FEATURE:
Bring It Back to the Boil
PHOTO CREDIT: @vital1969/Unsplash
The Changing Nature of Sex in Pop Today
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I have covered this before…
but, having done a trawl of music Pop music from 2001 and 2002, I have noticed how there has been a change in terms of sex and explicitness. Today, there are artists who explore sexuality freely and confidentially – whether that is through promotional images or lyrical content -, though it seems rarer compared to years ago. Modern stars like Dua Lipa and Charli XCX inject a raciness and passion into the music that can be thrilling and alluring, though I don’t think there are that many artists today that are that raw and sexual. Perhaps it has been as result of new standards and Pop rules. Social media might have affected things. I don’t think that things have become more puritanical and cautious. I guess, with social media meaning artists can be blasted and trolled so easily, many hold back. Pop has become more experimental and sophisticated but, as it is still a genre that allows personal revelation and release, mentions of desire and sex have been pared-down and are less widespread. That said, I was watching the video for Holly Vallance 2002 single, Kiss Kiss. It is a cover version of a remake of the song, Şımarık, by Tarkan. It is catchy and has a great chorus hook, though the video leaves little to the imagination! At some points, Vallance appears to be naked (certain parts of her body covered by shafts of light). For a song that is not overly-explicit, I feel the content of the video was perhaps not that well-judged.
It seems like there was a push to promote sex rather than represent the song. This did happen a lot in the early-‘00s. It was not just Vallance who was culpable. Male artists were doing it too, though I think a lot of labels and directors were pushing female artists to be more explicit. Around 2001/2002, artists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were hugely popular. Aguilera’s album, Stripped, came out in 2002. Songs like Dirrty are notable for the sexual nature of the video. Britney Spears track, I'm a Slave 4 U, was released in 2001 (it is from her 2001 album, Britney). Maybe it is the visual aspect that has become less sexual. Listening to Pop music from the past decade or so, there has been a slight change of emphasis. Maybe sex is less important or commercial. I do miss a certain sense of the risqué and the evocative. Of course, if the Pop songs are no good or lack any notable hook, then one has to wonder what the objective is. So much of the music of the early-mid-‘00s is really memorable and catchy. Not that Pop music is forgettable now, though we have lost a certain energy, fun, thrill and rawness. Even if Pop music lately has not had the same hooks and sense of uplift that defined the ‘90s and early-‘00s, there has been incredibly accomplished and original Pop made. We have some incredible artists taking genres like Pop in new directions; creating sub-genres and new sounds.
When did things change and why did the ‘rules’ alter? I think it is relevant today but, back in 2018, Laura Snapes wrote for The Guardian. In her feature, she discussed why Pop rules on sex have changed forever. There are sections that discuss how sensuality and a lack of obvious sexualisation has been co-opted. Other artists are talking about romance and chilling on the sofa, rather than putting it all out there and letting the sweat drip:
“That is not to say that sex has vanished from pop since the controversy. Jason Derulo and Bruno Mars are no strangers to objectification; ex-boybanders such as the former One Direction members are still breaking with their clean-cut pasts by letting you know in song exactly how much sex they’re having; while Brit awards nominee J Hus cackles in the face of good taste. In 2016, Ariana Grande released a classic of the form in the admirably brazen Side to Side, about the inability to walk straight after a long night at the coal face.
But pop’s portrayals of sexuality have been complicated – and muted – by an unusually eventful half-decade. Intimacy has been corrupted by technology and anxiety. Female artists are redefining sexuality. Would-be seducers must acknowledge conversations about consent and gender politics. Provocateurs who aren’t progressive are soon rumbled. R&B is grappling with what pleasure looks like when black bodies are under siege from police brutality and cultural fetishisation. And LGBTQ listeners are demanding more than rote heterosexual hook-ups. This immediacy is nothing new – pop has always either shaped or reflected the social and sexual mores of its era – but the outcomes are.
Ed Sheeran is far from a conventional pop Adonis, but, Powers tells me, that is what makes him a contemporary sex symbol. “Shape Of You, the biggest hit of 2017 by a long shot, is about sex. ‘Now my bedsheets smell like you’ sounds like a line from a Marvin Gaye or Joni Mitchell song.” She views Sheeran as, in some ways, the perfect Top 40 heartthrob for this era: “ He comes across as unthreatening, but he’s still sensual. In Sheeran’s song, the new couple goes out to eat, the girl eats a lot and he still wants to have sex with her. That is where anxiety about being “woke” is taking pop songwriters today.”
More significantly, listeners’ heightened awareness of pop’s gender politics began extending behind the scenes. In 2014, the singer Kesha filed a civil suit against her producer Dr Luke accusing him of sexual assault and battery. Dr Luke immediately countersued for defamation in a case that’s ongoing and Kesha’s claims were later thrown out by a judge. Regardless of the outcome, the case prompted debate about pop’s fraught power dynamics.
Rina Sawayama is a Japanese-born, London-raised DIY pop star tipped to break out this year. Her slick sound is influenced by mainstream music from the turn of the millennium, “when labels and A&Rs were actively promoting young sexuality through acts like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera”, she says. But that is where the similarities end. “People are more sensitive to manufactured sexuality, especially from female artists.” she says. “If singers are going to talk about sex, then it has to come from the artist; authenticity is important.” She praises the “comfy erotica” of SZA and her track Drew Barrymore: “She talks about the TV show Narcos in the first verse; it’s a perfect Netflix-and-chill song. I think it echoes how millennials – and especially people of colour – want to spend our time, in a safe space with the people we love.”
The gold standard of empowered female pop sexuality is another holdover from 2013. On Beyoncé’s self-titled surprise album, she sang with explicit command about rediscovering her sexuality after the birth of her first child. “Beyoncé boldly proposes the idea that a woman’s prime – personal, professional, and especially sexual – can occur within a stable romantic partnership,” wrote Pitchfork’s Carrie Battan.
But Beyoncé’s next album represented another paradigm shift in how artists – and specifically black artists – address sexuality. Built around images of matriarchy and female solidarity, 2016’s Lemonade was assumed to confront longstanding rumours of husband Jay-Z’s affairs. “But the trauma of infidelity is about much more than matters of adulterous fucking in Lemonade,” wrote MTV News critic Doreen St Félix. “Black women in America are cheated out of spiritual and material things.” Lemonade confirmed the inseparable nature of structural injustice and interpersonal love, St Félix asserted.
This vision of sexual sanctuary will look intolerably bleak to some. So what should erotic pop look like in 2018? Tranter, who is gay, already sees the mainstream becoming more inclusive. Last Friday, he says, gay artists Troye Sivan and Hayley Kiyoko released new singles, both co-written with LGBTQ writers, “that were clearly queer, fully humanised and sexual while still being emotional, and not fetishising – so I’m pretty hopeful.” He is currently working with black trans singer Shea Diamond, determined to present a three-dimensional portrayal of her desires. “I’m fighting my hardest to make this future come soon,” he says”.
In the wake of Black Lives Matter and ongoing discussions about gender equality and how women are represented in music, maybe the sort of sexual freedom and lack of boundaries we heard almost two decades ago is not going to return. There needs to be quality and change. It would be great to see more L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists spotlighted and heard; for them to be given the same platform. Even so, there are great L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists (such as girl in red), who are writing songs that are erotic yet intelligent. For many reasons, there will not be a return to artists like Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake and their peers who were producing Pop that was red-hot and bold. Times have changed and attitudes to sex in music/videos has evolved. I do feel that, even though there have been improvements and conversations, things have gone in the opposite direction. I can appreciate how the pandemic might affected what Pop artists write about and what their priorities are. I do miss days when Pop was rich and varied enough so that we could hear wholesome and carefree songs sit alongside those with more tongue and tease. Pop is becoming even broader. With that, there has been a loss of an element that made it so thrilling and boundary-pushing. Perhaps things will change in years to come. I like Pop today, but there is something lacking beyond big choruses, hooks and a warmth that one requires. A heat has gradually gone out that has been replaced by ‘the new sexy’. I feel there can be a compromise between the type of the more sexual Pop of years past and a more mature nature. I have asked what ‘post-pandemic Pop’ will sound like and how a huge worldwide pandemic will affect artists and what they discuss. It is going to be interesting…
WHAT we will see.