Weekly Dance Break: Send My Love (Adele)

I’m still not quite over Adele’s album, and she just released this MV that is perfect in its simplicity. After all, a voice like that needs no gimmicks.

Weekly Dance Break: Ain’t Your Mama (J. Lo)

Jenny From the Block takes on working women tropes and unequal divisions of labor, all while wearing a pair of ass-less chaps (no comment). Other gems? A serious purple power-suit, a nod to BumbleBFF, and a crowd of awakened women dancing in the streets. But seriously, about the oppressive men in this video—where did she even find those living Ken-dolls? 😂

 

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Weekly Dance Break: wRoNg (Zayn ft. Kehlani)

Choreographer friends: who’s on this?

Weekly Dance Break: Work (Rihanna x Drake)

Two music video versions (!), in which Rihanna enjoys her dancing in the mirror.

 

Weekly Dance Break: I’m in Control (AlunaGeorge ft. Popcaan)

Summer vibes, and not a moment too soon. Check out this video, which also celebrates life in the Dominican Republic!

 

Lana del Rey, Florence and the Machine, and the Performance of Femininity

They thought death was worth it, but I
Have a self to recover, a queen.

-Sylvia Plath, “Stings”

 

Even amidst the buzz surrounding the release of Adele’s 25 this month, I’m still caught up in two other albums released by major female artists this year. Florence and the Machine and Lana Del Rey both (like Adele) released their third major-label albums in 2015. Florence and the Machine’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful and Del Rey’s Honeymoon each mark a sonic departure from the albums that preceded them.  Beyond that, Florence Welch and Lana del Rey are two of my favorite female artists, and listening to these two albums on constant repeat—Florence’s since May, Lana’s since September—has led me to wonder what these two very different singer-songwriters have in common, and why both have a similarly dark, magnetic appeal for me (and, I suspect, many others).  Placing their latest albums in the context of their work as a whole, I can see that part of what’s intriguing about both of these artists is their blurring of the lines between authenticity and performance, mythmaking and confession.  Both perform femininity and embody it in ways alternately troubling and inspiring.

Weekly Dance Break: BBHMM (Rihanna)

To me, there was really one choice for weekly dance break this time around.

A warning, I suppose, for violence and nudity—though not more violence, I think, than your average CSI episode. This is also allegorical. It’s more than just a bloodbath. It’s a meditation on how intensely personal financial violence is (look for the knife Ri Ri labeled “ruined credit”), since money is always more than money—it’s power, independence, survival. It also contains a lot of food for thought re: the status of the white trophy wife. Finally, Black Girl Dangerous said it better than I could, with regard to the “torture porn” aspect of a black woman inflicting pain on a white woman.