Heartbreak Was Everywhere at the Grammys
It would be hard to cite a dance song with more depressing lyrics than Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers," which captured Record of the Year honors at the Grammys and ranked No. 2 on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 Singles chart. Set against an irresistibly peppy beat, its lyrics make a case for finding empowerment through solitude.
The narrator informs her ex-lover after their breakup that she’s doing better than ever, not because she has found someone else, or hopes to, but because she has accepted being alone. “I can buy myself flowers," goes the refrain. “I can take myself dancing, yeah / I can hold my own hand / .
. . Yeah, I can love me better than you can." Pop songs sung by women have been dismissed as “bubble gum" for decades.
That might have been true in 1983, when Madonna sang “Holiday, celebrate!" or in 2010, when Katy Perry enticed listeners with the image: “California girls / We’re unforgettable / Daisy Dukes / Bikinis on top." But today’s female singer-songwriters are crafting hit songs that convey despair, anger and bitterness. A generation ago, the queens of the pop charts—Sheryl Crow, Christina Aguilera, P!nk, Destiny’s Child—vowed to soak up the sun; asked us to come on over, baby; and said it was time to get this party started. The mood has darkened since.
Male singer-songwriters remain chiefly interested in what their forebears wrote about: seduction, occasionally with a soupcon of brooding alienation. Whether it’s Harry Styles (“I can see you’re lonely down there / Don’t you know that I’m right here"), Post Malone (“I can’t let go, it’s chemical") or The Weeknd (“Baby I would die for you"), the singer is generally either putting the moves on a potential lover or trying to win one back. The English crooner Ed
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