"Play" by Jax Jones & Years & Years, Thursday, January 5, 2023 (repost)
Coming off the heels of Years & Years' second album, Palo Santo, the group collaborated with British House DJ and producer Jax Jones for his debut album Snacks. The song "Play" was released as a single in November of 2018 and would find a place on deluxe editions of Palo Santo like "Up in Flames." The two songs don't fit into the story of the futuristic queer/ religious concept album. Instead, "Play" follows Jones's concept. A colorful music video with nostalgic goodies, the sweets and toys of a millennial's childhood, along with the single's artwork, clearly inspired by Play-Doh, remind listeners of playtime and all of the goodness of a childhood full of sugary cereal, matchbox cars, and action figures. The disco beat and Olly Alexander's vocals take that childhood playtime nostalgia to a late-night dance hall.
MY PHILOSOPHY DON'T LET NOBODY COME TOO CLOSE. The status quo of the song is defensiveness. The singer talks about guarding his heart. The emotional power is so strong in the singer's heart that he fears that another person will either not be able to understand him or will hurt him. Many people find themselves in this situation. Past traumas from parents' relationships, taunting by schoolmates, rejection when a middle school boy expresses his love to a girl in his class, realization that one is different from the others, repression of one's sexual identity all build a wall around the young person. If you look closer at that wall, each brick is an individual situation where fear triumphed over autonomy. For years, I wondered why dating didn't work out for me. At that time, many of the girls my age were reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris' book that messed up a generation of millennials, so much so that the author eventually pulled the publication and renounced his beliefs in everything it stood for. The premise, though, at the time was for young Christians to commit themselves to purity and abstinence until marriage. Younger teens had no business dating in the worldly sense. Dating, while it could be as innocent as calling each other up on the phone every night, talking at school, or even going to a movie, was a chance for ungodly lust to fester in the body. When teens got closer to an age when they could legally marry, they could begin courting, which was like what worldly preteen/early teen dating looks like, but with spiritual ramifications. But in a quest for holiness, Harris and the other proponents of early marriage failed to take in the statistical truth that early marriages result in more divorces. While eighteen to twenty-nine-year-olds are adults, their educational and life experiences can render two halves of a married couple incompatible. The late teens who are flooded with hormones often don't make clear decisions about their future.
I WANT IT TO BE YOU, DIVING INTO MY OCEAN, A BRAND NEW EMOTION. I didn't completely buy into the I Kissed Dating Goodbye ideas, but they certainly took a lot of Christian girls off the market. If you wanted to date in Christian high school, you had to be particularly aggressive. So I built a wall of excuses. But Alexander isn't writing "Another Brick in the Wall." Instead, he's singing about the time when someone broke through his wall. It's the moment when the song plays and he realizes that he wants to dance with this person all night. In his other songs, Olly Alexander explores the link between human sexual connection and spirituality. Palo Santo was an album that explored the spiritual experiences in the gay dance halls. Dance is a spiritual awakening for the singer, and the muse of the singer shatters the wall. I, however, built my walls thicker before they ultimately shattered. In college, I no longer had the excuse of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I thought everything would fall into place, but it turned out that I didn't actually like girls, but I couldn't admit it to myself. So I built the walls thicker, choosing to attend a religious college, choosing to go into Christian education, choosing to become a missionary, choosing to fit in with the conservative missionaries. Every brick I added made me feel safer, until I realized that it was a prison. Until I came out to myself, I thought that I was broken and unlovable. But coming out made me realize that what's true for other people may not be true for me. A brand new emotion entered my vocabulary--freedom to be myself.
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