Please God Let This Be the End of Pop Princesses!
My dream of female singers putting their pants back on
Back in the day, there was a great deal more reverence for so-called pop princesses. It seemed like EVERYTHING to be one of them. When my little friends and I played Barbies or starred in the grade school talent show, it was all in service of the vision of ourselves as the next big superstar. Stars used to have clout and that’s why we watched them so avidly and kept track of their lives via magazines and award shows. It was exciting to see people who were recognized for their talents and the pop princesses of yore had talent in spades. Carole King wrote songs for herself as well as Aretha Franklin, James Taylor, and the Beatles. Barbra Streisand had an amazing voice. Janis Joplin electrified every performance until her tragic death (under fishy, Clive Davis-connected circumstances). Stevie Nicks was uniquely amazing.
Though it is arguable that the pop-star-as-harlot trend began with Nancy Sinatra and Boots Were Made for Walkin’, it didn’t track until Madonna and her early eighties Reagan era schtick. Madonna’s voice wasn’t much but the songs she chose were fun, irreverent, and carefree. Yes, there was a time when Madonna wasn’t an insufferable, pompous wretch. Madonna quickly morphed into the creature we know today, a metastasizing schizoid chimera’s head of new personalities, one for every passing trend. Like Madonna herself, pop devolved from goofy and fun to shock and awe. Nearly all hip hop was Diddy-fied and nearly all pop was Madonnaed. Both genres became tools to cover for rapists, including child rapists. Both genres reflected the abject worship of death.
They took the audience
For every Beyonce, there are a hundred flash-in-the-pans such as Nikka Costa, Elle King, and Tones and I. One hit wonders still hit and disappear. For every one hit wonder artist, there are thousands of could-have-beens with talent that was equal or greater to the one hit wonder artist, if not Beyonce herself. Beyonce is not and never has been particularly talented except perhaps as a vocalist. She is slightly above average as a singer but she is not anywhere near the vocal talent of Ariana Grande. Her songs are co-written, and if we translate from the Bullshitese, that means she takes credit for other people’s creative work and calls it her own. Now that Beyonce’s looks are fading and she and her husband are being revealed as malefic Luciferian witches, Beyonce’s glamours are developing deep fissures. Beyonce as a brand is soon to be relegated to the Walmart clearance aisle.
It could not have happened to a nicer person, LOL. Beyonce is an awful human being who all but admits to murdering a woman in cold blood in a song lyric.
Your body laid out on these filthy floors
Your bloodstains on my custom coutures
Bathroom attendant let me right in
She was a big fan
I really tried to stay cool
But your arrogance disturbed my solitude
Now I ripped your dress and you're all black and blue
Look what you made me do
-Beyonce, Daughter
There are compelling rumors that Beyonce, who attended many Diddy parties, forces other artists to acknowledge her at awards shows as a form of tribute. The Beyonce rabbit hole goes very deep and if nothing else reveals that she should probably not be allowed around children. To see her finally failing after the forced farce of Cowboy Carter, a garbage black “country”album that suspiciously swept awards shows, provides a warm dose of schadenfreude. She is finally beginning to taste the obscurity she richly deserves.
The trouble with the one pop princess who beats out the hundreds of one hit wonders who beat out the thousands of Never-made-its is that thousands are not able to make a living or gain a following in music because of the pop princesses soaking up attention and money. Live music has taken a real beating in the last fifty years. Rates of pay for live shows have stayed exactly the same as they were in 1978 with no adjustment for inflation. Cover is where all the money is and anyone singing cover has to live in fear of being shaken down by the performing rights orgs such as BMI and ASCAP. When the performing rights org gestapo catches a nine year old singing Bruno Mars in a coffee shop while her music teacher accompanies her on guitar, it is all hands on deck to put the coffee shop out of business with astronomical licensing fees. A small restaurant near where I live in suburban Chicagoland was put out of business for hosting open mic nights with unlicensed cover songs. Meanwhile, YouTube has millions if not billions of cover songs being broadcast any given second that somehow are of no matter.
Pop princesses have dominated the scene long enough that I perceive their demise as shocking. I never thought I would see the end of them but it seems the memes have spoken: the pop princess era is aging badly. South Park started having a field day with J.Lo back in 2003, ruthlessly mocking her as Cartman’s hand (job) puppet. In 2012, a meme called Beyonce’s Final Form heralded the beginning of the end for Mrs. Carter, who stupidly attempted to force “everyone” to take the meme off the internet. This backfired spectacularly, and now the enduring image of Beyonce that will always live in the hearts of the masses is this one:
There is a particularly savage meme going around TikTok using combined footage from various pop princess’s concerts. The meme borrows the soundtrack from a 2008 SNL spoof of the Laurence Welk show featuring the fictional Maharelle Sisters, an old timey singing group in matching, semi-formal, yellow dresses. The sisters sing to introduce themselves in cringey crooner voices. “I’m Janice,” sings the first sister. “I’m Holly,” sings the second sister. “I’m Noraaaa,” croons the third sister in a wacky vibrato. “AND I’M DENICE!” screeches the fourth sister, who has a large forehead, tiny doll-sized hands, and a hefty helping of derp. Though the meme has several variations, Janice is Sabrina Carpenter, Holly is Taylor Swift, Nora is Cardi B, and Denise is Katy Perry in her Lifetimes tour. Katy Perry, for many reasons, has become the butt of internet jokes. Once the reigning queen of pop stardom, she too will be joining Beyonce in the Walmart clearance bin soon.
If I could walk a mile in their leotards, I would pass
All pop princesses wear leotards and/or bikinis onstage. It is as if there is a “no pants allowed” rule if you’re a major label artist recording a video or performing on tour. I get that pop music is more about entertainment than actual music. I am still sick to death of the goddamned leotard. When I hear a good song, the very last thing I am curious about is what the artist’s butt looks like. Having a perky derriere should not be a prerequisite for musical success, yet as we have seen with the hundreds of one hit wonders who are pushed aside for a single pop princess, there does not seem to be any other way than shaking that ass.
I had that body once upon a time and I suppose had I had slightly different luck, a more symmetrical face, fewer scruples, and less autism, it could have been me pumping booty to some co-written track. Ugh. No amount of money is worth the humiliation these women put themselves through to give the appearance of staying on top. Butts have nothing to do with good music and never will — the sounds that come from the butt cannot be tuned or helped. The Janice/Holly/Nora/Denise meme gives me hope that the Leotard Retard era is finally coming to its close. When they dance in their scanty outfits, they uniformly look like the stripper Cardi B once was. This not only commodifies music, it commodifies dance. I am old enough to remember when dancing was fun and my relatives danced the polka at backyard parties. I remember when dancing wasn’t always overtly sexual and didn’t feature copious attention to the crotch.
It eats them alive
When you are sexualized and commoditized from a tender age, it does horrible things to the brain. There is not a single pop princess that I would describe in a good mental or emotional place, though they all love to pretend they are perfectly transcendent.
Katy Perry is a mess who gets off on torturing senior citizens. Poor Britney Spears has left the building. I have no doubt that evil things have happened to that woman starting when she was a girl. She is broken and bleeding. Christina Aguilera is dysmorphic and probably mutilated. I believe Sarah Ferguson of the Black Eyed Peas was serially raped from childhood. J.Lo became a monster. Lady Gaga is a ritual Satanist. Olivia Rodrigo is mentally ill. Li’l Kim butchered her face. Cardi B. is a political dishrag. Doja Cat is probably mutilated and again is another out and proud Satanist. Rihanna lost her ability to sing. Amy Winehouse is dead. Ariana Grande looks like she is dysmorphic, self-harming, and dying of anorexia. Chappell Roan has dead eyes and dresses like Dee Snider in his Twisted Sister era.
Every one of them is supposed to be a role model. Every one of them undercut thousands of talented artists to sit at the top of a septic astral pyramid that yields diminishing returns for all. Most of them are industry plants. Taylor Swift is the daughter of a Blackrock bigwig. The reason her bland, banal Muzak sucks so bad is because she has the soul of a private equity firm with ancestry to match. Her songs are the sound of a corporate focus group. The same company that buys up middle class housing so they can drive up real estate prices to benefit their shareholders put Taylor Swift on the map and drove her earworms into the soft flesh of little girl’s brains. Disney (with its woke communist agenda) is also owned mostly by Blackrock. Blackrock may have geoengineered the North Carolina earthquakes in a convenient grab of a lithium mine — there is another rabbit hole. Let’s just say I would not put it past them. Blackrock’s executives are not nice people.
To her credit, Taylor Swift is reportedly good to her employees and staff, and she’s nice to fans, which is far more than Jennifer Lopez or Madonna will ever be able to claim. That said, her constant whining and politicizing carries a sinister agenda. If she is a role model, I would like to see some other choices.
At least Swift apparently writes her own music — her shoddy, generic stamp is all over her lame oeuvre. Many of the aforementioned artists cannot bother to pen their own tunes, which means they displaced talented people in order to pimp whatever Max Martin felt like writing any given week. Most people do not know that he writes the majority of pop songs offered to any given major label songwriter. He is Carol King on steroids.
I will conclude this lament with my own hope that pop princesses can be filed away for perpetuity and that local music can regain the foothold it had in the seventies. Perhaps I am alone but I would like to see the next generation of musical women keep their pants and skirts on. Call me a nerd but I would like to hear songs with more than four chords with actual acoustic instruments being somewhat expertly played. I would like this music to be as good live and unedited as it is on recording. I would like to see music divorce itself from porn and pornified culture. I would like to see my friends who are far more skilled at playing live than I will ever be compensated for their skills. I would like to see them be able to make a living off of something besides teaching. It may be too late for me (also I am very happy as a music teacher) but I would like to see them on the stage, exuberant, and very much with all their clothes on.
I guess a girl can dream.
I think it might already be.
The “Women … In … Space …” fiasco kind of ended that I thought.
Nobody cares anymore.
The problem with these "princesses," just like in all other areas of art, is that the bland and crowd-pleasing is given far too much space. The dominance of the marketing strategies behind it means you really have to search before you find something that stands out from the mass of agreeable, formulaic work. As for me, I've always been more interested in queens than in princesses. At the top of the list is Kate Bush, of course, but I’ve also drawn powerful inspiration from Jarboe, P. J. Harvey, Lisa Gerrard, and more recently Maria Franz from "Heilung," who has earned her place among the musical queens. And that’s just a small fraction of the extraordinary women artists who barely get noticed by the media. (Yes, Kate Bush was a star in the 1980s, but the brilliant work she produced after her long break is almost completely ignored by the mainstream.) So the question isn’t just why the princesses take up so much space. It’s also worth asking who gives them that attention and why. There are real artists out there. They can be found.