#stillspaces

Sorry for literally just now answering your question :P But it’s a super good one and I wanted to make sure I answered it!! So when you want to say “oh I love your shirt” or “I really like the color” or whatever, you can say “Ich mag deinen Hemd” or “Die Farbe gefällt mir,” just like you said. When you are talking to people, you say things a little differently (and it’s important to spare yourself from some awkward conversations and unknowingly professing your love to someone haha). So, like we said before “Ich liebe dich” is really telling someone you love them in German. You say the to a person you’re in love with, and that’s it. When you want to tell your parents, friends, siblings, dog, whatever that you love them, you say “Ich habe dich lieb.” You can also say “ich mag dich,” but that’s “I like you.” It might be good to get things going to the “ich liebe dich” ;) haha 

sorry, dear, i haven’t read that one yet and cant find it either.

it’s not quite pop music, but i generally think hozier does a good job writing about women in his music. that may be because he takes a less literal approach in his writing and uses a lot of metaphor. for instance, (not sure if you’re familiar with his music) he recently released a song comparing his lover to a shrike, which is a bird that kills its prey by impaling it on thorns—a bit of a different take than “devil in between the sheets” etc

oh, and the song is aptly titled shrike if you would like to listen to it yourself

Hi anon,

Thanks for your thoughts. 

I haven’t listened to much of Hozier’s music, but I have had a look into that song and I think it’s really interesting. I interpreted it slightly differently - I think that Hozier is the Shrike and his lover is the thorn.  I could probably have opinions about how that metaphor related to heterosexuality as an insitution and ideas about men and women, but that’s not the point that I’m going to make in this post.  I think the specificity of the metaphor and the emotion it’s trying to describe ends up meaning that even if in some ways it reinforces ideas about heterosexuality and men and women it does more than that as well. 

One of the interesting questions I have is whether or not it’s possible to write music from a male voice that acknowledges women’s humanity within the pop genre.  Because I think specificity is a really important tool to creating more complex ideas about gender and sexuality, and the pop vocabulary tends towards the general and the universalisable. 

Or to be more specific - if a man is writing songs with the intention that htey resonate with an audience of young women who want men to be attracted to them within the pop genre (and I think the most important comment about Harry’s album is Alex’s point that this is what he was trying to do) - is it possible to do so in a way that acknowledges that women are people.  Does heterosexuality - in its most generaliseable forms in this society - deny women’s humanity?

What is particularly interesting to me, is how precise Harry is able to be about how women who want men to be attracted to them might feel validated. The writer of the Radio NZ review of his concert mentioned that her friend had a lyric from ‘Woman’ tattooed on her.  I’m fairly sure it’s: “You Flower, You Feast”.

And the more I thought about that line - the more effective I think it is and the more it shows an understanding of some of the demands that are placed on women and the fantasies that some women have about meeting those demends.  Flowers are beautiful and delicate - as women are endlessly told they should be.  Feasts have substance, can be satisfying and are worth devouring.  To tell a woman that she is both is to suggest that she’s achieving the impossible - successfully navigating the competing demands put on women.