We've written a lot this year. By the time the clock strikes midnight on Thursday night, Puke will have published 1000 blog posts in 2020 (hopefully). I (Joe) can't speak for everyone, but I know that regarding everything that I've written this year, there are very few posts that I regret. Most of my regrets involve me just writing shitty blog posts due to lack of time or effort or both (Family Matters references, vegetables, that kind of thing). But there is only one blog post, as far as I know now, that I was just straight-up wrong in my assessment. I am here now to quickly make amends before the year is over and I go back to writing an average of 2.5 times a week.
Alright, here it is: On 10/31/20, I ranked all the Billboard #1 songs of the year so far, and I had a lot of compliments for "Say So," a disco-infused summer-y jam by Doja Cat. I thought so highly of it that I called it the second-best #1 song of the year. Some new information has since come to light, information that makes me regret the nice things I had to say. I promise that this is the last time I let a large-breasted, small-bikini'd, french-fry-eating music video distract me from what really matters.
First, all the evidence that I could stand reading (about half of it, maybe) seems to indicate that Doja Cat is... not a good person. Not that every artist has to be a saint, but her particular brand of shittiness is what makes me want to dismiss her. Vulture has an extensive look at all the controversies, and it's a lot, but it can probably be summed up as such: Doja Cat moderated an alt-right video chat room, in which she stripped for incels, and expressed some volatile racist views herself. Kinda hard to justify any of this, and I'm not sure Doja Cat was ever able to. Whether should be "cancelled" or not seems like a stupid argument based on premise alone. All I can say is that her history of unsavory views and how she expresses those views makes me sorry I ever liked her song.
Second—and I didn't know this either, at the time—"Say So" and four other songs from the most recent Doja Cat LP were produced by Dr. Luke, a.k.a. Lukasz Gottwald, a.k.a. "Tyson Trax" (his pseudonym for his Doja Cat credits), a.k.a. the dude who sexually assaulted Kesha. I had no idea (because I'm ignorant about these kinds of things) until Fiona Apple brought it up the other day. She makes a good point—absolutely wild that the Grammys could make a big show of supporting Kesha a few years ago, saying they "believe" her, and then go ahead and nominate her abuser. It makes me angry enough that I don't even want to watch the Grammys this year, to be honest (I guess I should retract making a big deal out of it too, then). And that's not even spotlighting the fact that Doja Cat thought she could sweep this under the rug by letting Dr. Luke use a pseudonym? Creepy, disgusting, and irredeemable.
Third—and this is the least important point, but probably the closest to my own sensibilities—"Say So" has been credibly accused of ripping off a song that already exists. That song is "Fiona Coyne" by an artist named Skyler Spence (who used to go by the name "Saint Pepsi"). I mean, you tell me. Do they sound enough alike for Spence to have a day in court over the issue? It's possible (not probable). It's just as possible that the creators of both "Fiona Coyne" and "Say So" were influenced by the same general disco sound, and that both of those songs also sound like countless other hits and semi-hits from the 1970s. But after listening to it a few times, I like "Fiona Coyne" a lot too, and it's particularly galling that that song never even charted, but Doja Cat can finagle her way to #1, since only the former is about a Degrassi character.
If I continue my Degrassi reviews, then it'll be another seven years or so before we meet Fiona, but still, I think it's great that such a fun song can be about—and also directly quote—the best teen soap opera of all time. So I hate the fact that Doja Cat and her producers took a pretty cool sound, stripped away the best part about it (Degrassi), and added some pretty distasteful elements (Nicki Minaj). Like I said, who the fuck even knows if it's a direct rip-off or a coincidence, but even if it's the latter, it still breaks my heart that Doja Cat gets the fame and Skyler Spence is left with the scraps. So it goes with us Degrassi fans, huh?
Thus completes my one retraction of 2020. I regret everything nice I've ever said about "Say So" and about Doja Cat. I hereby take it all back, and insist that "Say So" is now officially PoYB's second-worst #1 song of 2020 (not the worst, since even after all this, it's still pretty hard to top the noxious pair of Minaj and fucking Tekashi 6ix9ine). I have no one to blame but myself. If I'm going to write a long blog post about pop music, then I have to stop pretending that I even know one fucking thing about pop music to begin with.
No comments:
Post a Comment