Don’t pull your pants, before I go down
Don’t turn away, this is my time
Don’t make demands, I don’t take none
Just say a prayer that it gon’ get done
Don’t pull your pants before I go down
Don’t turn away, this is my time
Like a shotgun needs an outcome
I’m your prostitute, you gon’ get some
Like a shotgun needs an outcome
I’m your prostitute, you gon’ get some

Get Some

Hooooooooooooooooooooo mama! That’s some spicy meatballs! Is it hot in here? I know it’s not my central heating, as I haven’t been able to afford that for around two years now.

I still remember my reaction on first hearing the introductory single from Lykke Li’s second album. I had fallen in love with their debut record (#3 in 2008) and had a extremely memorable personal experience/sexual awakening while seeing her live that year. “Sexual awakening”? I dunno, but I vividly remember watching her interpret her agonisingly beautiful and perversely anthemic music through hip movements and overwhelming stage presence and thinking to myself “I would die for this person”. That thought came from deep in my soul. And also my penis. Not entirely my penis, you understand, I’m not a monster. But my penis was still on the board of directors of my soul. It was at least allowed to have a say.

#Representation

I had eagerly awaited Lykke’s next move for close to three years. In that time, they had contributed a song (seriously? One of the most devastatingly beautiful pop songs of the 21st century) to the soundtrack of one of the Twilight movies and given a central role in the film, so their fame and name recognition had multiplied tenfold. And then she comes back with Get Some. Musically combative, tribal drums and dirty synths. And aggressively sexual. Lykke, whose first album was full of distraught paeans to sadness itself like “I like it salt, I like it wet/Like my makeup in a mess/So I cry hard, let it fall/And I won’t stop until my tears are all shed“, was now demanding that she go down on us and be our literal prostitute. I… wasn’t sure if I liked it… This was only just over ten years ago, and itself a decade after we’d had Peaches instructing us to Fuck the Pain Away, but it still felt like this kind of advancing (almost threatening) sexuality was not the premise of indie darlings like Lykke. We knew that artists like Rihanna or Nicky Minaj could be so openly sexual, but their… different… aren’t they? They’re more… urban. It’s, like, their culture or something, yeah? But Lykke Li?? I saw you play at the Eden Project!! You’re better than this! You’re an artist!!

“Because you’re a woman, the music industry puts you in another corner. I want to be fighting with the men. I want to be amongst the men, topless, throwing things….[Get Some is] not about being a sex prostitute. It’s about this power play in the war of the sexes. It’s a rat race, like, ‘I’m in charge’, ‘No, I’m in charge’. A lot of times females are in charge because they kind of have the pussy power. If they say, ‘I’m you’re prostitute’ then they mean ‘I’m the power’.

Pitchfork

Relationships to power?? Yes please, Comrade Li! Can you have a chat with Félicette? There was criticism from feminist circles at the time (“Look, I’m not here to knock prostitutes. I’m starting on the second season of Deadwood, and Trixie is one the show’s most interesting characters”), because even in more presumably empathetic circles, in the pre OnlyFans world of 2011 (Get Some was released a free download in late 2010) there was still considered nothing more icky than being a sex worker. As a statement of intent outlining the sort of sharp and borderline offensive places you were planning on taking your next project, it’s difficult to think of many similarly successful. Yes, yes, Rude Box, of course, I said it was difficult to think of many.

‘Wounded Rhymes’ also followed that statement of intent musically. It’s far more abrasive, far more to the point and precise than Lykke’s debut. You won’t find anything as caustically brash and the dirty synth stabs that penetrate the opening track Youth Knows No Pain, for example, on the debut album. Nor in anything that Lykke has released since. More than a decade and three albums of spectral beauty later, the album seems like a weird anomaly in Lykke’s career. After this they would concentrate on making music that flowed beautifully from the speakers to your ears, heart and soul with as little disruption as possible, but parts of ‘Wounded Lines’ instead wallows in the disruption, born in the disruption, moulded by it. There are places that Lykke goes on ‘Wounded Rhymes’ musically that they would never even touch again.

But then there’s the other part of the record…

‘Wounded Rhymes’ also contains the most epically beautiful songs that Lykke had ever done. Some of the gorgeous songs they’d ever do. They introduced a more expansive wall of sound approach that really did point to the kind of music that they’d later make. There are tracks like Love Out Of Lust and the Motown shuffle of Silence is a Blessing that could be off any Lykke album if you maybe just turned the drums down a little. Then there’s songs like I Know Places that… I mean, fuck me, have you ever heard anything so spectacularly beautiful? However, despite these two apparent directions that Lykke seems to be pulling the music into, it somehow never sounds disjointed or incohesive, and flows spectacularly as a record with a consistent style.

Back in 2011, it took me a long time to come to come to terms with the fact that one of the reasons I’ve always loved Lykke was precisely because they always managed to knit in references to how intense love often lead to great sex. Because she always had that singular talent to make art pop that didn’t completely ignore sex in its investigations of aching psychology. It’s part of what made/makes her great, it was just the blunt declarations that I found uncomfortable. I was a liberal back then, Lykke, you’ve got to treat me like a baby!

2022 #56, 2018 #10, 2014 #40, 2008 #3

Metacritic: 83

Legit Bosses: 1

Oh yeah! And I was in freaking China in 2011 so didn’t bother doing a list! Funnily enough, this entry now means that Lykke has all five of her albums ranked and is now a: