“ Love ain’t no fairytale, love is a buried nail Inside of this heart of stone, so you wanna get married?”
Where do I even begin with this one ?
Before I came to college, I had only heard of maybe an album and a half of Eminem and one Yelawolf song. They made up only a portion of the weird mix of music that I find myself listening to. Once I got to college, I met one of my best friends, Andrew, in the dormitory that I was staying in that year. We got along really well, as we were both huge gamers, and our musical taste seemed to become influenced by each other. And while I started to introduce him to Irish music and Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing (as talked about in one of my previous writings), he introduced me to Runnin’ by Adam Lambert, Tech N9ne, and this song, Twisted by Skylar Grey, Eminem, and Yelawolf.
At first, my reaction was “What the Hell am I listening to?” But as I got further in, I noticed that it is actually enjoyable, and hearkens back to the angsty teenage years. The lyrics were dark and twisted like the name suggested that they would be and Yelawolf’s part was strangely catchy. But as time passed, I began to ask a simple question of it. How does it represent gender ?
After taking a look at the lyrics, I found the representation as strange and sadistic as the lyrics themselves. Before the 3rd verse, females are represented as pains, nightmares, twisted, and wishing murder for fear of leaving, while men are represented as cold, psycho, and fantasizing of murder. During the 3rd verse, the representation of Romeo and Juliet gets a twisted version similar to Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing. He’s high, drunk hates her, but doesn’t want her to leave. She’s played as a stripper, a prostitute, and evil. The gender representation is both horrible, equal only in the dark view of each gender.
It sucks seeing that songs I have fond memories of are poor in the representation of gender. However, we can’t act like every fond song we have is totally perfect. So Twisted, while I enjoy listening to you, you suck at representing gender.
