What Happens When Two Female Artists Mix the Songs “Blurred Lines” With “Rape Me”?
Has the time come to censor what is classed as ‘entertainment’?
When I heard Amanda Palmer and Reb Fountain’s mash-up of “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke and “Rape Me” by Nirvana I was stunned into silence. It is raw, cathartic, and deeply revealing about the music we currently call popular, but who were these women?
Amanda Palmer is a performance artist, author, and musician, most widely known for being one half of The Dresden Dolls, a cabaret punk style band. Reb Fountain by comparison is ‘new’ to the music world only releasing her first album in 2020. What these women share is an emotive, unflinchingly direct way of calling out the world as they see it in their music, and refusing to go quietly. Becoming friends and later finding out they were cousins, Amanda was asked to cover a traditionally sexist song for the DoReMeToo fundraiser and knew straight away that Reb was the one to do it with. With just a piano and two incredible voices, they pressed record.
Without the catchy pop tune to disguise it, “Blurred Lines” was stripped down to its disturbing reality, and when placed into an almost dialogue with Cobain’s words in response the stark message we are popularising is like a shard of glass.
