Hi friends! With apologies for the delay, it’s time to round out the final five entries in the New Masculinities Playlist for 2018.
Track 8 – Anna Calvi, “Don’t Beat the Girl out of My Boy”
When Anna Calvi took to Instagram to announce “Hunter,” her 2018 album, she made its moral core and message very clear. “I want to explore how to be something other than just what I’ve been assigned to be,” she wrote. “I want to explore a more subversive sexuality, which goes further than what is expected of a woman in our patriarchal heteronormative society. I want to repeat the words “girl boy, woman man”, over and over, to find the limits of these words, against the vastness of human experience.” For this reason, the entire album is worth your time. I especially adore the grandeur of the track “Swimming Pool”.
But if we have to pick just one song for the New Masculinities Playlist, it should be “Don’t Beat the Girl out of My Boy,” about which Calvi wrote, “This song is about the defiance of happiness, it’s about being free to identify yourself in whichever way you please, without any restraint.”
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Track 9 – Christine and the Queens, “Doesn’t Matter”
Nonsense gender boundaries also motivated “Chris,” the new album by Hélöise Letissier, the artist who performs as Christine and the Queens. For the album, Letissier took on the persona of “Chris,” an imagined male version of herself, but one granted the liberties and removal of boundaries offered to male pop stars. “I wish I could be Nick Cave or Mick Jagger,” Letissier said in a GQ interview. “They can be sexual, flawed, and incredibly charismatic. Complexity and intricacy is reserved to men. Women must make it unthreatening, simplified.” Letissier’s performance and lyrics live up to this ambition: they are complex and intricate, charismatic and flawed. Start with “Doesn’t Matter,” which lives on the brink of suicide, and explore the record from there. Enterprising listeners should also check out the original French version for alternate lyrics and bonus tracks!
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Track 10 – Jonathan Richman, “Old World”
Jonathan Richman is an absolute icon and I won’t dare summarize his idiosyncratic career and persona in a mere paragraph here. But fans of the New Masculinities Playlist should give his more recent catalog a chance… while I try to find the time to write the much longer essay he deserves. When Richman’s band, the Modern Lovers, released the song “Old World” in the 1970s, the message was one of nostalgia. At that time, he would sing, “I still love the old world.” More recently, however, Richman has (literally) changed his tune, and in recent recordings and performances of the song the refrain has changed to, “I must say goodbye to the old world.” Introducing the song at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis this year, Richman pointed to our current political and cultural hellscape as, hopefully, the final brutal goodbye of the old patriarchal hegemony. He wasn’t sure what would come next, he said, but he knew that the old world has to go. When someone in the crowd shouted, “Matriarchy!”, Jonathan smirked.
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Track 11 – Troye Sivan, “Bloom”
One of my favorite discoveries from list season this year was Troye Sivan. His music had me before I knew anything about him, but the more I learn the deeper my fandom grows. Sivan famously came out as gay in a YouTube video in 2013, and has embraced his role as young gay pop icon with impressive humility and balance. “I’m one voice of so many that are missing,” he says at the outset of this great interview. “There are plenty of other people who need to be heard first.” Way to share the stage and blossom all at the same time, Troye!
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Track 12 – Anna & Brian, “Waiting for Santa”
Oh, why not. I’ll end the year’s playlist on a self serving note and offer a couple holiday recordings that my friend Anna and I made together. I admit that I enjoy the annual tradition of festive music for the last couple months of the year, and all the more so when I get to collaborate with a friend on the other side of the world to create some of that music. For most of 2013 and 2014, Anna and I developed a close creative bond as we contributed to a “song exchange” together, where the two of us were strictly committed to deliver a new song to each other every two weeks. The song exchange has faded away as life has gotten more busy but I’m happy we found time for this lighthearted project this year. What does “Waiting for Santa” have to say about new masculinities you ask? Well, not much other than showcasing the joy of creative collaboration. That particular joy is a big part of my masculinity, I suppose.
Here’s where you can access “Waiting for Santa.”
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There you have it, a full year’s New Masculinities Playlist assembled (mostly) month by month. Thanks for reading and listening!
- Trashcan Sinatras, “Best Days on Earth”
- Kendrick Lamar & SZA, “All the Stars”
- Shannon & The Clams, “The Boy”
- Prince, “Nothing Compares 2 U”
- Hailu Mergia, “Lala Belu”
- Martin Newell, “We’ll Build a House”
- Curls, “Emotion”
- Anna Calvi, “Don’t Beat the Girl out of My Boy”
- Christine and the Queens, “Doesn’t Matter”
- Jonathan Richman, “Old World”
- Troye Sivan, “Bloom”
- Anna & Brian, “Waiting for Santa”
Edited by Brett Goldberg
