In Art Angels, Grimes grasps onto the hyperfeminine
Pop music is often, and easily, stereotyped as feminine: its vocals are light and airy, it’s dominated by women musicians, and easily accessible. These factors combined allow music critics to sneeringly dismiss it as “feminine” and rock as “masculine”. (A verdict easily dismissed by the existence of the Screaming Females or countless other bands, but whatever.)
While many other musicians shy away from pop music or try redefining its gender, Grimes embraces it: Art Angels is not just feminine, but hyperfeminine. She doesn’t write of love (as many have interpreted “Flesh Without Blood”), but of lost BFFs, fangirling and objectification.
(The hyperfeminine is not the only theme of Art Angels but, without question, the most important. It permeates every aspect of the album, from the production to the lyrics to the concepts.)
Her hyperfeminine predilections and preoccupations with gender are most obvious in “Kill V. Maim” and “Venus Fly”; a constantly repeated refrain in “Kill V. Maim” (a song about a genderfluid space vampire mobster) is “’Cause I’m only a man…I do what I can”. The irony is evident — men, even with all their privilege, are constantly harbouring aspirations for more power. When the vampire switches into its feminine modality, it switches to a form of rhythm and rhyme as if some sort of cheerleading chant. This time, however, the cheerleader is cheering herself on, telling herself to “B-E-H-A-V-E nevermore”. In the final stretch of this chant, as the vampire tells the listener that they “declared a state of war”, the hyperfeminine displays its aggressiveness and starts to scream.
In “Venus Fly”, Grimes collaborates with Janelle Monáe to create an anti-catcalling chant — in her own words, it’s about “being too scary to be objectified”. Much like the track’s namesake, Grimes and Monáe want to be able to use their charm to attract the unsuspecting. Once they catch their prey, the duo will use their “curls” and their “pearls”, traditional images of femininity, to kill the men that thought they could catcall anyone they wanted. However, this isn’t a viable option for the world they live in, so they opted to make a great banger instead.
Grimes produces sugary sweet, dreamlike, and idealised pop in Art Angels. Yet, as she takes great pains to informs us in the closing track, “Butterfly”, she “will never be your dream girl”. Beyond the hyperfeminine, and all the small themes, that’s what the album is about: Grimes growing until she realises she can never please everyone.
And that’s just the way I’d want it.
