"Miccio, you give meaning to everyday" - Nellie McKay, "It's A Pose"

(or does she mean "every day"? I may never know.)

Along with a bevvy of British '80s post-punk I burnt off my friend William (The Sound! The Chameleons! The Cure's Pornography! Siouxsie's Kaleidoscope! So tempted to turn invert the background-text color scheme again and be a happy lil' pop-goth), I've been listening Desaparecidos' Read Music/Speak Spanish and Nellie McKay's Get Away From Me, my favorite albums from 2002 and 2004, a lot. I guess politics have been on my mind. No idea why.

While I've spoken my peace on Desaparecidos, my attempts to sum up McKay's appeal basically add up to a blurb (#30 on that list, should be waaaay higher). I undoubtedly wrote a hooray or two here but all I can remember announcing is that I thought she and Howlin' Pelle should cover "Somethin' Stupid." I want to say more.

Like Dirty Mind-era Prince with a more specific concept of non-sexual politics (thank god), McKay makes a thrilling demand for liberation from societal expectations. Her body, her mouth, her album, herself. It doesn't matter if "I Wanna Get Married" is ironic or not, she can play it either way depending on her mood (I sure do). There's no reason she can't call out men as "copulatin' populatin' masturbatin' denegratin' birth of a nation instigatin' violator(s) of her escape" and then coo "give me head or you'll be dead, salute the flag or I'll call you a fag. Oh, won't you please be nice?" two tracks later. Surely you don't have to be free of selfish impulse to point it out in others - if anything acknowledging said aggro desire tells you she isn't holier-than-thou. Listening to her flip through a mess of emotions and insights with such giddy intelligence and reckless freedom provides me exactly what I want from art. That she reminds a lot of folks of the batty thespians that hollered through their high school hallways and has Geoff Emerick give her album a rather "lite" vibe is even better. Capitulating to common concepts of hip would distract from the point.

I just feel like there's so much you gotta do, and half the time I feel like, "I'm going to do it, goddammit, I'm going to do all of it, and there's nothing I can't accomplish." And then the other half is just like, "Oh, fuck it." Those are my two emotions. I go through the whole day just like this. Even in an interview, it just goes back and forth.

This Onion interview still rocks my world every time I read it. "Won't U Please B Nice" is evidently on the Monster-In-Law soundtrack (wtf)! New album in September!