OVER-ANALYZING MY SPOTIFY WRAPPED

TRACKLIST: My 2023 Spotify Wrapped

Click a song title below to jump to a blurb about that song, or scroll down to read through them in order. Some are longer (and more interesting) than others. Hope you enjoy some of them!

1. World Class Sinner / I’m a Freak - Lily Rose Depp
2. Envolver - Anitta
3. I Can See the Future - Tinashe
4. One That Got Away - MUNA
5. Popular - The Weekend with Playboi Carti and Madonna
6. I got it bad - Addison Rae
7. I’d Rather Have Sex - Anitta
8. Hit It From The Back - Kim Petras
9. missin u - Tori Kelly
10. Call on Me - Bebe Rexha
11. LMK - Kelela
12. Fashion After All - Poppy
13. Regulars - Allie X
14. Superlove - Tinashe
15. Make Me Wanna - Emotional Oranges
16. Troubled Paradise - Slayyyter
17. Coconuts - Kim Petras
18. I’m So Hot - Chrissy Chlapecka
19. nonsense - Sabrina Carpenter
20. Positions - Ariana Grande
21. Watch Me Work - Tinashe
22. Future Starts Now - Kim Petras
23. Gimme More - Britney Spears
24. Woke Up Blessed - Tinashe
25. BONUS TRACK

1. World Class Sinner / I’m a Freak - Lily Rose Depp

I am, unfortunately, a proud The Idol apologist. Not necessarily because I think the show did anything particularly well, I’m just a sucker for anything with its dark camp aesthetics and themes. But also — the soundtrack fucking slaps. That’s the main thing that has attracted most of The Idol’s reluctant fans. Whatever some may say about The Weeknd’s acting skills, he’s a master at moody, melodic R&B.

But World Class Sinner, performed by show lead Lily Rose Depp as main character Jocelyn, stands out, not just because of its more pop-leaning sound, but because of the way it’s used in the show. It succeeds at so much of what the show was trying to do. It’s a self-aware pastiche; it’s referential but contemporary; it’s a critical commentary of and also succeeds at being a mindless hypersexual pop song; it’s dumb-on-purpose and delightfully so.

In the show, the song soundtracks grueling rehearsals and stressful video shoots that leave Jocelyn’s feet bleeding, rather than the sexy adventures the lyrics describe (“Get in that car drive fast / Get on the road, take off my clothes”), complicating the song’s meaning and calling into question its own worldview. At one point, Jocelyn herself dismisses the song for its shallow and sexualized lyrics (“Better have a bank account if you wanna’ know what I’m about ... I’m a good girl gone bad”), only to later champion her remix of the song, which features an even more overt sexuality, with heavy moans overlaid atop the entire first verse.

Critics have taken issue with The Idol’s lack of direction, and pointed to these sort of supposed hypocrisies as proof the show is bad. Is it a parody or does it take itself seriously? In the universe of the show, is this song good? Without saying the show succeeded at striking enough of a balance to make a clear artistic statement, I can’t help but feel this song proves it is intentionally playing with ambiguity and contrasting binaries, not (always) overlooking conflicting messages.

This song is the ultimate guilty pleasure. It wants you to feel uncomfortable with its overt sexuality and vapid lyrics, and it wants you to dance anyway — it wants you to enjoy it and feel bad that you do. In that way, it puts you in Jocelyn’s bloodied shoes — forced to dance through discomfort — while also embodying her defiant deviance — she, after all, sexualizes her own trauma and unapologetically abuses her pop star power to get her sick kicks. She’s just a freak, yeahh.

This song played a similar role for me in my life. It soundtracked sleazy hookups, at-home dance parties and rushed walks across the mall (on bloody, blistered feet, no less) to get to work on time after running through city streets polluted with wildfire smoke and record-breaking summer temperatures. And it made me feel sad and dissociated and so sexy.

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4. One That Got Away - MUNA

Indie trio MUNA is known for their emotional, vulnerable synth pop and their self-titled 2022 LP featured some of their best contributions to the genre. But this one-off single, released to promote their 2023 tour, is an uptempo, self-assured kiss-off to someone who “fumbled the bag,” in the band’s own words. On MUNA, the band questioned “if I’m on a runner’s high” — on this track, the narrator moves on with assured certainty.

Crucially, it’s not a hot new lover or even a brighter future that has them feeling so sure. Instead, the lyrics speak to the very qualities that caused them to pursue the ill-fated relationship in the first place (“I’m the one who opened up, ready for a connection / I’m the one brave enough to say how I was feeling ... who isn’t scared to dive into love”). Though they also lament the time they wasted “crying over you in the bath on the weekend” and “waiting by the phone ... home alone,” and call out their ex for “lying to your friends,” the song isn’t focused on maudlin emotions like revenge and regret.

Instead, One That Got Away celebrates the self-worth and confidence required to go after what you want and move on from something that isn’t serving you. That idea certainly resonated with me as I sought out a more functional work environment and grappled with conflict in my friendships. And so this song made me as excited for MUNA’s future releases as it did for my own next move.

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5. Popular - The Weekend with Playboi Carti and Madonna

At this point in Madonna’s career, it often feels like she’s desperately grasping for relevancy. Worse, the “disturbing” and “embarrassing social media posts she shares in attempt to capture the attention of a new generation threaten to tarnish her legacy. There are some moments of promise — the Frozen remixes were a moment — but her career trajectory and musical output have long left much to be desired.

So when this song was released to promote The Weeknd’s then-upcoming television project The Idol, it felt like a refreshing return to form. Here was Madonna collaborating with a current hitmaker arguably at the height of his career — The Weeknd was fresh off back-to-back critical and commercial smashes, After Hours and Dawn FM, he had headlined the Super Bowl and was spearheading a buzzy HBO show ahead of the hotly-anticipated relaunch of their streaming platform. That the song was actually good was promising for both the Queen of Pop and The Idol.

At once bouncy and gritty, Popular tells the tale of a fame-hungry femme fatale from the perspective of both the woman and the men she’s after. The Weeknd claims “She calls the paparazzi, then she acts surprised,” that she’s “begging on her knees to be popular” and will be “runnin’ back to me” after “a little taste” of his fame. Playboi Carti echoes this sentiment — “Shawty fuck with me ‘cause she know I’m popular.” But Madonna claims to have “spent my whole life running from your flashing lights” and vows — threatens? — “you can’t take my soul without a fucking fight.”

Even though the male narrators in Popular don’t paint their female counterpart in the best light — she’ll “kill anyone to be popular,” they say — the conflicting narrative Madonna presents in her verse complicates their unflattering portrait. The song doesn’t privilege one narrative over the other, leaving the listener questioning what is true. Who is the hero? Who is the villain?

At the end of the song, The Weeknd admits in the sing-song bridge that even though this woman is “in debt twenty mil ... she can never be broke ‘cause she popular.” Clearly, her charms are working if she’s amassed enough followers to be a successful cam girl, as the lyrics suggest (“turn the webcam on for the followers”). She’s gained some form of power. And yet, she had a form of power all along in the sexuality she allegedly yielded to gain fame. But is that truly power if it requires her to objectify herself?

These are the questions that come to mind when I listen to the song and it feels safe to say they’re questions The Weeknd wanted to explore with The Idol, but viewers would not be satisfied with the way he went about it.

A highly-critical Rolling Stone article released before The Idol’s debut described on-set conflict with the show’s original female director. The article claimed The Weeknd thought she brought too much of “a female perspective” to the show, and quoted a source that described the show as “torture porn.”

Hype around the show was no doubt influenced by the #FreeBritney movement, which had reached a media fever pitch as the show gained buzz — after meeting with The Weeknd, Britney even claimed to have a starring role in the project. Many fans looked forward to a sympathetic depiction of a subjugated female pop star, like Britney. The details leaked in the article painted an entirely different picture, and The Weeknd was framed as yet another problematic man in the media — he was made to be the villain of his own story.

The show went on to debut to further ridicule — even its streaming platform got roasted for its mishandled rollout. And Madonna was hospitalized after a health episode, postponing her greatest hits tour. Life comes at you fast, and things rarely go as planned.

It’s this truth that this song and The Idol, for all its faults, seem the most guided by. The song and the show don’t tell you what to believe. They depict what is in a way that appears to glorify it, but also reveals the gore in the glory — suggesting even the most glossy guises have a shadowy side. Popular — The Idol — is a cautionary tale, but one that is perhaps less about how fame corrupts and more about the human condition.

After all, what is fame — popularity — if not, ultimately, being perceived on a mass scale? A desire for fame is often a desire to be adored on a mass scale but as the backlash against the show proves, things don’t always go that way. That’s the unique power dynamic of fame — you may hold influence over an adoring audience, but you also make yourself vulnerable to the views of an unforgiving public (and even, as Popular illustrates, your peers). Despite our fantasies of being favored, in reality fame often shines a spotlight on parts of ourselves we’d rather keep hidden.

This is the bind Popular’s subject finds herself in — she’ll “never be free ‘cause she’s popular.”

Whether or not most people are ever perceived on the scale of Madonna, The Weeknd or The Idol’s Jocelyn, we all, in some way, grapple with the existential questions of being seen — of identity. How in control are we of how we are perceived? How accurate are our own self-concepts? Can we ever be free from people’s perceptions of us? How sure can we be of our own motivations — of who we are — if, famous or not, we remain feeble, fallible humans? When you, as Madonna coos in the intro, see “the devil … in every place, in every face,” who can you turn to for answers? Who can you trust? When nothing feels sacred, what else can you do besides try to beat the devil at his own game? For those who manage to “win” — to become idolized (idealized?) — do they only achieve such heights at the expense of their humanity? The question of fame is a very human one indeed.

Such questions populated my mind as I tried to navigate chaos in my career and conflict in my personal life. I tried to own my own truth and stay focused on my goals, while also owning up to my own faults and refocusing as necessary. The truth often turned out to be a lot more complicated and painful than the comforting narratives I often told myself; the path full of unexpected turns. And still I never felt better than when I felt popular — when I was existing in the world; being seen so rawly.

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6. I got it bad - Addison Rae

After TikTok star Addison Rae’s first single “Obsessed” failed to make a splash on the charts and garnered widespread ridicule online, her debut album was shelved and her pop career was put on an indefinite hiatus. When the album was leaked online a year later, it developed a cult following because it was — shockingly! — good. Fans lamented the loss of a potential new main pop girl, but satiated themselves with Soundcloud playlists of the leaked tracks. Then — out of nowhere! — she announced the release of her debut EP, AR, in August 2023.

Despite a devastatingly short track list, the EP has no shortage of bangers — but this song remains a standout. It makes strong sonic and lyrical reference to 2000s teen pop (the lyrics describe Addison pining after “the boy next door from my boyband poster”), but it doesn’t feel like a derivative nostalgia trip, or an uninspired interpolation of an old-school hit. As influenced as the song clearly is, it stands on its own as a solid pop song.

So much of culture these days is made up of cynical, heavy-handed appeals to nostalgia. And even though this falls in step with current Y2K trends, it doesn’t feel like a total retread. It feels like an authentic artistic statement from someone who grew up with and earnestly appreciates the bubblegum pop of the aughts. It’s a true revival in that sense. In our post-Eilish era of dark and moody pop music — not to mention a dark national mood — “I didn’t see it coming.” And I gotta say — DAMN! — I got it bad.

That this song soundtracked my own personal renaissance gives me even more of a soft spot for it. I’m not romanticizing the past, I’m making new memories with new music that gives me the excitement I felt back then but makes it feel brand new.

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7. I’d Rather Have Sex - Anitta

If World Class Sinner offers a dissociative type of escapism that shines a light on the shadow side of sexuality, this song — from Anitta’s 2022 album Versions of Me — celebrates the enlightening elements of what happens in the dark. In this ode to save-the-relationship/make-up sex, physical intimacy is a welcome distraction from the boredom and drama that can often accompany a steady (but perhaps unstable) relationship. “We can stay up all night in an argument … we can fight but I don’t wanna … I’d rather have sex.”

A shallow reading of this song suggests a hegemonic male fantasy — a hypersexual woman with a one-track mind. “Come and touch my body / Every part of me” Anitta coos on the track; to be sure, a flirtatious utterance — but not necessarily an appeal to a patriarchal male gaze. There is, of course, the argument that the narrator is an empowered woman demanding pleasure. But the fact that this invitation for intimacy comes in a moment of emotional tension raises some interesting questions.

When Anitta says she’d rather have sex than engage in an argument, is she weaponizing her sexuality to avoid accountability for some wrongdoing? Is she dismissing her own feelings and seeking a false sense of resolution through sex? Maybe she really is just that horny — but is sex really ever that simple?

Anitta’s own story suggests otherwise. In a 2023 cover feature for Harper’s Bazaar, Anitta revealed she survived sexual assault and abuse from a former boyfriend when she was still a teenager. That experience is what inspired her to create her sexed-up on-stage alter ego. She wanted to create “a brave woman … whose feelings no one could ever hurt, who could find a way out of any situation … that’s how I created that character” — a sexualized, but resilient self.

In the same interview, Anitta also confesses to exaggerating and fabricating parts of her backstory to court public interest — notably that she’s told reporters she’s learned to speak different languages by dating men from different countries. In reality, she hires language tutors who help her practice while she gets her hair and makeup done, but she knows her alter ego’s version of events is more tantalizing. As a woman and especially as a survivor of sexual assault, she knows she will be sexualized anyway — and so she decided to use her sexuality to her benefit.

This knowledge makes it difficult to take Anitta’s more sexually-charged songs at face value. Perhaps that is what Anitta means when she asks her partner to touch “every part of me.” The staccato delivery of ev-er-y feels significant — if every syllable of a word demands a conscious acknowledgement, so does each part of her body, her being — each layer of meaning.

This makes I’d Rather less of a sexual empowerment anthem and more of a song about the power of sex. Sex can be yielded as an emotional weapon, sex can be exciting and fun, sex can be harmful and sex can also be healing. That this song acknowledges — however flirtily or frivolously — all these parts of sex makes it more of a celebration of our complex physicality, of materialsim. Where some may see a crude or tacky dance track, there’s just may be an evocative exploration of the human condition — but in order to see the latter, we have to be willing to humanize Anitta’s self-objectified subject. This song — Anitta’s persona — demands that respect and dares you to provide it without desexualizing Anitta; without watering down her experience, our awareness.

It’s also the perfect tempo to strut on the treadmill to, so there’s that. But sex also burns calories. ;)

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8. Hit It From The Back - Kim Petras

I had the same dual reaction to this song as I did to Coconuts when she performed them in a medley at the 2021 EMAS — horrified at how shallow and mindless the music was, but also into the shameless kitsch of it all. It felt like lowest-common-denominator stuff made for pure shock value. It gave me the same feeling of dread The Masked Singer does — it felt like a parody out of 30 Rock; an idiotic distraction from an inconceivable dystopia. But the songs are undeniably irresistible pure pop indulgences — and repeat listens revealed deeper themes that made this particular track even more evocative.

There are pretty explicit dark undertones to much of Kim’s; work. Her breakout hit Unholy describes the seedy hypocricy of heteronormativity; her Slut Pop EP is pure animal hedonism; and even her love songs have a tinge of sadness — Hillside Boys recalls memories of a summer love that’s faded; Heart to Break finds the narrator offering her heart while fully expecting it to be destroyed.

Hit It From The Back takes that narrative to erotic extremes — instead of offering her heart, she’s offering her body. That this song packages such bittersweet circumstances in a slinky sexy song feels poetic. It's like she's saying, If we can’t be in a romantic relationship, at least we can have a hot fling; at least I can relive the mood with this music. Like much of Kim’s work, it’s sad but it’s also ambivalent.

As I faced less than preferable circumstances in love and life, I found myself settling for cheap thrills and finding a sort of ascendance in that ambivalence; a sort of empowerment in making an informed bad decision. This song celebrates that.

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9. missin u - Tori Kelly

After a detour towards gospel-inspired music on her last two albums, powerhouse vocalist Tori Kelly has made a triumphant return to mainstream sounds, with an EP inspired by 90s and 2000s R&B. Like Addison, Tori successfully blends old-school references (this track samples Craig David’s influential 2000 single Fill Me In; another features guest vocals from Darkchild) with a contemporary sensibility (one line recalls a signature Drake lyric and 2000s tech in one breath — “I miss the way that you would make my Sidekick bling;” the final third of the song has a subtle hyperpop influence) to create something that feels both familiar and fresh.

The lyrics express a longing for an old lover, a narrative that lends itself almost too well to the throwback vibes of the beat. The song cleverly calls attention to this, playing with the double meaning of missing an ex and missing an era of life — referring to recalling memories of an old flame as going “back in time,” as the instrumentation recalls past eras of pop. But somehow the time-warp of references doesn’t make the sound dated or derivative. Instead, it all comes together to suggest that some things — like heartbreak, longing and love (and seeking catharsis through song) — are timeless.

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11. LMK - Kelela

This triumphant R&B track from Kelela’s seminal debut Take Me Apart is a DTF anthem that celebrates sexual agency while lamenting the pitfalls of modern dating. The lyrics describe the narrator’s struggle to find a suitable partner while out on the town and on the prowl, without resorting to disempowering narratives of heartbreak or rejection.

From awkward banter that finds her seeking solace in a cocktail — “I’ll give up right away and you’ll never figure out what you said / But it’s cool, babe, I’ma get me another round” — to overly-clingy dudes who threaten to kill the girls’ night mood — “Did you think you’re my ride home, baby? / ‘Cuz my girls are parked behind” — none of the prospects pass the vibe check, but our narrator remains unbothered.

She’s not looking for a relationship, but she wants more than an anonymous hook-up. “No one’s tryna’ settle down,” Kelela assures her would-be suitor. But she’s not willing to go home with just anyone; she wants to be courted, albeit casually, and respectfully —“You could chase it for the night / There’s a place for you and I.” In the official Genius Verified video for this song, Kelela explains that this place refers to an “abstract” space where she and a partner can “exist in this … sort of casual place in a healthy way.”

Too often, it can feel like the only options for sex are bad one-night stands and serious relationships — and those seeking casual connections will often ghost on their partners if things even appear to be getting serious. Our dating culture has only begun to explore the idea that casual sexual relationships can be respectful — and even long-term — connections without being weighed down with emotion and romantic expectations.

Unfortunately, without clearly-stated intentions, expectations and boundaries, many sexual connections devolve into unhealthy “situationships,” where it’s unclear how invested each person is or what each wants from the other. This can lead to unsatisfying and, at worst, unhealthy relationships.

This context gives the song’s main refrain powerful meaning and resonance. “Let me know, / It ain’t that deep either way” — this is not just an expression of desire (which is powerful in its own right, especially for a Black woman in America), it’s also a demand for reciprocal communication and — as a result of all that — a bold statement of worth. It ain’t that deep because she’s not looking for anything serious — the potential connection ain’t that deep — but also because she’s not relying on the other person for validation — she’s not deeply invested in the situation. Whether or not she finds someone to go home with, she’s going to have a fun night out with her crew; she’s going to live a full life — and it’s because she’s so bold and direct in pursuing not just what she desires, but what she knows she deserves.

That’s why I always turn to this song when I need a confidence boost — and as I faced many humbling situations this year, it was a needed reminder that I’m worthy of pursuing things that fulfill me, instead of desperately seeking cheap thrills and quick fixes.

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12. Fashion After All - Poppy

This song, from novelty pop act turned post-genre rocker Poppy’s sophomore effort Am I a Girl?, works on so many levels. At first listen, it’s exactly what it says on the tin — a song about fashion with an instrumental that provides the perfect sonic landscape for a runway walk. Yet as a song about fashion — which itself blends history, culture, art, commerce and identity in often evocative ways — it can be interpreted from a number of interesting perspectives.

What on the surface seems like a cocky, boss bitch anthem (“My hair and makeup make you envious”) is complicated by unexpected and creative lyrical turns that make reference to fashion’s complex history and subversive, subcultural power (“My wrists are terrorists” can describe both enviably ornamented forearms and a sinister effeminacy). The meta lore of the Poppy project — that Poppy is an android programmed to be the perfect pop star — suggests even more intriguing angles. Taken from this metatextual perspective, the song’s opening line seems to encourage their exploration — “I’m working every angle.”

With all this in mind, the chorus of the song — “It’s fashion after all” — feels like both a testament to such complex power, and a flippant dismissal of the superficial. Together, these dual readings empowered me — countless times since its release, but especially during such a tumultuous personal year — to make my own meaning in my life, the way Poppy — as this song seems to suggest — makes her own meaning out of fashion.

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13. Regulars - Allie X

Allie X’s 2020 LP Cape God was the perfect soundtrack to the COVID-19 lockdowns, with themes of loneliness, isolation and unseasonable sadness. This track — the album’s third single — is a portrait of the complex inner conflict that defines modern life — the deep sense of alienation so many of us feel regularly (no pun intended).

In an Instagram post, Allie X said the song “is about trying to reintegrate into society when you’ve been an outsider all your life.” The titular “Regulars” refers to the people who populate the narrator’s world — who, in Alexandra’s words, are “going to their nine-to-five jobs in their corporate suits and they’re just there hanging from skyscrapers by the edge of their fingertips, smiling and thinking, ‘I might just let go.’”

I’m reminded of that quote — “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Only, unlike that quote, this song seems to celebrate adjusting oneself to said sick society. The lyrics, at once, laud what seems to be a personal accomplishment for the narrator (“Out in public ‘cause I learned a new trick now … don’t I look so happy? … so lucky that I’m balanced now”) while also lamenting the loss of authenticity such assimilation requires (“They believe when I pretend”). For the narrator, assimilation is an admirable feat that necessitates the erasure of something essential. Her society celebrates this concealment not simply as a means to conformity, but as the apex of that end (“We just wanna’ see you win”).

For her and her corporate counterparts, “success” is, indeed, a sick negotiation. Not only must they hide their natural impulses to integrate with society, but they also have to deny their negative feelings about this unfair arrangement with pasted-on smiles; so one type of integration drives a deeper disconnect — an alienation from each other but also from their own emotions, their own identity. This paints a bleak portrait of her situation, while revealing its pervasiveness.

Such is American Life in late capitalism — exploitation and alienation are our shared experiences. It’s a rite of passage to overcome your post-adolescent idealistic phase and achieve success in a corporate career, but that doesn’t make it feel any better to sacrifice your ideals in exchange for an income. It’s necessary but soul-crushing; universal but so lonely. “Oh, what a feeling” indeed. It’s that strange ambivalence that this song captures so well, and it’s a feeling I related to as I found myself out of work and hustling at a part-time retail job at the mall.

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19. nonsense - Sabrina Carpenter

This viral hit from former Disney starlet (and alleged man-stealer) Sabrina Carpenter’s fifth studio album emails I can’t send joins the canon of songs that utilize onomatopoeia to express the incomprehensible emotions of infatuation — see Padam Padam, That’s The Way My Heart Goes and Bidi Bidi Bom Bom for other prime examples. For Sabrina, her clumsy attempt at flirtation “sounds like bleh blah blee.” Seriously, any song that includes the lyrics “bleh blah blee” and makes them sound not only charming — but meaningful! — is a triumph.

This song manages as much by cleverly acknowledging — as the title suggests — the refreshing frivolity of her feelings. Such unapologetic embrace of silly and cliche turns-of-phrase — “cartwheels in my stomach when you walk in” — perfectly captures the uninhibited joy of new love. Cliches are cliche for a reason — there’s no better way to express how love feels. It might be nonsense — but nonetheless, it “feels so good, I had to hit the octave.”

The song’s true claim to fame is just as enjoyable — the sing-song freestyle at the end of the song, which Sabrina customized in bespoke fashion and to viral effect on tour and most recently on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (“Clark is everybody’s favorite Dick type … balls are dropping everywhere at midnight”) — adds fun new flavors at the end of an already delectable track.

I wish I could say I found a love that had me as tongue tied (and creatively inspired!) as this song’s narrator — but at the very least, its clever and humorous lyrics had me feeling almost as elated.

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23. Gimme More - Britney Spears

On the surface, this song — from Britney Spears’ critically-acclaimed Blackout — is a straightforward club banger. The lyrics describe meeting someone who becomes the center of your attention and making a connection that feels like the center of the universe, as your uninhibited PDA draws insatiable eyes. (“Feels like no one else in the room / We can get down like there’s no one around … They keep on watching … saying ‘Gimme, gimme more’”) But the song’s significant spot in Britney’s discography and the lyrical parallels to her public life provide intriguing new interpretations that are surprisingly universal.

This was supposed to be Britney’s big comeback song when she was going through a highly-publicized mental health episode. It was, at the time, her most direct artistic comment on the public’s obsession with her and her struggles. The overwhelming negative response to her infamous 2007 VMA performance made the song a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cara Cunningham put it best in her viral video in defense of Britney: “The song is called ‘Gimme More’ for a reason — because all you people want is more, more, more, more, MORE!”

Britney captured the public’s attention from the start of her career, but the celebrity-obsessed culture of the late 2000s turned attention to her personal life in new ways. Britney was such a tabloid staple MTV.com declared a full-on “Britney Spears Economy” for the millions she raked in for paparazzi, magazine publishers, celebrity bloggers and countless others (including, eventually, her own shady family). The world really was saying “gimme, gimme more” — more, it seemed, than Britney was capable of giving.

Yet in this song, released at the height of her public struggles, she defiantly declared, “They want more? I’ll give ‘em more.” By the end of the song, Britney is no longer speculating about the would-be words of the crowd surrounding her, she herself seems to be begging her love interest to “gimme more, babe,” suggesting that she shares her audience’s insatiable appetite.

Gimme More was similarly recontextualized in the 2019 film Hustlers. The needle drops at a pivotal turning point, where the main characters have begun to claw their way out of their precarious situations — and into a world of luxury and excess — via a criminal plot. The song expresses both their desperation and class ascension, as well as the greed and hedonism of the rich Wall Street executives they target. This is the track’s most chilling revelation — it’s not a critique of an entitled audience, it’s a raw admission of an excess we all seem to secretly crave.

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THANK YOU’S

A few shout-outs to resources that helped me create this page:

• SadGrl’s Layout Builder: This is the first mobile-responsive page on this site and making it was a breeze thanks to this useful generator. Most of this website is intentionally designed to be viewed on a desktop, but I want people to actually read this and I know it’s convenient to scroll through long articles on mobile. This resource made it easy to recreate a version of my main layout with responsive features.
• CSSGradient.io This handy tool lets you create custom gradients and turn them into CSS that you can use on your webpage. It helped me create the title bar portion of my layout!
• Murray Ewing’s HTML Curly Quotes Converter I’m a copywriter by trade, so I’ve been trained to pay attention to the smallest of details. When I realized my that my writing/coding/editing process resulted in inconsistent quotation marks in my copy, I freaked out. But then I found this convenient converter that changes your copy’s straight quotes to curly quotes in one click, without messing with the characters in your markup.
• CodePen.io I usually just edit directly in the Neocities editor because I’m chaotic. But I really wanted to fine-tune this feature before I uploaded it to my site. This great tool allowed me to edit my code as much as I wanted, while providing a real-time preview of the final product. There’s a reason why it’s a go-to and industry standard for so many!
• Pop Pantheon Podcast If you actually willingly read any of this page and enjoyed it, you’ll probably like this podcast where host DJ Louie XIV and guests similarly analyze pop singers and rank them in a weighted tier. Their unapologetic deep-dives on some of my favorite divas and their discogs are a big part of what inspired me to go all-in on my interpretations this year. Give it a listen!

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