causes a collision in the other direction? Or does she sail away? 

    Read the Lyrics on Genius.

    Lyric video in Korean, Romanization, and English:

  • “The Tortured Poets Department” by Taylor Swift, Sunday, June 2, 2024

    Last year Taylor Swift was in the middle of a whirlwind romance with the frontman The 1975, Matty Healy, allegedly. This romance came after Swift broke up with actor Joe Alwyn after a six-year relationship. Swift and Healy’s relationship has never been confirmed by Swift or Healy, but the press surrounding the two and neither’s denial of the affair has cemented the relationship in pop culture canon. The spring fling was said to have lasted for a month, possibly a fortnight. All of this was happening in the middle of Swift’s Midnights Era—songs about life experiences that supposedly happened in the past. Some listeners have interpreted Midnights as a breakup album.


    LIKE A TATTOOED GOLDEN RETRIEVER.  Fans were eagerly awaiting for Taylor Swift to reward their Easter Egg hunt with the release of The Tortured Poets Department, the album that she announced when she won Album of the Year at the 2024 Grammy Awards. The Easter Eggs Swift gave fans and the press led listeners to believe that Swift was going to release a confessional album about the erosion of her longest documented and some would stay stablest relationship. There were details about Swift’s unhappiness in the relationship and a few against the character of Joe Alwyn. Swift’s latest offering was slated to be a tell-all slanderous memoir against the private English actor, starting with the name of the album, a play on a group chat Alwyn was in, called “The Tortured Man Club” with fellow English actors Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. Instead, the title track and many of the songs on the album seem to deal with Swift’s complicated relationship with Matty Healy. The Swifty scholars on the Internet are mixed on this opinion, but a larger percentage believe that the title track is about Healy, which begs the question, why does he earn a title track when fans thought they would be getting a break up album about Joe Alwyn? 


    WHO ELSE DECODES YOU? As Taylor Swift is one of the biggest celebrities in 2024, there is simultaneously so much and so little known about her. Like an excellent writer, she only gives the details we need—facts to establish background—the things we know about almost every celebrity from their place of birth to the first song they sang on stage. But somewhere along the way, Swift became an expert of keeping personal details closely under wraps. She gives paperazzi a show, publicly spending time with men she apparently has dated and women whom she supports—this is not to discount Gaylor theories. Everything else she reportedly covers in NDAs—staff, friends, lovers, lovers’ family members. Also, Swift reportedly makes ex-boyfriends sign a statement that she is allowed to use details of their relationship in her songs so that she is not sued for libel later and that they do not reveal their side of the story. Interestingly, some sources claim that Matty Healy never signed an NDA. Still, details about Healy seem mostly positive on the album—a misunderstood artist who has alienated himself from Taylor’s fanbase and her famous friends, such as Ice Spice and Lucy Dacas. The details of the relationship disappear in a lavender haze, but could it be that Swift chose her friends and fans over her “tattooed golden retriever?” Although Swift has extricated herself from London and its love triangles, I think that more of this story will come out eventually. It’s far too interesting of a story to be footnotes in a mediocre anthology of poetry. 


    Read the lyrics on Genius.




  • "Video Game" by Sufjan Stevens, Saturday, June 1, 2024 + Pride Month Playlist

    It’s time for our annual Pride Month playlist. Headlining this year is Sufjan Stevens with his hipster hit “Video Game.” Last year, Stevens officially came out after years of speculation and artist support through songs from the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name and the single Love Yourself / With My Whole Heart. This year I’m including my usual mix of queer artists and allies. While the corporates may be scaling down their Pride sections this year, I say, now is the time that counts. So many human rights are on the verge of collapse. Today’s the day we say, “I don’t wanna play your video game!”


    Check out Pride ‘24 on Spotify.

  • “Not Strong Enough” by boygenius, Friday, May 31, 2024

    In 2016, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus opened for singer-songwriter Julien Baker on separate dates. It turned out that the three queer-identifying indie-folk songwriters mutually appreciated each other’s music. In 2018, the three musicians decided to have a co-headlining tour. To celebrate the tour, they decided to join forces and record a six-song EP titled boygenius. Tired of the misogyny in the music industry that compared women to women while pinning female artists against female artists, Dacus stated: “I hope people see the three of us and know there isn’t competition. You don’t have to compete with your contemporaries. You can make something good with people you admire.” And in that statement lies the genius on which the collaborative supergroup is founded.


    BLACK HOLE OPENED IN MY KITCHEN. The debut self-titled EP by boygenius was made almost entirely by female musicians. The band’s name is ironic. Julien Baker told Newsweek that the name refers “to the archetype of the tortured genius, [a] specifically male artist who has been told since birth that their every thought is not only worthwhile but brilliant.” After the tour and the EP, boygenius went on hiatus as the three artists went on to record their solo projects, though each member of the trio appeared as backing vocals on the solo records recorded after the eponymous boygenius EP. Working with Hayley Williams on her Petals for Armor II in 2020 and on each others’ projects lead to a renewed interest in their collaborative work. That year, the group started selling demos on Bandcamp for various charities. As the trio dug into their shared Google Drive, inspiration for 2023’s The Record hit Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker.


    ALWAYS AN ANGEL, NEVER A GOD. Phoebe Bridgers is arguably the most commercially successful artist of boygenius, but each member brings a unique characteristic to the collective. Bridgers brings her large fan base and often honest and often dark songwriting. Unlike Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, Bridgers had a secular California upbringing. Baker and Dacus grew up in the religious South, and they reflect on themes of faith, doubt, and sexuality in their music. Dacus’s writing is witty and sometimes raw. She examines when faith becomes traumatic, though rarely becoming caustic. Baker’s lyrics deal with similar material as Dacus with a gloomier take on the subject. Baker’s early influences include Underoath and mewithoutYou and other groups from the Christian screamo era. Baker brings a hard rock element into boygenius. Today’s song, “Not Strong Enough,” is the biggest song of the band or any of its members. Musically and lyrically it’s a great representation of boygenius at their best. Bridgers and Baker take the two verses, while Dacus adds the bridge. The Grammy-winning, Adult Alternative #1 song examines feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, and the compulsion to control one’s life. The smooth heartland rock sound of the track is simple on first listen, but guitar and synth textures come alive with repeated listens. And repeated listening is what you need if you enter the boygenius universe as the lyrical crafting and the vocal harmonies give listeners a deeper understanding of the artists’ message.

     Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Bad Idea, Right?” by Olivia Rodrigo, Thursday, May 30, 2024

    When I scored my top songs last year, the second single, “Bad Idea, Right?” from Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album GUTS ranked at #8 in my top 25 of 2024 list. I didn’t write about this song last year, though. Instead, I wrote about Rodrigo’s lead single, “Vampire.” The lead single is a moody rock fantasia. “Bad Idea, Right,” though, is a valley-girl punk rock song in the style of The Waitresses with its sing-talking. While GUTS didn’t quite match the success of Rodrigo’s debut SOUR, the singles and the album develop Rodrigo’s sound as a pop artist who is fluent in rock music, building on the previous album and second single “good 4 u,” a single that brought rock back into upper reaches of Billboard’s Hot 100, unseen since the ‘00s. And while “Bad Idea, Right?” didn’t top the pop chart like “good 4 u,” the song did top the Modern and Alternative Rock Chart.
     

    CAN’T HEAR MY THOUGHTS. In 2021, Olivia Rodrigo scored an unexpected number-one hit with “driver’s license,” leaving Rodrigo and producer Dan Nigro scrambling to follow up the song with what would become SOUR, Rodrigo’s debut full-length album. SOUR had two main sounds: sad-girl pop like Rodrigo’s first hit and bitter heartbreak rock, like “good 4 u.” The story came out that the singer’s inspiration for the “brutal” album and its singles was a breakup with her High School Musical: The Musical — The Series costar Joshua Bassett. In 2023, Rodrigo returned with Nigro producing, this time spilling her GUTS about more pains of growing up, particularly the transition between adolescence and young adulthood. Rodrigo said of the time between the albums: “I feel like I grew 10 years between the ages of 18 and 20.” After recording SOUR, Rodrigo took six months off from songwriting to “live a life to be able to write about it.” The album is more rock-influenced than the previous one and doesn’t seem to be themed on a particular relationship or point in her decade-in-two-year development. 


    FUCK IT, IT’S FINE. The GUTS lead single “vampire” seems to be about a real relationship Rodrigo was in with someone who took advantage of her in some capacity. Fans have pointed to Olivia’s relationship with Adam Faze as the potential vampire. Some listeners theorized that Rodrigo spoke about the same relationship in “Bad Idea, Right?” but the song seems more likely to be satire. The character that Rodrigo plays in “Bad Idea” is insufferable. She’s the friend making bad decisions, justifying them to herself and to those who would hold her accountable. It’s easy to call out the speaker of the song when it’s a friend or an acquaintance, but yet somehow I found that I’ve made those same stupid decisions that I have judged others for and I had my own set of rationalizations for those decisions. It’s like my heart pulled me in the opposite direction of where my head told me to go. Why does toxic love burn hotter when you’re in your own quarters, away from the voice of reason? Rodrigo captures those lies we tell to ourselves when we make bad decisions, and Dan Nigro gives us a Tom Morello-styled guitar solo to celebrate those bad ideas. Are bad decisions inevitable? Or does listening to songs like today’s song make it easier to make them or less likely because we hear about how ridiculous we sound when we rationalize them?

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "Without You" by Lana Del Rey, Wednesday, May 29, 2024 (repost) (Trigger Warning: Discussion of Domestic Abuse)

     In Lana Del Rey‘s first interview with Zane Lowe, she talked about her inspiration for the 2012 record, Born to Die. She talks about the collaboration between her, hip-hop producer Emile Haynie, and string arranger Larry Gold to create an album that sounds classic and fresh. Although Del Rey has moved away from the Brooklyn-style hip-hop beats in albums after Born to Die, the album still feels relevant ten years later. In fact, when Pitchfork re-examined the record last year, the review bumped the score from 5.5 to 7.8. While pop cynics may argue that music has gotten worse rather than being misunderstood at the time, the young adult escapism, the post-modern life she sings about makes more sense among the younger artists Del Rey influenced such as Lorde and Billie Eilish. 

    I EVEN THINK I FOUND GOD. “Without You” appears as the thirteenth track on the Target Bonus Tracks edition of Born to Die. The album’s standard edition ends with “This Is What Makes Us Girls,” a semi-autobiographical song about when Del Rey was sent off to boarding school to straighten up. Will all of the songs of Born to Die would eventually find a home on streaming services, Del Rey’s fandom started at the tail end of physical releases. Del Rey’s 2012 pop star persona was just gimmicky enough to thrust the singer into a cult level of fandom. While the indie scene obsesses over authenticity, Del Rey offers a carefully cultivated, manufactured image. Appearing on the scene like a highly-vetted industry plant, as people said of pop stars like Britney Spears, and Lana Del Rey in 2012 was a satire of what a pop star is. But this satire is more in the vein that some critics call The Great Gatsby a satire of the roaring ’20s. Del Rey’s use of satire is contemporary and often over-the-top. In this satirical world, she shows us that alcohol, drugs, sex, and a search for a deeper meaning link us to our grandparents’ time. 

    LIVED ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM. Today’s song, “Without You,” is a B-side from Born to Die, and if it were cut, most of the themes and motifs exist in the album without this additional chapter. But Born to Die is far from a cohesive concept record or a rock opera. What “Without You” does after “This Is What Makes Us Girls” reflects on the themes presented in Born to Die. Del Rey has spent the whole album talking about the “bad man” she falls in love with. He’s a type of unhealthy, often sexist, sometimes violent, virile man who makes a girl like Del Rey weak in the knees. This is one major point of contention with the singer-songwriter as many have called her music anti-feminist, glamorizing abusive relationships. The singer also has a slew of controversial statements from social media and interviews. In “Without You,” Del Rey also sings about being fragile “like a china doll.” She finds her worth through him and by being so beautiful that she is adored by “the lights of the camera” where she even thinks she “found God.” The speaker has become part of the old-time glitterati. The line that sticks out the most to me, though, is the commentary about “the dark side of the American Dream.” Del Rey was clearly influenced by American literature when novelists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald set out to write the definitive American novel and ultimately solidified American literature. What the American novel strives for is to define what the American Dream is. Fitzgerald shows that even with all of the wealth that Jay Gatsby acquires, he can’t have the one thing that he wants. And while not all Americans want a brutish hunk, as listeners may think that’s all that Del Rey wants, I can’t help but think that the superficial glamour of Del Rey’s lyrics which harken back to A Street Car Named Desire’s toxic masculinity and strict ’50s-gender roles is a Stepford Wives or Twilight Zone level of satire. But I could be wrong.