For the last decade or so, pop has engaged in a masochistic relationship with its own excess. I’m sure there’s some socio-economic cause which can be argued—that post-2010 society’s ubiquitous obsession with responsibility and shame can be traced to the credit crunch, as we try to guilt-trip roofs over our heads in absolution for our past excesses. I’ll leave that all to someone cleverer than me, though.
Whatever the reason, the naïve millennial optimism of LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock’ has crumbled—first giving way to Danny Brown’s ‘Dip’, then Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Swimming Pools’, and now Billie Eilish’s ‘When the Party’s Over’ and The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’. It is now imperative for pop music, and mass culture in general, to engage in self-flagellation. Deviations from this formula are quite often dismissed as gaudy or selfish—though there are exceptions in the likes of 6ix9ine and Cardi B. If you’re sceptical, try listening to Skrillex’s ‘Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites’ now without wincing. You can’t, because you don’t really want to party anymore. You’d rather stand outside until the party’s finished, then help clean up while ‘lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to’ plays.
This context makes Shygirl’s ALIAS doubly impressive. She’s a member of NUXXE, a label/collective of four like minds who buttered their bread by celebrating excess, and throwing less-than-sanitary oozy wonders of the human condition into sharp relief. ALIAS doesn’t break that mould. The seven-track EP turns its sights on sex and relationships—and seduces at the same time as making you want to get a top-up HPV jab “just in case”. It seems to admonish and admire casual sex in equal measure, elevating the act to monumental, quasi-narcotic status. Sex gratifies—but just as it turns you on, it can turn on you, and become consumptive.
Shygirl herself becomes the personification of this—a praying mantis-esque character whose self-proclaimed sexual availability and prowess feels as parodic as it does appealingly dangerous. Shygirl can “go all night” and continually asks “can we throw it down again?”. Nowhere is this GFOTY-style fulfilment of male fantasy made clearer than in ‘LENG’—a track which features the line “so wet that I drown”; a raucous escalation of the year’s biggest hit, ‘WAP’.
Despite going doubling down on the rudeness, ALIAS is ultimately far more empowering than ‘WAP’. Shygirl doesn’t indulge in Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s self-commodification or earnest vapidity in which your pussy is bartered as social currency. Behind the posturing and naughtiness is a half-ironic and deceptively sentimental release, which sneaks vulnerability and depth in behind its own boldest elements.
‘TASTY’ is an oasis of sweetness at the album’s exact midpoint; detailing the rush of optimism and confusion that heralds a new relationship. And ‘BAWDY’ double-hands strength and weakness, framing sex as an act which can crystallise and intensify our deepest feelings, permitting grander heights of emotional bliss. 2020 be damned: ALIAS has the buoyancy and joie de vivre of a Cakes Da Killa release—and it’s twice as smutty.
ALIAS is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe