"Lost Yesterday" Has a Problem When it Comes to Literature

 Here's the second in a little series on looking at popular song lyrics as a form of literature.

"Lost Yesterday" by the Australian music project called "Tame Impala," listed as one of the 20 best pop tunes of 2020 by New York Times music critic Jon Pareles, is about the pluses and minus of nostalgia, a good literary topic on the face of it.

But the lyrics have something of a clanger in them, taking this song out of contention when it comes to any prizes along the lines of the one Bob Dylan famously received.

To wit:

And you're gonna have to let it go someday
You've been diggin' it up like Groundhog Day

Those lines rhyme, but that's about all one can say for them.  While literature is replete with similies -- figures of speech that compare one thing with another, generally so as to shed additional light on the first of the two, using the words "like" or "as" to point out the connection, Kevin Parker of "Tame Impala" hasn't got it anywhere near right with this one.

"diggin' it up like Groundhog Day" is presumably a shortened form of something akin to "diggin' it up like one does on Ground Day" or "diggin' it up like what happens on Groundhog Day" or something along those lines. No problem with the short form: I'll grant Mr. Parker some artistic license on that.

But, and this is a big but, Groundhog Day (capitalized) is a day recognized as such on Feb. 2 in the U.S. and Canada and it is not known for digging of any description.  Rather on that day, a groundhog emerges from a burrow where he or she has been sleeping through the winter -- a hole dug months earlier -- and looks around to see if he or she has cast a shadow.  If so, the animal traditionally concludes winter will last for another six weeks and retreats. If, on the other hand, the day is cloudy and there is no shadow, Spring will arrive soon.

As such, the lyrics don't work -- as literature at any rate.  But who knows, perhaps Mr. Pareles of the NYT  believes 2020 -- the first year of the pandemic -- was strange in so many ways that Mr. Parker somehow got it right. Count me out on that one. I vote for sending Mr. Parker  back to the drafting board.

Women, Too, Can Objectify Sex

 For many writers -- particularly male, but not exclusively so -- female sexuality is a difficult topic. And never more so than in the present when it seems to increasingly be a moving target.

In that vein, Maya Phillips, a poet and cultural critic, had an interesting piece in the Feb. 4, 2021 "New York Times" entitled "On Female Sexual Desire" in the print edition, but confusingly, something different in the electronic version of the paper.  In any event, you can find it by clicking on the hypertext above.

The article, which discusses three TV shows, explores various aspects of female sexuality, all problematic in what Ms Phillips identifies as "our predatory culture," but for this post, I'm only going to talk about one of them.  I may come back to others later.

It's a familiar trope that when it comes to sex, men "objectify" women, or as Ms Phillips puts it: "with straight male characters, sex is rarely shown as anything more than an act."

To what extent might women be  drifting around to the same approach?

At the end of December, The Times, making its usual heavy contribution to year-end list journalism, published "The Best Pop Songs of 2020" by each of two of its critics.  

Generally unfamiliar with current trends in pop music (I did think Lady Gaga did a great job with the always troublesome national anthem at the Biden inauguration), glancing over the list, my eye fell upon Jon Pareles' third choice: "One Night Standards," by Ashley McBryde, who, not surprisingly, I had never heard of.  What was this song all about, I wondered, searching for the lyrics.

It's all about a woman, "I ain't Cinderella," who has initiated a hook-up, or a one-night stand as they used to be called in line with the title of the song, and wants her partner -- presumably a man, but perhaps not -- to think of it as nothing more than that.  In other words, she is determined to objectify her partner and make sure that what is happening is no more than an act (as Ms Phillips would put it).

"Can't you just use me like I'm using you?" Ms McBride sings at one point.

If you are interested, you can read the rest of the lyrics here. They continue entirely in that vein.

My point is that it appears straight men may well no longer have a monopoly on the objectification of sex and the Times apparently thinks that is important for readers to know: third best pop song of 2020, on one of the paper's two lists at any rate.  The other list, by the way, puts "WAP" by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion at number seven, but that's a different if highly illuminating take on just where female sexuality stands today.

The way things are going, Ms Phillips could be well advised to reel in her indignation a bit. Meanwhile, fertile ground for authors on how their female characters can be convincingly depicted.