Results for “commodification of femininity”

Songs

Typical Girls

The Slits

The Slits catalogue a set of sexist clichés about femininity by reciting them in a flat, deadpan list, letting the accumulation…

gender stereotyping commodification of femininity conformity vs rebellion

The Model

Kraftwerk

A deadpan, synth-driven character sketch of a fashion model, delivered with the same flat affect Kraftwerk applies to machines…

commodification of beauty surveillance and consumption media and celebrity

Hip Hop

Mos Def

Mos Def treats hip hop as both craft and condition -- a language, a livelihood, and a lens on Black American history that he…

artistic craft and discipline Black lineage and history music industry exploitation

I'm Every Woman

Whitney Houston

A cover of Chaka Khan's disco-era declaration of feminine totality, reworked by Whitney Houston into a glossy, gospel-tinged…

female empowerment universality of womanhood self-possession

Cowgirl In the Sand

The Byrds

This is a cover of Neil Young's enigmatic address to an idealized, almost mythic woman, sung here in the harmony-driven style…

idealized femininity aging and desirability ambivalence toward love

Entangled

Genesis

A hazy meditation on sleep therapy and hypnosis that curdles into a quiet indictment of medical or psychological control.…

dependency and control the ambiguity of dreams versus reality institutional/medical authority

Sealion

Feist

A chant-like nursery rhyme built almost entirely around a single nonsense word repeated as a call-and-response hook, tracking a…

ritual and repetition femininity as costume romantic transaction

Damaged Goods

Gang of Four

Gang of Four fuse the language of romantic breakup with the language of consumer transactions, treating a relationship like a…

commodification of relationships alienation desire vs. disgust

Soon the New Day

Talib Kweli

A club-and-nightlife narrative that follows the mating rituals of a night out, mapping the performance, pretense, and…

casual sex and disposability performance and masquerade gender dynamics and predation

Tiny Dancer

Elton John

A soft-focus portrait of a woman moving through the early-1970s Los Angeles music scene, seen through the eyes of an admirer who…

idealized femininity life on tour / music-industry culture memory versus presence

Is It Love

Gang of Four

A fractured meditation on desire and alienation, this song asks whether what passes for love is really love at all, or just…

alienation under capitalism commodification of intimacy loss of language/memory

Pixeleen

Steely Dan

"Pixeleen" is Steely Dan's arch send-up of manufactured pop-culture heroines, following a video-game/anime action girl through…

commodification of fantasy media satire artificiality vs. authenticity

Big Yellow Taxi (Original A Cappella with Guitar)

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell's early environmental protest song works as a series of loosely connected complaints -- about development,…

environmental loss commodification of nature nostalgia and regret

Little Bribes

Death Cab for Cutie

A miniature Vegas travelogue that turns slot machines and casino architecture into a metaphor for loneliness and transaction.…

artifice vs authenticity loneliness and connection commodification of desire

Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan

Dylan turns a real Mississippi highway into a corridor where biblical myth, seedy commerce, and apocalyptic farce all converge.…

American mythology and violence commodification and exploitation absurdist apocalypse

Hoe Cakes

MF DOOM

Hoe Cakes is DOOM's mock-manual on relationship management, built entirely around a running pun that turns pancakes into a…

misogynist bravado as persona commodification of relationships comic wordplay and double entendre

Video Games

Lana Del Rey

A woman narrates her devotion to a boyfriend who barely looks up from his console, describing domestic small moments as if they…

self-abnegation in love performed femininity idealized domesticity

Water Me

FKA twigs

A compact, riddling song built on a single transaction gone wrong: a lover withholds intimacy once it's priced, and the narrator…

commodification of intimacy self-worth vs. desirability power imbalance in relationships

What You Need

The Fall

A repetitive call-and-response built around the phrase "what you need" turns consumerist advice-giving into an absurdist litany,…

consumerism and commodification absurdist list-making working-class drudgery

30 Days

Run-DMC

Run-DMC turns a courtship pitch into a mock infomercial, with the rapper selling himself as a consumer product complete with…

commodification of romance braggadocio satire of advertising

Blogging

Wire

Wire recast the nativity story as a satire of digital-age commerce and self-promotion, splicing biblical imagery with the…

technology and faith commodification of belief surveillance and self-branding

Natural's Not In It

Gang of Four

A slogan-dense critique of consumer capitalism's colonization of desire, where leisure, sex, and love are recast as products and…

commodification of desire capitalism and leisure power disguised as pleasure

Spanish Bombs

The Clash

A jet-lagged travelogue that collapses the Spanish Civil War into the same frame as 1970s package-holiday Spain and the ongoing…

historical memory versus tourism the Spanish Civil War romantic longing as political metaphor

Kick It Out

Heart

Heart casts a wild, ungovernable woman as an engine of pure momentum, fusing horse imagery and hot-rod slang into one continuous…

untamed femininity freedom vs. containment mortality and urgency

A New Wave

Sleater-Kinney

A defiant statement of self-invention that refuses easy categorization, either as a musical movement or as a stable identity.…

self-definition against labels resistance to commodification anonymity as autonomy

Somewhere

Jimi Hendrix

A hallucinatory vision of social collapse filtered through a drinker's blurred perception, where reaching hands never quite…

social unrest spiritual longing alienation

Dress

PJ Harvey

A woman puts on a dress to go dancing in hopes of pleasing a man, but the garment becomes a site of physical struggle and…

femininity as performance bodily discomfort and constraint desire for male approval

Welcome to the Machine

Pink Floyd

A synthetic, industrial voice greets a young rock aspirant with false warmth, revealing that his entire trajectory—rebellion,…

commodification of art loss of individuality the music industry as machine

The Lady Don't Mind

Talking Heads

A breezy, mid-80s Talking Heads pop song built around a woman who slips through logic and expectation without apparent friction.…

surrender to irrationality enigmatic femininity detachment vs. desire

We've Been Had

Uncle Tupelo

A disillusioned rock musician surveys the wreckage of the alternative-rock gold rush of the early '90s, comparing the…

disillusionment with the music industry commodification of youth culture loss of authenticity

Lowest Part Is Free!

Archers of Loaf

A snarling piece of mid-90s indie-scene satire aimed at the music industry's courtship rituals, particularly the A&R feeding…

music industry cynicism authenticity vs. commodification parasitism

Mermaid

Sade

"Mermaid" is a short instrumental interlude on Love Deluxe, functioning less as a standalone song than as an atmospheric pause…

fluidity and drift the sea as feminine mystery transition and pause

BALD!

JPEGMAFIA

BALD! is JPEGMafia in full battle-rap mode, using his shaved head as a running joke and a badge of honor while he torches…

hypermasculine boasting industry contempt self-image and self-mockery

new body rhumba (from the film White Noise)

LCD Soundsystem

A jittery dance-punk track built for a film about consumer dread and mortality, this song fuses supermarket-checkout imagery…

consumerism and self-commodification bodily alienation mortality and letting go

Rosa Parks

OutKast

A brash, funk-driven boast track in which Outkast repurpose a civil-rights phrase as a battle-rap taunt, using the chorus as a…

competition and dominance in hip-hop staying artistically ahead Southern regional pride

Break The Man

Tears for Fears

A song about the collapse of patriarchal control, framed through a female figure who both exposes and dismantles a man's…

patriarchal collapse reckoning and accountability toxic intimacy

Video

India.Arie

India.Arie sets her own image against the airbrushed, materialistic archetype of turn-of-the-millennium music videos, using…

self-acceptance body image anti-materialism

All My Friends

Broken Social Scene

A brief, hazy track that sketches a kind of collective burnout among musicians and lovers who have turned intimacy into product.…

artistic disillusionment the commodification of love songs exhaustion and urgency

At Home He's a Tourist

Gang of Four

A clipped, funk-inflected post-punk track that treats leisure, culture-consumption, and sexual routine as forms of alienated…

alienation under capitalism commodification of leisure and sex self-improvement as anxiety

Bull In the Heather

Sonic Youth

A slippery, almost mantra-like track built from a numeric countdown and a cycling list of demands, where desire and commerce…

desire vs. commodification repetition and ritual unpredictability/chance