Sexy Music Videos are Good, Actually
Friday Recommendation: The Thirteenth
I’m breaking my usual Friday Recs format this week.
Quick content warning here for the first two paragraphs: I will be talking about alcohol.
It’s Sunday, which can only mean one thing: time for Friday Recommendations! I have myriad excuses for being late this time. I wasn’t home on Friday because I was cat-sitting. Then I went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I was going to post on Saturday, but I was more hungover than I’ve been in a long time thanks to someone buying me my first jägerbomb which was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted in my young life.
This brings us to my first recommendation — the vodka soda. The vodka soda is the perfect drink. It’s low-calorie and sugar free. No sugar means that you’re going to be less hungover the next day. Additionally, club soda is basically saline. That’s science, baby. Now you may be thinking, but Ryan, I hate vodka sodas. This is because they are served with a lime. Next time you go out, ask for a lemon instead and squeeze all that good good juice in there. Something about the lemon juice completely cancels out any lingering vodka flavour. You can thank me later.
Now for my sober friends. I know La Croix is the seltzer of choice, but let me turn you on to City Citrus (Update: City Citrus may only be available in Canada, if so, I’m sorry). This seltzer has a yuzu-mandarin flavour and it’s straight up the best sparkling water I’ve ever had. I can crush a case of these bad boys in one sitting. They also have other flavours and I need to warn you right now to not buy them. Truly some of the most atrocious drinks I’ve ever tasted. Like flavoured medicine. God awful. But the yuzu one! Stellar!
Now my main recommendation for the week is “Rush”, the lead single for Troye Sivan’s upcoming album. I have a long-standing crush on Sivan that was only exacerbated by his AD Open Door video a few years ago (If you haven’t seen it, go watch it and then come back. His house is STUNNING).
Like, are you kidding me? Just absolutely gorgeous.
Historically, Sivan’s music has been hit or miss for me. His first studio album, Blue Neighbourhood came out in 2015 and was heavily influenced by the sytnh-pop/coming-of-age vibes that had been popularized by Lorde’s Pure Heroine a couple years earlier. It was received positively at the time, but I don’t think it’s aged as well as some of its contemporaries (my personal favourite on the album is “SUBURBIA” which also conveniently summarizes the general thesis of the project).
His next — and most recent — full album was Bloom. It was received with even better reviews than Blue Neighbourhood. The sound shifted to include more dance-ready tracks and certain inclusions, like the title-track “Bloom,” led to the album being considered a celebration of queer love. The song was a thinly veiled metaphor, but Sivan has since grown out of his need to hide sex behind metaphor.
If there was one good thing about 2020, it’s that the music was fantastic. A quick sampling:
How I’m Feeling Now by Charli XCX
Women in Music Part III by Haim
Folklore and Evermore by Taylor Swift
Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple
Plastic Hearts by Miley Cyrus
Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers
Kid Crow by Conan Gray
To name a few, in no particular order. In August of 2020, Troye Sivan released his In a Dream EP — a short project consisting of seven songs that was about twenty minutes long. It is, in my opinion, his best project. It’s a darker album both lyrically and musically with a laser-focus on creating an intimate and vibey — but still danceable — atmosphere.
One of the standout tracks on In a Dream is “STUD.” A song about a casual hookup with someone whose body he envies.
“Rush” and its accompanying music video seem like the logical progression from “STUD.” The track is a celebration of queer sex. Sivan has dropped the metaphors he hid behind on Bloom and he’s moved past his own insecurities that permeated “STUD.” Instead, this new era seems to be focussed on unapologetic horniness. The music video has a clear point of view, and that point of view is sex and partying.
There’s a certain genre of music in the experimental pop category that has always been focussed on sex. This torch has largely been carried by women and it’s a fairly tight circle. Charli XCX, Slayyyter, and Kim Petras, are some of the most notable artists here and have all worked with each other. They also happen to have fanbases that largely consist of queer men. If I were to speculate on why this is, I would guess that the fans have an appreciation for an artist that is unashamed about sexuality (the club beats don’t hurt either).
Sivan has been a frequent collaborator of Charli, and it feels like he’s taken some inspiration from her. There’s an audience for the horny club banger and he’s trying to, er, fill that hole. Just go watch that music video. It’s very hot and very gay.
Culturally, we seem to be hurtling towards a new puritanism. Social media is constantly dominated by people decrying sex scenes in media, and TikTok influencers are successfully laundering old slut-shaming talking points for a new generation.
We don’t often get music like Rufus Wainwright’s “Gay Messiah,” or Rihanna’s “S & M,” or even Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” anymore. Sexuality has to be obfuscated and cloaked in metaphor. Can you picture a mainstream musician singing the lyrics, “Is she perverted like me? Would she go down on you in a theatre?” We all saw the reaction to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP.” It wasn’t unique to right-wing influencers either. The song was performatively mocked by people on all sides of the political spectrum for being obscene or “over the top.” But it’s a good song, and the tongue-in-cheek lyrics are a lot of fun.
Anyway, this is a lot of words to say that I enjoy a song and video about gay sexuality that isn’t bending over backwards to maintain plausible deniability with loose metaphors. It’s fun, it’s hot, it’s danceable. Check it out.