LADIES, amirite? (Happy day after International Women’s Day)

After the Prawn Song on Wednesday I got an email containing only a link to this song, Shrimp– by Dessa, no less, whose album cover is appearing everywhere in my life. In music as in life– Dessa’s real name is already Margret Wander and she still branded up– Dessa takes something good and abstracts it to be awesome. NPR was calling this one of the most-anticipated albums of the year, and for good reason: Dessa is a badass. A totally idosyncratic (white/Puerto Rican lady) singer, rapper, and genre-mixer, she’s also a record exec at Doomtree; has charted before; composed for orchestras; contributed to the Hamilton mixtape; and has published her writing in the Times magazine and in BOOKS (keep an eye out this fall). Once you recoil from that resume (did she go to Swarthmore too?), get into Chime, which is full of clever lyrics, curious sounds, and a whole bunch of new mindspace.

Did anybody see Spotify’s International Women’s Day campaign, brought to you by… Smirnoff? We’ll leave the Smirnoff bit as a hanging question mark–just can’t find a good rationale– and instead we’ll interrogate the rest. Entitled the “Smirnoff Equalizer,” Spotify launched a tool that shows you what proportion of male to female artists you listen to (gotta love a binary). Once you’re thoroughly embarrassed–my spotify consumption appears to be 18% female– it feeds you an ‘equalized’ playlist that’s closer to gender parity. For me the ‘equalized’ list was still 70-30 M-F, and also full of artists I would never listen to; my friend’s equalized playlist was headlined by Chris Brown. [pregnant pause.] Reportedly the tool was created in response to a critique of Spotify’s (non)representation of women in their 2017 Year In Music stats. But like, way to put it on us, Spotify. Fact for you: 1/3 of Spotify listening happens in Spotify’s own playlists, which means Spotify isn’t feeding us women artists to listen to, so how about a campaign asking your playlist curators where the women are? Would Smirnoff pay for that?

That’s Jane in opposition to Johnnie. Walker. Whiskey. Jane graces the brand’s new black label bottle, which will kick back up to $150k toward Monumental, (which is working to put up statues of sufragettes in Central Park –cool but pretty soft on impact) plus an unspecified amount toward She Should Run. All of which is fine, but… Jane Walker? In addition to the fact that she will always be an afterthought to Johnny and probably still does all the cooking in this relationship, the label literally says, ‘Jane Walker *by* Johnnie Walker.’ Adam and Eve much? But look, ladies, at least now we know Scotch can be *for us*– banish that intimidation toward all things manly.

Someone go get me a beautifully-branded indie tampon– as much for this here brain nosebleed as for my womanhood. (But god, not those Lola ones, they’re BLUE, which is, uh, for boys? Duh?)