I haven't much been in a car, thus haven't heard the radio, in 7 months. I have no idea what's on the top 40 right now.
What's the connection between being in a car and listening to the radio?
Do people not generally have radios in their homes where you live? And you must have a phone or laptop to be typing this where you could listen to the radio!
Not saying there's not other ways to consume. but as an anecdote myself or my partner never listen to radio anywhere but in my car either, it's pretty common I believe!
At home, I can select what I want to hear. I don't need to keep my attention on the road.
What about the current affairs, plays, comedy, history?
I can’t imagine going without the radio!
I'm commuting at not-even-close-to-that-time. Can't get their shows even as podcasts, because the music rights would cost an arm and a leg.
No.
> And you must have a phone or laptop to be typing this where you could listen to the radio!
Do I need an RTL-SDR?
Anecdotal: Friends have acknowledged that they're more disgusted by it than the male singer's counterparts. I admit I am, too. And this is regardless of the particular singer's ability to sing/rap, or the lack thereof.
Artistic merits aside, the (uncensored version of the) song and the music video seem justly regarded as a feminist redressing of the balance (if men can rap explicitly about being horny and wanting sex, so can women).
WAP isn't the most nuanced contribution to this tradition, but it's hardly the first work exploiting the common-denominator. Its shock value largely lies in its novelty. In another 2-6 decades it will make the transition to familiar and then oldy. No predictions if it will be ranked with Simone, White, Jagger, the Beatles, or Hillary.
Not my cuppa, though I got off the pop train a few decades back.
(peasants with little to no agricultural surplus aren't interested in freemartins, neither four- nor two-legged. Compare "we also have a ‘big’ cycle of generations" in https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they... )
I'm not intending to watch WAP until I must in order to understand a parody. There's certainly no shortage of other musical sublimation, such as the pin-up pastiche of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpuemnGD-44 .
Bonus clip (with gentlemen, it's "ladies first"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDcixye_0Jo
[1] is there any popular genre that lacks in innuendo? Those highly-censored soviets produced https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tDZl_wj8Fo , which raises a pose estimation question: how could the eponymous girl's tears possibly fall directly on such long spears? Was she standing on a ladder?
Even the Taliban, I believe, allow arguably amorous lyrics, as long as (a) they're not accompanied by instrumentals, and (b) the surface meaning of "beloved" is the divine.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song%20of%20Sol...
(By no means the earliest.)
Do not gaze at me because I am dark,
because the sun has looked upon me.
My mother's sons were angry with me;
they made me keeper of the vineyards,
Там смуглянка-молдаванка
Собирала виноград.
there's a dark-skinned moldavian girl
harvesting the grapes
(The violinist's earrings don't contradict my white/red theory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24382154 )
But musically, "Drop" is pretty pants.
On the other hand - it's just bawdiness. Humorous role play. It's not as if it's a new invention
You mean the same way James Bond movies are "manipulating" you to buy tickets?
If you are appalled by that, fair enough. It is not something particularly new though. Of course people at the time also saw Rock'n'roll as bringing the end of civilized society.
The furor caused by WAP is pretty hilarious to see.
As mentioned in a sibling comment, it's not the explicit lyrics but the extremely low quality of the entire production that puts me off.
Anecdotally, recent generations have been raised with sexual repression and frustration. The most obvious example is announcing yourself as gay and being very literally banished from your family household, but it is layered quite deeply -- I can go into detail, but in general, sex continues to be an unspoken and embarrassing topic that you figure out yourself in private.
Since these urges are natural and part of the human experience, the whole treatment is odd and is often seen as uncaring. If you experience it, it puts you in an odd place: The repression forces you to either build a fiercely negative connection with sex, or develop a positive connection while having a struggled and inauthentic relationship with your family.
There is a growingly open sentiment that it is healthy and natural to want to have sex, and to have it safely, and perhaps with multiple partners over the course of your life if it suits you, and perhaps with multiple partners at the same time if that suits you too, and to tell all your friends about what a great (or awful) time you had afterward.
The novelty and "shock value" of this song, if you will, is being able to discuss these topics without consequence. And it reinforces something that is newly ingrained in society: To be more open and encouraging of safe sex for all is aligned with an active social movement that is making a difference to a lot of people, one that brings us closer to inner desires previously repressed.
This song is especially fun for a few reasons but putting the silly absurdist humor aside, I see people get hooked because it strikes this social chord really hard, demonstrating this generation's cultural shift in a comically honest way. A progressive household has both partners happily and willfully cooking and cleaning regularly, so to be a more desirable partner there's pressure to offer something else extraordinary -- "I don't cook, I don't clean, but let me tell you how I got this ring".
On a meta level, it's a comfortable beat for the bedroom and it sets a mood that is more primal. On another meta level, there's also a novelty that this song could only get to this level of popularity right now, realistically. It's not a song you can play on the radio or in stores.