“Don’t cha wish that you could come, Cause we’re never going home, Till the summer’s all gone”
Why is it always California ?
Over the summer of 2017, I got bored with the same old tracks that I had on my Spotify. I had listened to them from the car ride to my internship and back, to playing games with my friends on PS4. I needed to find new music, and ones that I perceived sounded awesome. So after playing some Offspring music, I started a radio to find Punk music with them as the base. This lead me to find tracks I loved from Green Day, Good Charlotte, Rise Against, and more from the Offspring, including this track.
Cruising California is definitely a head scratcher, from a band I labeled as Punk. The song sounded more pop like and very energetic. Hell, if this song was a description of what summer was like in Orange County, I’d be all about it and wanting to go there. It seems like a very fun song to play in your car to have a fun time and to cheer up.
There is an area where the song fails, however, and that is the representation of women. Any of the women in this song, and the main ones in the music video, seems to be sexualized in description. With lyrics like “ And she’s waving her caboose at you,” “ a G-string just like floss,” and “ Bumpin’ in my trunk,” the representation is not a good one. While the 3rd one could take on a double meaning, the way that Dexter gives a “uh huh” after every time the lyric is stated leads me to mean that she isn’t solely referring to a good sound system in the trunk of a car. Finally, the video has the women that are singing dancing around a pole in an outfit that leaves little to the imagination. This leads me to believe that while the song is about having a good time in California in the summer, Dexter also hangs a good time on the sexual image of women, and not just hanging with friends and drinking.
I still hold The Offspring as one of my favorite artists, and Cruising California as a fun song. That being stated, it needs to focus more on having fun in California, without sexualizing women. Also, maybe invest in a hair style that doesn’t make you look so old.
