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April 17, 2020
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong's Playlist for Her Book "Pop Star Goddesses"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong'sPop Star Goddesses matches musicians with ancient goddesses, and offers wisdom on incorporating their energy in our own lives. Armstrong's takes on popular culture are always insightful and smart, this book is yet another example.
In her own words, here is Jennifer Keishin Armstrong's Book Notes music playlist for her book Pop Star Goddesses:
Beyoncé, “***Flawless”
This is a book for which the actual first, critical step in the research process was making a playlist, and “***Flawless” was one of the first songs on it. You don’t need me to tell you that Beyoncé is a goddess, and you don’t need me to recommend to you the song that made “I woke up like this” a catchphrase. But this does set the tone for this playlist, for which I have erred on the side of upbeat and inspiring in these times, as we now say. If you’re going to listen to this while disinfecting your entryway after a trip in combat gear to the grocery store, I want you to feel as much like Beyoncé as possible. This is the power of the Pop Star Goddess. No song will make you feel more like Beyoncé than this one; she’s working her special magic at full force, telling us she’s flawless (which we already know) while somehow making us feel like we are, too (which, of course, we are, but …).
Britney Spears, “If I’m Dancing”
I went with a Britney deep cut here because you know how to find “Toxic” or “I’m a Slave 4 U” or “Oops … I Did It Again” or “… Baby One More Time.” But Britney has survived well beyond those massive hits of the 2000s, and that is her goddess superpower. “If I’m Dancing” is on the deluxe edition of Britney’s most recent album, 2016’s exceptional and underrated Glory. It’s representative of a consistent weird strain in some of her work, which is often on display in bonus tracks like this one. Case in point, this stanza: “One look at him and I see candy-coated heart shapes/The jewels and furniture can go, but baby, he stays/He plays sitar, three notes so far …” It’s also about the joy she finds in dancing, which is the true heart of Britney.
Carly Rae Jepsen, “Cut to the Feeling”
Carly Rae is my Goddess of Non-Guilty Pleasure, and this song is a shot of delight straight into your weary veins. She’s actually said that her songwriting technique is to look for moments of joy, then translate them into song later. This, “Call Me Maybe,” and many of her other tracks are shining examples of exactly that ability.
Demi Lovato, “I Love Me”
I didn’t include this in Demi’s playlist in the book because it’s brand new. But my Goddess of Fighting Addictions is back making music in public after an overdose in 2018, a relapse from her sobriety. And she is doing so in a big way, with a widely admired rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before this year’s Super Bowl (a veritable Pop Star Goddess Fest, also with Jennifer Lopez and Shakira slaying the halftime show), a vulnerable performance at the Grammys, and this song, which is what I’d call a sensitive bop. We could all use a little more self-love right now, couldn’t we?
Janelle Monae, “Pynk”
Any Janelle, especially from her 2018 masterpiece Dirty Computer, is a win. “Django Jane,” “Make Me Feel,” and “I Got the Juice” are among the danceable and catchy, but still insightful and political, treats on that album. But “Pynk,” which also got plenty of internet attention for its video full of labia pants, allows for a rare and sweet experience: a mainstream-pop celebration of the vagina from a woman’s perspective. The album coincided with Monae coming out as pansexual in a Rolling Stone interview—or, as she said, as a “free-ass motherfucker.”
Jennifer Lopez (feat. DJ Khaled and Cardi B), “Dinero”
An unapologetic ode to money from two Pop Star Goddesses who were also in the brilliantly empowering Hustlers? You can’t really go wrong. As a bonus, it rhymes “Benjamin Franco” and “banco.”
Kacey Musgraves, “High Horse”
Kacey went mainstream with, of all things, a country-dance album written with a strong assist from LSD, 2018’s Golden Hour. There are a number of beautiful, soothing tracks written from deep in love, such as “Slow Burn” and “Butterflies,” but you get a bumping beat and more classic Kacey attitude from “High Horse,” a kiss-off to “someone who thinks they’re cooler than everybody else,” whom she urges to “giddy up and ride straight out of this town.”
Kelly Clarkson, “Whole Lotta Woman”
Kelly is another queen of attitude, and this track from her underappreciated 2017 album Meaning of Life is a pure R&B romp through her finer qualities—“hotter than your mama’s supper, boy.”
Laura Jane Grace, “Transgender Dysphoria Blues”
The Against Me! frontwoman came out in 2012 as transgender in a Rolling Stone interview, then made an entire album about it, 2014’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues. The title track is classic Grace, a magical combination of joyous and angry and catchy and rocking, a treadmill going a little too fast, with lyrics that are heartbreaking (“You want them to notice the ragged ends of your summer dress”) and blunt (“You've got no cunt in your strut, you've got no hips to shake”).
Mariah Carey, “Touch My Body”
The queen of number-one hits has plenty of tracks to choose from, and we know she can blow. But I appreciate Mariah’s wittier side, like when she writes lyrics about being “all up in my bidness like a Wendy interview” before issuing very specific instructions for what her lover should do with her. She’s a self-aware diva at her finest here.
Miranda Lambert, “Vice”
Miranda’s songs are often about being ballsy—please see “Little Red Wagon” and “Crazy Ex Girlfriend”—but in this one she just is ballsy. Just after ending a very public marriage to fellow country star Blake Shelton, she wrote this swaying, twanging ballad full of no regret: “Another bed I shouldn’t crawl out of … said I wouldn’t do it but I did it again.”
Nicki Minaj, “Anaconda”
Nicki took the ubiquitous 1992 Sir Mix-a-Lot hit “Baby Got Back,” sampled the bejeezus out of it, and won: Sure, she used all of its best parts, including its oscillating bass line and its punchline re: anacondas. But then she beat Mr. Mix-a-Lot in a rap battle he didn’t know he signed up for, out-rhyming him, double-timing him, and objectifying a series of male lovers in terms far more graphic than his fussy anaconda. We will never look at romaine salad the same way again.
Pink, “Beautiful Trauma”
Pink is the pop-punk poet of the truth about love, as one of her album titles put it: She’s refreshingly honest about her 14-year marriage to motorcycle and off-road truck racer Carey Hart, with whom she has two kids. This soaring banger celebrates the major mood swings of a long-term relationship, with a lush mood-lifter of a video to go with it.
Shakira, “Whenever, Wherever”
The Colombian singer has a catalog full of excellent Spanish-language pop, and you should listen to all of it. But I’m still a sucker for her 2001 American breakthrough hit. Writing in multiple languages often leads to fresh phrasing, such as: “Lucky that my breasts are small and humble/So you don’t confuse them with mountains.”
SZA, “Drew Barrymore”
SZA is the Goddess of Powerful Vulnerability, a master of awkward self-revelation. She talks and writes openly about her lack of confidence, a lack of posturing that has infused her alt-R&B full of raw lyrics about the difficulties of 20-something life. The moody track “Drew Barrymore” is a perfect example of this, all about binge-watching TV with blunts and tacos, needing therapy, and feeling unattractive—a real mood for right now.
Taylor Swift, “Cornelia Street”
This will bring your vibe right back up while still keeping a bit of bittersweet edge. Taylor as a public figure evokes all kinds of feelings in people, not all of them positive, but if you listen to the music, you remember why she’s one of the biggest current pop stars in the world: She can write the hell out of a song. In the understated verses of “Cornelia Street,” from last year’s album Lover, she tells the story of a relationship in three parts: the first time spending the night with a lover in a certain apartment on a tiny West Village street; a near breakup there; and the presumably secure coupling much later, looking back with nostalgia on their time there. Nothing terrible happens to them, but each step is haunted just a little by the joyous-sounding chorus’s cautious lyrics: “Baby, I'm so terrified of if you ever walk away/I'd never walk Cornelia Street again.” This is the power of Taylor Swift, and of the Pop Star Goddess: She can bring us right along into a very specific feeling, an energy, if only for the three minutes of a pop song.
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong first honed her knowledge of Pop Star Goddesses at Entertainment Weekly, where she worked for a decade. She now writes for Billboard, New York magazine, Refinery29, and Dame, and is the author of Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love; the New York Times bestseller Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything; and Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And All the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic. She lives in New York City.
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