Blowin’ In The Wind: Male Masculinities In Song
By: Jacob Miller
Tags: 2020, Culture, Masculinity, Music, Gender

It is late March, and 2020 has only just begun to get strange. The skies above Denver are a tarnished mother of pearl, and I’m going for a walk. We’ve been alone for a few weeks now, the early days of pandemic panic isolating us from our friends and encouraging my partner and I to spend time disinfecting our groceries after each harrowing trip to the store. As I wander through side streets and across deserted avenues, I see others on equivalent journeys. We walk aimlessly, together in our purposelessness and our distance. A light rain threatens, but does not deliver. The whole city is quiet, pregnant with anticipation of something, but no one seems to know what. I pass some friends drinking beer in a loose circle and stop to say hi, then quickly move on as I realize that I don’t know what to say and they’re just as uncomfortable. The light is beautiful, grey and silver with a promise of spring greens to come. It’s one of those moments when the internal and external seem ineffably joined, mirrors beyond understanding. In my headphones I can hear a sad voice, resigned and emotional with a wry, sarcastic wit. Mac Miller died two years ago and I’m listening to Circles (2020), a posthumous record released one day after what would have been his 28th birthday. It’s melancholy but knowing, which fits my mood perfectly. His voice outlines the confusion, isolation, and sense of confinement of being trapped in a world not of your own choosing.

As I reflect on the character that Mac Miller projects on Circles, I see a very different sort of masculinity than that dominating the headlines: the perpetrators who necessitated #MeToo, Boogaloo Boys, 8-Chan, Donald Trump. We live in an age of toxic masculinity, a time when entitlement and misogyny rage unrepentantly across the savannahs of modern society like misbegotten, AXE-body-spray scented lions, ravaging the lives of others and pausing only to say, “You’re welcome.” Although I locate myself in a circle of men trying to push back against those versions of masculinity, I also know that as a white, cisgender man I am implicated by the central and dominant position that men and male-centric research have occupied in both academic and popular discourse, often to the exclusion of other voices and points of view. However, as Jarman-Ivens and Biddle (2007) argue, “in order for men to emerge as objects of scrutiny, we must find ways of talking about them that are not prejudicial to feminist work, but which also nonetheless give room to a careful and critical assessment of masculinity as a problematic” (p. 4). Moving forward with sensitivity and an open mind requires an intentional effort to avoid the “…uncritical and essentially narcissistic tendency in masculinity studies…to reproduce the power relations that feminism in its most radical moments sought…to overturn.” (ibid, p.4) To put it simply, in order to clean up the mess we’re in, it’s necessary to look at its foundation.

Though reprehensible in itself, the rise of Trumpist thought and politics has unwittingly performed a potentially helpful function in making explicit many of the prejudices and subcultural norms that have heretofore been limited to either covert mutterings between like-minded men behind closed doors, or overt violence obscured from public scrutiny by the fog of privilege. As Will Smith has said, “Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed” (Staff, 2018). I wonder to what extent the exposure of the depths of racism, misogyny, and homophobia presents an opportunity to approach head on many issues that have for too long been easily pushed aside. The current moment has produced dueling versions of masculinity, many of which are performed — and promoted — through music.

As Jack Halberstam (2018) argues, hegemonic white male masculinity positions itself as “natural,” and “nonperformative,” thereby excluding and delegitimizing other masculinities (queer, black, female, etc). If “normative (‘heroic’) masculinity per se is entirely and only committed to the project of sustaining its own normativity and ‘natural’ status as synonymous with the white, middle-class, male body,” (Jarman-Ivens & Biddle, p.14, 2007) then what really is masculinity? In this essay, I reflect on some of the various ways in which male masculinity is constructed through popular music. As Partridge (2014) suggests, “rather than being made for the people, in the sense of being made commercially available, popular music should be understood as that which is, in some sense, of the people” (p.16), and thus “needs to be taken seriously as formative of social situations and of an individual’s sense of identity and agency.” (ibid, p.39) Drawing from Whiteley’s (2007) argument that constructions of masculinity are “socially and historically informed, and within popular music they provide a particular route into understanding and relating to different genres,” (p.33) I explore three songs from the Trump era that play with different versions of male masculinity: Mac Miller’s “Good News” (Circles. 2020. Warner), The National’s “Not In Kansas” (I Am Easy To Find. 2019. 4AD) and Blood Orange’s “Hope” (Negro Swan. 2018. Domino).

Good News

Mac Miller’s “Good News” is what started me on this line of thought, of examining and appreciating the ways in which different artists explore their masculinity through song. It is also the most obviously tragic of the three songs at hand: the story of a young man who sees only one possible escape from a prison of expectations. The song begins with a sub pulse and a stuttering 1/16th note kick hit. Then a quiet cascade of pizzicato arpeggios, and a tremoloed synth warbling along like a stream beneath a family of waterfowl. Mac’s voice enters, just singing along, he could be you or me, “I spent the whole day in my head…” (Circles. 2020. Warner) The vocal is dry, almost too intimate yet somehow comforting. Redolent with glottal fry, Miller’s voice seems as casual as a lullaby. Underneath it all as glue is the quiet hiss of tape noise, mic noise, white noise. Miller is trading in intimacy here, inviting listeners to spend the whole day in his head, or maybe to have him spend the day in ours, anything to feel less alone. A brittle, chorusing guitar joins in counterpoint to the strings, panned left and playing call and response with its drier counterpart an octave below to the right. Entering with the guitars, a trap set begins to keep time with the electronic background stutter. The arrangement builds, synth and guitar pushing into a higher register for the first chorus, “Good news, good news that’s all they wanna hear.” (ibid) The song hits a groove and chugs along in it until the lyrical conclusion, wondering about death and thinking that maybe, “It ain’t that bad / At least it don’t gotta be no more.” (ibid) As that realization comes a long, slow, sleepy fadeout begins like an opiate haze, nearly two minutes worth of it: motion through inertia rather than intention, the loss of control as a warm blanket rather than the sharp panic of a car crash.

There’s nothing musically unusual in the song, it is a simple four bar loop with smooth instrumental embellishments that track the emotional rise and fall of the lyrics. It is, in that sense, a near-perfect representation of what Adorno (1941) terms ‘plugging’: a process of repetition that,

aims to break down the resistance to the musically ever-equal or identical by, as it were, closing the avenues of escape from the ever-equal. It leads the listener to become enraptured with the inescapable. And thus it leads to the institutionalization and standardization of listening habits themselves. Listeners become so accustomed to the recurrence of the same things that they react automatically. (p.25)

One could say that this plugging repetition, this standardization, is made to feel inescapably “natural”. Listeners are, according to Adorno, hypnotized by repetition into accepting the ineluctability of the loop, mesmerized into believing that there are no other possibilities, and tranquilized into not caring. This effect is unavoidably similar to that produced by white male masculinity’s positioning of itself as “natural” and nonperformative, as a quality that adheres to the male body without thought or effort. (Halberstam, 1998) A construct positioning itself as organic, a Truman Show of identity that pins its stability on the impossibility of acknowledging other possibilities. This is what is, to me, so fascinating and moving about “Good News”: Miller, floating aimlessly and seemingly without effort in the stream of the loop and following its current because there are no other possible options, because it is so gentle and soothing that he is only just barely aware of it, is moving slowly and softly toward death, the only possible escape from the loop. The male body, the male voice, and their “adherent” masculinity, cast as so “natural” by music and production, show vulnerability and softness the only way that the loop allows: in death. The structure reflects the meaning, which is built from the structure.

It is tempting after an artist’s untimely death to see their work only in terms of that death. I had a bandmate who died of cancer at 20, and as we discovered more and more of his solo work on his computer, my friends and I could not help but to read it as prescient; that he was somehow aware of his impending death and finding ways to express that awareness to the world at large, or maybe just to himself. Whether or not there is any truth to that idea is immaterial. What I am interested in is the effect that this music can have on me, on all of us, as listeners. I have prior experience with the unexpected death of a dear musician friend, and so I have a set of associations that I bring to my listening of Circles. The text brings meaning with it, and so do I. I can, to a certain extent, choose how I interpret it, but that process is not absolutely malleable; there is some stability on both sides. “While we may have some agency in our use of music, for the most part, this agency is limited by our cultures, our backgrounds, our social contexts, and the affordances the music itself possesses.” (Partridge, p.47) What is of most interest to me here is the possibility to change or remix the building blocks of that stability within ourselves, to question what may seem “natural”, and through that questioning perhaps arrive at a new stability, a new viewpoint that can provide understandings that would not otherwise have been available to us.

Not In Kansas

Walking home from a friend’s house at 3 am I can see the reflection of sodium vapor streetlights dancing in the pond at Wash Park, and the National rings in my head like some huge and mournful church organ. It’s a sound that is deep and wide enough to cover all of my confusions, the sound of another man figuring himself out. “It’s half your fault so half forgive me.” (I Am Easy To Find. The National. 2019. 4AD) He’s a sad bastard, and even when he’s not he’s spent so long playing one that it still sounds that way. Glowing guitar tones sketch chords but do not play their fullness; that’s left to an electric piano and soft string section. The guitar is the skeleton, the keys and strings the flesh, the voice is the blood. This song is a true andante; ‘music at a walking pace’, and Matt Berninger walks us through a museum tour of his mind, each object or reference knitting together with the others to form a melancholy yet comforting tapestry. Interpolated with the gloom of the narrator are two gentle, soothing sections of 3⁄4 time, phrases from “Noble Experiment” by Thinking Fellers Union 282 (Strangers From The Universe. 1994. Matador). The already minimal instrumentation retreats even further, leaving room for a chorus of female voices to rise and give response to the relentless listing of the verses.

If the sadness of life makes you tired

And the failures of man make you sigh

You can look to the time soon arriving

When this noble experiment winds down and calls it a day.

(I Am Easy To Find. The National quoting TFW 282. 2019)

Berninger as narrator is as clever and compelling as he ever has been in the band’s twenty-odd year career, and also seems just as trapped by his own wit: “I am not in Kansas / I can’t slow down and I can’t stand it.” But the truth is that he’s found a way out, a door out of the closed system of his own mind and abilities. Since 2007’s Boxer! (4AD), Berninger has shared lyrical duties with his partner Carin Besser, and though she is not credited as a lyricist specifically on “Not In Kansas”, the principle behind the collaboration is certainly present in the song as seen in the use of “Noble Experiment”: when your own expressive possibilities feel inadequate, invite someone else in to help. As Berninger has said of earlier work, “My writing was obsessively conscious of being an awkward man. And then I became less of an awkward man.” Carin Besser named Boxer! because she saw the band “struggling, in this fight with [their] identity.” (Sodomsky, 2019) That struggle seems to have, if not totally resolved, at least calmed with time. Of particular interest to me here is the idea that as the band have moved from making “dude rock” to being less awkward men, they have also begun to allow more and more other voices and collaborators into the mix: they have found traditional dudely modes of expressivity inadequate to their changing lives, and so have expanded the palette by inviting other voices to join in their musicking. Basically, representation matters.

Here the narrator has placed himself in a larger context and given up the control that a compulsive lister requires. There is room for possibility, for the unknown, and the peace that comes with giving your trust to others. One form has been covered over by another; not obliterated but expanded upon.

Time has come now to stop being human

Time to find a new creature to be

Be a fish or a weed or a sparrow

For the Earth has grown tired and all of your time has expired Oh, the gardens are sprouting with flowers

All the tree-tops are bursting with birds

And the people all know that it’s over

They lay down their airs and they hang up their tiresome words. (I Am Easy To Find. The National quoting TFW 282. 2019)

Sometimes you cannot say the words that you know to be true and necessary, and must lean on others for help, as the men of The National do here by bringing in female voices. I can’t help but see the contrast between this openness, this making of space for other voices, and the jealous domination that so many men exert in their daily lives, so fearful of their own status that simply allowing someone else to speak could be the undoing of their fragile selves. If “this band of five dudes, five Midwestern white men, [can] finally let women speak for themselves,” (Bonca, 2019) then maybe some of the rest of us can begin to do so as well.

Hope

August, 2018: woozy with jet lag and excitement, my bandmate and I stagger up some narrow stairs and into the tiny apartment that will be our home while in Amsterdam. Old Dutch floorboards stained with years of life and smoke, but not dirty. A corner studio in De Pijp, and though smaller than many American cars, it doesn’t feel crowded so much as the very Dutch gezellig: cozy, warm, and welcoming. The sounds of life filter up to us as Amsterdammers go about their daily business; soft guttural exchanges of delivery trucks negotiating the endless stream of cyclists as they make their rounds. We collapse onto the bed in our separate piles, and sleep the shallow sleep of the traveller. The northern late-summer sun falls down and we wake, groggy and confused. Returning to the flat after a quick dinner, I put on a new album: Blood Orange’s Negro Swan. Populated with endless guest spots, the loose, casual style fills out the room perfectly. It is the sound of a traveller who builds community wherever he is, and takes it with him wherever he goes. The whole album hangs together beautifully both as a concept and as a piece of music, but the song that really sticks out to me is “Hope” (ft. Tei Shi and Puff Daddy).

Dev Hynes’ ethereal, effected voice starts the song with one stanza a cappella, and then a quick siren interrupts to begin the beat. Electric shaker, chorus and delay staggering it back upon itself like woozy morning footsteps, is grounded and structured by a simple kick-snare beat. Piano and synth chords, heavy with extensions and substitutions, float around and through the beat as a male and a female voice have a conversation, one rapping and the other singing. Tei Shi: “Is this the way that you are? Is this the way that you leave me?” Puff: “Yeah, bring hope when you come around / Yeah, I still smile when you come around.” (Negro Swan. Blood Orange. 2018. Domino) The exchange continues, with subtle word changes and exchanges, until about two and a half minutes into the song when the beat disappears, leaving behind only a cascading piano improvisation as Puff starts talking. He hesitates, pausing and stuttering his way through.

You know, what is going to take for me not be afraid To be loved the way, like, I really wanna be loved

But that I know how I really wanna be loved

But I’m, but I’m, like, scared to really, really feel that

You know, it’s like you want something but you don’t know if you can handle it. (ibid)

It’s a feeling that many people can identify with, really two feelings: loving a person who feels inaccessible, and on the other hand feeling that something within ourselves, some way that we want to be, is inaccessible to us. But the characters find hope in each other, and in themselves: “You give me that hope that, um you know (Don’t look again) / Maybe one day I’ll get over my fears and I’ll receive (You’ll be the only one) / You’ll be the only one.” (ibid) At last, the third voice from the opening returns, bookending the conversation with an urging to chase what we know. Maybe one day, with a little help from our friends, we can all get over our fears and receive.

Sean Combs’ (Puff Daddy/P.Diddy) monologue here was, according to Dev Hynes (Blood Orange), something “that he did on his own — I guess he just heard the rough version of it and felt like going in. It was actually way longer [before editing].” (Torres, 2018) The monologue feels like an unfiltered glimpse inside of someone who has long existed at the intersection of myriad hyper-masculinized roles: rapper, mogul, producer, Black man. White western culture has long cast rapping as the masculine opposite of the feminine singing, Black men as the archetype of the threatening alpha male, producers as the ‘rational’ (and thus masculine) counterpart whose job it is to control the ‘irrational’ and (thus feminine) artist, and the business tycoon or mogul as that striving man, one who has clawed his way to the top through a combination of grit and manifest destiny. These are powerful stereotypes, and thus the transgression of their boundaries is equally powerful. Hynes has created an affective space where even someone who has long occupied extremely masculinized roles is moved to spontaneously share his uncertainty about his own desire, and his insecurity about his own abilities. The video for “Hope” shows very clearly how this is done: through community. It is replete with images of Black men being happy in groups, gamboling down a hillside and reveling in their own bodies and lives. Amid scenes of people chatting in the studio, dancing and singing in the street, Hynes falls and is carried to a piano on the shoulders of his fellow Black men. No one is alone, and everyone is supported. It is not definitively gay, and not definitively straight. Just like Dev Hynes himself it is fluid, experimental, and above all human. This is a vision of how to share, how to be open, how to be masculine in a way that is vulnerable without being fragile, how to be comfortable with yourself, and how to hope.

The Way Forward

Each of the above songs shows struggle, conflict and resolution, and discovery. To me they represent different possibilities of self, different ways of understanding one’s relationship to the world at large. Mac Miller found himself confined by a role and expectations that he did not know how to break out of, or rather found that he could imagine only one, very final way out. The National showed recognition of the limitations of expressivity within their identity, and sought to fill those gaps through outsourcing, making space for and adding in voices that could access different possibilities. Blood Orange created a space that allowed for the expansion of the possibilities afforded by an identity, a broadening of horizons and reimagining of the self. This is just my interpretation of these songs, and my reactions to them, but that is all it is supposed to be. My point here is not to erect any rigid scaffolding of understanding, to dictate how one must interpret a song, but simply to show the central truth that the art that we absorb and participate in plays a huge role in the shaping of our personal identities, and that there may be more possibilities out there than initially appear.

Obviously, there is much that I have not covered here, including but not limited to a deeper dive into the video and other visual components of all three of the above songs, analysis of the commercial/industrial power structure of the music and art world, and the inclusion of femininity and non-male masculinities in talk about (per)formations of identity. I have also focused largely on artists who are exploring the bounds of their identities intellectually rather than physically; I have not included men like Harry Styles and DUCKWRTH who are playing with and problematizing masculinity through the sexualization and objectification of their own bodies. Additionally, there is much more to be said about the despacialization of culture as artistic technology and connectivity have advanced, with the availability of content sparking change in regional sounds, identities, and communities. I hope to be able to look more deeply at some of those ideas in the future by interrogating the links between place/space, culture, and individual identity.

As I move through the world as a man, I see so many others like me never questioning why they have the tastes that they do, why they have the power that they do, and how their “natural” behavior affects the people and places around them. I think that the answer is not necessarily to prescriptively dictate what is and is not acceptable, to cancel and purge, but rather to show that there are many options available, that you do not have to be any one way in order to receive the respect, love, and acceptance of your fellow humans. This is a personal responsibility; if there are power structures that have a vested interest in claiming, confining, and defining identity in order to make it more saleable and reinforce their dominance, then it is up to all of us as individuals and communities to reclaim the power to define ourselves.

Bibliography

Adorno, T. W., & Simpson, G. (1941). On Popular Music. Zeitschrift Für Sozialforschung, 9(1), 17–48. doi:10.5840/zfs1941913

Bonca, C. (2019, July 18). Not in Kansas: On The National’s “I Am Easy to Find”. Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/not-in-kansas-on-the-nationals-i-am-easy-to-find

Halberstam, J. (2019). Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jarman-Ivens, F., Biddle, I. (Eds.) (2007). Oh Boy!: Masculinities and Popular Music. New York, NY: Routledge.

Partridge, C. H. (2014). The Lyre of Orpheus: Popular Music, The Sacred, And The Profane. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Sodomsky, S. (2019, May 17). The National Break Down Every Song on Their New Album, I Am Easy to Find. Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://pitchfork.com/features/song-by-song/the-national-i-am-easy-to-find-interview/

Staff, T. (2018, April 19). Will Smith: “Racism Is Not Getting Worse, It’s Getting Filmed”. Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/will-smith-colbert-race-relations-obama-politics -sings-summertime-916816

Torres, E. (2018, August 23). Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes Breaks Down Every Song on His New Album, Negro Swan. Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://pitchfork.com/features/song-by-song/blood-oranges-dev-hynes-breaks-down-every- song-on-his-new-album-negro-swan/