Music

We Don’t Just Want Pop Music. We Desire It.

“Desire, I Want to Turn Into You” — Caroline Polachek

Listening to Desire, I Want to Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek is a transformative experience.

From the moment, you turn it on: Polachek speaks directly to you.

“Welcome to my island. Hope you like me. You ain’t leaving.”

“Welcome to My Island” — Caroline Polachek (2023)

At first, her voice feels detached and unemotional, but we’ll realize soon that she’s just playing hard to get. The song soon erupts into wails of lovely pop, cascading waves onto our ears.

If we were steering a ship past this island, we’d surely turn around, lured by this siren-like call.

And who can blame you? These pop sounds are alluring. From the blips and beeps of electronica and trip-hop, to the Katy Perry-like bombastic nature of the vocals that somehow wane into a detached Taylor Swift-like spoken word, we never know what sound is coming next.

And that’s exactly how Polachek wants it on this record.

Taking Enya Into A New Era

Polachek lists Enya as one of her first influences, and although that may sound off-beat at first, when we hear the song “Blood and Butter”, we’d be hard-pressed to admit there isn’t some Celtic inspired influence.

Yep, that’s a pop song. With bagpipes.

Who’s doing that in 2023?

Answer: No one.

But beyond breaking instrumental boundaries, Polachek is reforming our misconceptions about pop music. In fact, I’d argue she’s challenging us.

Years ago, we may have been too quick to shrug off Enya as “new age pop nonsense”, even though there was an inherent joy in songs like “Orinoco Flow.”

When Polachek’s voice comes in on this song with the blips, beeps, and thunderous synths, we realize maybe it’s time to rethink those preconceived notions. So many influences in each of the songs on this album are thrown into a blender until they’re a smoothie where you can’t recognize what fruit went in.

And at its heart, a song like “Blood and Butter” may feel like a normal sensual love song about sex, but it’s anything but:

Look at you all mythicalogical and wikipediated Look how I forget who I was Before I was the way I am with you Where did you come from, you?

Whoa. What?

These lyrics speak to the idea that we may be able to look up all the information we want on our phone, but no matter how much we read about what love is like, we won’t really know until we experience it.

In the same way, we may think we understand pop music. We may believe it’s just recycled and regurgitated, a mother bird of pop masticating for the new generation of baby birds.

But that’s a sad misrepresentation of what is possible.

“I Don’t Recycle. I Reinvent.”

Instead, Polachek breaks pop music into a million little pieces to rebuild it.

Her foundation is a topic close to pop’s core: songs about desire and love.

So what do we get in this monolithic skyscraper she constructs?

Twelve unique songs that weave stories about what it’s like to have desire. To be in love. Because it isn’t just an island. And it’s not just sex.

It’s a psychedelic hallucinogenic feeling:

And it waxes and wanes. Trying to catch it can be fleeting…

Or we can escape into the warm fiery glow of a “Sunset”:

Some of these descriptions of desire may feel cliched at first, but Polachek always finds a way to reinvent them.

Because every time we get a beat on this music, expecting it to go a certain way…it doesn’t.

Polachek keeps subverting our expectations. For example, things sound familiar on a track like “Pretty in Possible” at first with a-capella-like ghostly reference to “Tom’s Diner”, but that quickly breaks down. Within twenty seconds, we’re listening to the second cousin of “Artangels” by Grimes.

It’s almost like Polachek is laughing at us too with tongue-in-cheek self-referential nods when she features both Dido and Grimes on one of the tracks on the album: “Fly to You”

It’s like she’s saying: “Sure. You might have a handle on some of my influences. But good luck trying to discover what’s coming next.”

But Why Keep Us Guessing?

Why is Polachek bouncing around like a pinball sonically? Is she really just trying to subvert expectations with pop music? For pure entertainment value?

No. The message is deeper than that.

Polachek illustrates through this 2023 release that as a relationship grows, things morph and change. People aren’t you originally expect.

In the same way, genres of music follow suit.

Polachek challenges us to rethink music, and pop music specifically. Although pop music can be background music at the mall or for a phone commercial, it can also choose to say something.

Such as talking about basest human emotions that we often can’t control.

The cover illustrates Polachek on her hands and knees, crawling forward, overcome with emotion.

This is intentional. Although we can resist our desires, our love, our emotions, deep down at our basest need, we eventually are overcome by them.

In the same way, we can resist pop music. We can choose to be annoyed. Swear it off as derivate nonsense.

But we’d be hard pressed to say deep down that we don’t crave it just as much as the next person.

What do you think? Have you heard this album? What are your thoughts?

I’m Bill. I write about music and spirituality.

I’m listening to 1001 Must-Hear Albums Before You Die in a Year and documenting it on Youtube.

Give me a follow if you like my vibe.