“Sweet’N Low Daddy” by Girls5eva, Sunday, March 31, 2024

 

In 2021 Girls5eva premiered on Peacock. The premise of the show was a ridiculous one-hit-wonder girl group from the early ‘00s gets sampled by an up-and-coming rapper, Lil Stinker, which causes the disbanded Girls5eva to reunite for their now middle-aged fans. The show; created by the writer and co-producer of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Meredith Scardino, and comedy mogel Tina Fey; reexamines fictionalized relics of the new millennium in the light of the ‘20s cultural climate. In the show’s first season, the remaining members of Girls5eva--ironical the group is now four members after singer Ashley died in an infinity pool accident--reconcile the problematic lyrics of their early songs. For a one-hit-wonders, it turns out they had many songs and videos, which are revealed over the show’s now three seasons. 

A LOVE THAT’S ARTIFICIAL, BUT HIS WALLET MAKES US HAPPY. In the second season of Girls5eva,  the group writes new material and tries to break back into cultural relevance. Showrunner and songwriter Sara Bareilles plays Dawn, who takes on the role of the primary songwriter for the group. The group almost achieves a true second wave, but stalls when it comes to their US tour in season 3. Each season explores the balance of recognizing and appreciating the past while moving in a new direction. It’s about creating art, even if that art is just joke songs about female empowerment or overcoming arthritis. But no matter how Dawn, Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry), Summer (Busy Philipps), and Gloria (Paula Pell) try to move in a new direction fans always pull them back to the old days. Today’s song, “Sweet’N Low Daddy” is an example of the girls pulled into the past. In the fourth episode of Season 3, “Orlando,” the girls have been whisked off to play a private birthday party for an extremely wealthy woman who has married an elderly man.

NEVER HAVE TO MEET HIS PARENTS ‘CAUSE THEY DIED DURING NIXON. Most of the episodes of the third season of Girls5eva sees the girls playing their new songs. But the van tour across America wasn’t paying the bills. Wealthy and nostalgic Taffy England (Catherine Cohen) assembles some of the biggest *fictional* stars from the turn of the millennium to celebrate her birthday party. The gig is supposed to be a pretty straightforward money grab until Dawn starts to feel guilt for the lyrics of the song Taffy wants the group to perform, “Sweet’N Low Daddy,” a song the group had performed for a fictional soundtrack. Dawn fears that the song influenced Taffy’s life choices--marrying a wealthy man and waiting for him to die so that she can inherit his assets. In the end, Dawn ends up refusing to perform but offers her spot to Taffy to sing with the rest of the group. In the end, while watching the group on stage, Dawn realizes that even though she thinks of the song as problematic, Taffy just loves the song and her marriage to her geriatric husband is incidental. The episode does bring up the question of how much responsibility an artist should take for a worldview that has shifted since the piece’s release. It reminds me of James 3:1 which talks about how teachers will be judged harder. And those words could keep anyone from creating. But artists, and teachers, feel compelled to share what they know. I guess we all just have to be ready for an apology tour.

Read “Sweet'N Low Daddy” by Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Paula Pell, & Busy Philipps on Genius.