Song commentary: Little Boots - Strangers

Lyrically, Strangers has always fascinated me. When I first got the Nocturnes album, I'd never been in a real relationship, and now that I've had and lost one, I still can't quite connect to it, because I'm too angry with my ex to even consider "dancing like strangers" with her if I ever bumped into her, though certainly "I knew [her] so well" and "we used to hold our bodies tight." But I love that idea of happening to cross paths with an old love, and trying to reconcile the past with the immediate present. It's a bit Before Sunset, isn't it?

But I appreciate it most for its aesthetic appeal. Something about the backing track and the vocal production has always appealed to me. It's a bit dream-pop, but the sort of dream you wake up from feeling confused, like all the elements of the dream are twisting around you, like Winnie-the-Pooh in the Heffalumps and Woozles scene, and it feels a little disconcerting even though it was sort of a nice dream. I guess that's fitting considering the lyrics. It also sounds like the last song of the night played at a mildly seedy club, as almost everyone's filtered out and you've only stayed because you've nothing else to do and don't really look forward to going home to an empty apartment. (Surprisingly, this is not an experience I've actually had ... but only because I've never gone clubbing, lolz.)

I played Nocturnes a LOT driving to and from work my senior year of undergrad, meaning that I heard a lot of it on near-empty highways after midnight (I worked the night shift), which is totally appropriate to its lyrics and its mood. Strangers is the one that always felt like it fit that time best, along with All for You, and even more than Motorway.

The first time I really paid attention to it, though, was one night when I was driving around three different parking lots looking for just one open spot, and eventually giving up and parking in the lot a half mile from my dorm, so that's the night I always associate with it! I can totally still see the dining hall and rows of cars when I close my eyes during the chorus.

Originally posted to Popjustice on January 23.

Song commentary: Little Boots - Real Girl

I've written commentary for a few songs that are really important to me over on Popjustice. I'm going to be posting them here for posterity. This one is from just last night.

---

When I first saw the song title Real Girl, my mind naturally leapt to the Mutya Buena song. But the topic of this song is quite different - rather than an affirmation that “I never pretend to be someone I’m not,” it's an outcry against the Manic Pixie Dream Girl stereotype and its ilk, and a warning and plea to a partner who is unable or unwilling to acknowledge that the speaker is a real human, with all the messiness that entails. To quote Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: “I’m not a concept. I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind.” And that... really hit home for me, way more than Mutya’s song - which I related to enough to put in a recent selfmix.

I have talked at great length about my recent breakup from my ex-partner, and guess what motherfuckers, you’re going to hear about it some more. But I have deliberately kept very quiet on PJ up till now about another part of myself, because I’ve seen more than a biT of bigotry on here around the topic. But some people here already know it or have deduced it, and I talk about it at length on my Twitter and Tumblr and my “identities” essay linked to in my signature, so I may as well open up about it now.

I say in my signature that I’m PJ’s token lesbian, which is true. But the part of that I've never explicitly stated - though I’ve talked around it in a plug.dj session or two - is that I am, specifically, a trans woman.

I’ve been on hormone replacement therapy for about nine months now, and though I have breasts, and my legs have changed shape, I still mostly look like a boy, which is a real blow to my self-esteem, because I've always hated the way I look, and I think if I could just look more like the girl I really am, I’d be happier about it. Moreover, as a consequence of that, I still present as male at work and in most face-to-face situations (and for my classes, even though they’re online, as they're tied to my name on record). In other words, I’m treated as a boy when I’m anything but, and I’m always afraid that people who do address me as female see me as less female than a cis woman, when I’m truly as much a girl as any other. “All I really need, I wanna stop pretending ... Could you treat me like a real girl? Won’t you tell me that I'm worth more?”

That lyric goes double for my ex. By the time we got together, I'd been questioning my gender identity for a while, and at the time I identified as genderfluid: occasionally male or female, but usually agender. (Looking back, I think that was a period I had to go through to arrive at who I was meant to be.) About two months into the relationship, I realized that I was much more of a woman than a man, and I needed to chemically and socially transition. She was the first person I told, even before my family or my counselor. And for a very long time, she was my #1 supporter. She treated me like a girl even more than I did, at times catching me off guard when she casually referred to me as “she” when I was still correcting myself with my pronouns.

Then that began to unravel as I came closer and closer to my coming out on National Coming Out Day, this past October. She’s panromantic and refuses to come out of the closet (or even to open the damn door), and was terrified about being with me as a woman. And I believe that, on top of our other problems (miscommunication, differing life goals, wanting different levels of emotional intimacy, different priorities...) was what led her to leave me just over a week after I came out. Although we’d been talking about breaking up for four months at that point, it was really abrupt, just forty minutes after she’d asked if we could spend the weekend together as we often did, and with no prior warning the days leading up to it. I’d thought we were doing great and starting to overcome our problems.

So along with everything else I lost when she left me – my best friend, my “life” partner, my surrogate family, my confidante – I lost the person who had given me the most support and affirmation around my gender transition. “Could you treat me like a real girl? Isn’t that what you're here for?”

But somewhat ironically, in other ways – many of the ways the song describes – she hadn't treated me like a real girl. She admitted that part of why she'd wanted to get with me had been to prove to the world that someone could find her attractive. “I’m not a fantasy, I’m not some kind of Holy Ghost.” She had assumed that I wanted just what she wanted and thought just the way she thought, because she thought everyone did. “I didn’t promise I’d be perfect, didn't promise that I’d play the game.” She had thought we could avoid ever having a fight, because she expected the relationship to be perfect, and was totally unequipped to have to put in any work. “Were you hoping I’d be flawless? Were you wishing on a movie star?”

Now, I finally got around to listening to Working Girl two or three weeks after the breakup, as I recall. And there was Real Girl, packaging up all these troubles in one song - and it was a bauxp to boot. It was, and is, exactly the right song at the right time for me.

Little Boots - Hands

Released: March 2, 2010

Purchased: October 2010 from Amazon.com

First Thoughts: I would have sworn this was from 2009. It has the sound of 2009 all over it. Luckily, 2009-2010 was one of my absolute favorite times in British music. (La Roux! Ellie Goulding! The return of Sophie Ellis-Bextor!) I always associate this album with my first year of college, especially Remedy, which I distinctly remember having stuck in my head one day in my Brit Lit class.

Playthrough:

New in Town - One of the most poppy songs on the album. I totally understand why it made its way onto a couple of soundtracks: it sounds like that's what it was meant for. Vicky's vocals are not very good at times, to the point that it makes it a little hard to listen to, but she compensates for it with great production.

Earthquake - My favorite at the time, and a worthy single choice even though it was destined to flop. It's the epitome of wonky pop, which is really what Vicky does best. Plus, it indirectly gave us this iconic Twitter exchange.

Stuck on Repeat - This is a surprisingly generic club track, but it has a great hook.

Click - This is where we really get a taste of how most of the album sounds. It's poppy, slightly atmospheric, and a little gritty.

Remedy - Yes slay me quen. Vicky's poppiest song to date. She wrote and produced it with RedOne, at the time newly famous from producing Just Dance and Poker Face. It does have a bit of the "RedOne on autopilot" thing, but it sounds like older, A*Teens-era RedOne, before he stopped trying and just started writing/producing Poker Face over and over. Her vocals are also pretty good on this one - not as good as on Nocturnes, but better than on the first four tracks. Her voice takes on a lovely sweet quality that works really well with the song. And yeah, lyrically it is Just Dance 2.0, but it manages to sound a little deeper, or at least like they tried harder.

Meddle - My absolute least favorite on the album. It's mostly just noise - it sounds like Vicky was trying to be ~artistic~ at the expense of pleasant production and melody. Which is a shame, because the hook is great.

Ghost - I think she was going for something ethereal and a little creepy, but it ended up cutesy. It's really cute, actually, which is a little strange given the lyrics about a distant partner. It's enjoyable when I'm in the mood for it, but I wasn't tonight, so I had to skip it.

Mathematics - A very typical Little Boots song, a pop melody overlaid with a lot of 2010 wonky-pop trickery. Not her best effort, and pretty fillery, but interesting if nothing else. (Interesting filler, now there's a concept.)

Symmetry - I gather this isn't popular among her fans, but I have no idea why. It's a joy! It features Phil Oakey from The Human League (one of Vicky's major influences) as her duet partner, which is great, though since his voice is so much more powerful and distinctive than Vicky's (and better controlled), she ends up seeming like the featured artist on her own song.

Tune Into My Heart - You could call this filler too, but I've always loved it. It's another more bubblegummy moment on the album. Has Vicky's stamp all over it: unusual analogy for a loving but troubled relationship. No wonder I love it, when I put it like that. It actually would have been a very good choice for a single, probably better than Earthquake. It's not at all representative of the album, but it would have appealed to a wider audience.

Hearts Collide - I barely remember how this went aside from "baaaby, when our hearts collide," but it's nice. I didn't feel the need to skip it like Meddle, Ghost, and Mathematics.

No Brakes - This is really pretty. Very similar to what she'd do on Nocturnes: a midtempo that somehow sounds like a ballad. The big downfall, again, is her voice. A stronger vocalist could carry the chorus much better and make the song even more appealing.

Hands - I think this is the first time I've ever listened to this all the way through, largely because it's a hidden track and I didn't feel like fast-forwarding through the silence after No Brakes, but partly because it's pretty shit. It's obviously Vicky's attempt at aping Kate Bush, from the vocal style to the piano accompaniment, and even evident in the songwriting. But vocal tricks that are merely annoying from Kate are downright screechy with Vicky, and the lyrics hold promise but sound totally half-assed.

Final verdict: As you can probably tell, the absolute biggest problem with this album is Vicky's voice. She sounds fine (though still not great) on Nocturnes, but I had honestly forgotten how bad she sounded here. But honestly, that's a testament to how good the songs are, at least for the most part. It's a shame that Elektra was so wrapped up in presenting her as the British Lady Gaga - although it gave us some great stuff like Remedy, I think ultimately it cramped her creativity and led to the songs not being as well developed as they could have been. Then again, it seems to be what pulled her away from the total left-field thing heard on Meddle, so we should probably be thankful for it. As long as you can do with the shaky vocals, this is a tremendously solid album that's unjustly overlooked and even maligned. 8.5/10.

Highlight: I'm gonna have to go with Remedy. It's an obvious choice, and not the most truly Little Boots, but it is definitely the best thing here.