Okay, so my "find" this week is more of a revival. My Youtube rabbit hole explorations led me back to Chromeo, a band that I was most in love with the summer before I moved for grad school.
I know, all the disembodied and shapely women's legs are not awesome. I get that it's a little bit of a callback to Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" video, but in both instances, it's a literal objectification of women's bodies, and I'm not down for that. I am, however, down for the end of the video, where disembodied men's (?) legs join the party and tango with the other legs. So it's equal opportunity disembodiment?
When I was at my peak obsession with this song, this is not the video that I watched a million times on early Youtube. This was before artists and musicians had official channels. So the video that accompanied "Fancy Footwork" in my day was grainy and of a guy in the middle of a crowded dance floor, working it out with his fancy footwork. He was a little nerdy, and not all his moves were awesome, but he was confident as hell. Who can't respect that?
I can't find that video anymore, but it summed up why I loved Chromeo's music and vibe so much. They were a little nerdy, a little street, a little cheesy, and all kinds of retro, which made for a weird combo (at the time) that I adored. They made synthy music I could dance to AND their lyrics made me chuckle.
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At that time, there wasn't much out there that made the same kind of music as Chromeo. My heart longed for more of that synthpop/electrofunk goodness, and I wanted it ASAP.
As grad school took over my life and more bands began creating the stuff that I craved (see Feminist Dance Rock), Chromeo fell off my radar.
And then, this.
Y'all, SOLANGE. And I know, I know, the crazed spontaneously impregnated women chasing the Chromeo guys down is not the best and most feminist thing that could happen here. But the end of the video kind of redeems all that, even though it kind of doesn't make a lot of sense? I don't know, I won't try to argue it. That hook, though, is something I will argue for until the day I can no longer argue for things.
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And then, I found out that Chromeo released an album a year or two ago. (Like I said before, I'm typically 6 months to 2 years late to the party.)
Now, I may be biased here, but Chromeo has not only maintained their awesomeness, but have gotten better with age, like fine wine. (YES. You heard right. I just said that.) Someone could probably argue that they keep making the same kind of music, but it doesn't ever feel stale to me. Every song and single has its own personality.
I'm not going to touch the content of that video, but I will talk about my leather jacket envy and all of those dance moves.
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I'll leave you with the Chromeo song I can't stop listening to these days. Some of the lyrics make a gesture toward something that resembles something with a feminist-ish sentiment, but then reverses itself into something that doesn't make sense to me. But I love the chorus, I love the guitars, I love its 80s-ish Dirty Dancing-ish swagger, I love that the song revolves around popping a nickel into a jukebox full of old 45s. And I love that Haim is in this video.
Happy Wednesday, y'all. May you have a Chromeo dance party in your living room to try out all your fancy footwork. Here's to getting over that hump this week. xoxo.