CULTURE

Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish, and the Sexist Backlash Against Female Sadness

Sure, the topics they sing about might be destructive and controversial—but typically, we let men get away with writing about the same themes without blinking an eye.

Photo by Paola Chaaya on Unsplash

Who could forget the firestorm that erupted around Lana Del Rey in 2012? The number of think pieces and posts smashing her for her purported glamorization of depression and sadness rose to the thousands, maybe millions.

She wasn't a feminist. She ran around with gangsters and slept with old men in her music videos. She loved Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg. She wanted to die.

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MUSIC

Jenny Lewis Plays With Nostalgia on "Wasted Youth"

The new song is the third single from her upcoming album, On The Line.

Jenny Lewis

The arrival of Jenny Lewis' fourth solo album, On The Line, is imminent.

And if "Wasted Youth" is any indication, the new record promises to be a wrenching and gorgeous trip. The third single released from On The Line bounces with a deceptively easy-going twang while meditating on addiction and lost time. It's a sound that lives somewhere between Dolly Parton and Carole King, sowing a saccharine sadness under its nostalgic pulse, but Lewis still effortlessly stakes her ground.

Beginning with a jaunty piano trill, the song's foreground is Lewis' voice lilting around a beautifully-echoing guitar lick, giving depth and vigor to the act of memory. But her lyrics are resigned and somewhat barbed in their look back: "Why you lyin'? / The bourbon's gone," she sings exasperatedly at one point; "Mercury hasn't been in retrograde for that long." The song rings with the sound of regret, but "Wasted Youth" makes a point of not wallowing in the pain of what's past. Instead, Lewis seems more interested in remembering as an act of survival, taking the days lazed away with drink and drugs "just because," as just more stories she alone gets to tell.

There's a lot to be said for a nostalgic artist playing with a walk down memory lane like this, recasting youth as something lost while not letting that loss consume her. Jenny Lewis makes "Wasted Youth" as an affecting experiment in memory while surrounding it safely in a wistful melody. The remorse of hindsight rarely sounds this self-aware, but Lewis has whole-heartedly nailed it.

Jenny Lewis - Wasted Youth (Audio Video)youtu.be



Matthew Apadula is a writer and music critic from New York. His work has previously appeared on GIGsoup Music and in Drunk in a Midnight Choir.


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