A very special episode in which a certain ex (or two) will not be given the satisfaction of being named, shamed, and allowed to be the main character. Also in which the gang talks about inequity for women in music, the historical lessons we have and haven’t learned about it, and Estella Adeyeri talks about the insidious way music history omits and discounts the people of color who created and were there at the beginning of the roots of rock and its various subgenres.
Links:
Go see Big Joanie on tour and buy their records!
Read Courtney about the year the Grammys really blew up (and blew it). And on the issues facing inclusivity for women in music.
Show Highlights:
00:22: The story of a Mitski song that a couple of exes, who do not deserve a name drop, ruined for Estella
02:24: The systemic issues oppressing women in society, romantic relationships, and the music industry — and how riot grrrls saved us all
16:08: Retroactively applying songs to relationships
Transcript:
Melissa: Hello, I’m Melissa Locker.
Courtney: And I’m Courtney E. Smith.
Melissa: And you are listening to Songs My Ex Ruined, the show where we talk about songs that have been ruined by our exes. We’re here today with Estella Adeyeri from punk band Big Joanie. Estella, could you tell us what song an ex has ruined for you?
Estella: You know, I had a good old think about the numerous exes and the various things they ruined, but the one I settled on was “Happy” by Mitski. Not because we specifically listened to it together, but just it’s lyrically a very relatable experience of dating a relatively selfish creative, and two particular exes that could apply to. So, yeah, I won’t give them the satisfaction of thinking it’s just them.
Courtney: So you’re telling me, in a nutshell, the song that a couple of exes ruined for you is not even a song that you shared with them or had a moment with? It’s something that reminds you of them.
Estella: I would feel too much like I was just outing them.
Courtney: That’s fair.
Estella: And yeah, also, I just think they don’t deserve being named. They can sit there and one day, if it is about them or not. But it’s also like if they think it is about them, it probably is. I just love the storyline that she sets in that song where it’s like, oh, like she didn’t hear them leave, and now’s, now I’ve got tidy up. It’s the come down.
It’s like, oh, this person’s here and stuff, and they made everything about them and not really considered my input, like my time. A few years later you’re like, “Why was I so impressed about this man? Shouldn’t have been.”
Courtney: Yeah,I feel that way about a lot of exes.
Melissa: Most of them.
Courtney: Most of them.
Estella: Yeah, it was rough for us all in our twenties.
Melissa: Hindsight is also truly amazing. As we record this podcast, it is a delightful trip down memory lane. And I was just thinking about somebody and was, ‘Why on earth did I like this person? He was such a loser.” Yeah, and it just never occurred to me until — I don’t know if it’s just the hormones when you’re like younger or something and you’re just like, why?I just feel like I really needed one of those talking friends that always show up in romcoms who’s just like, “What the hell are you doing? That person sucks.”
Courtney: I don’t want to blame our hormones because that makes it the woman’s fault. I think this is a systemic issue. I think this is an issue, especially in heterosexual relationships. I’m going to enter into my TikTok teaching era now, I guess — in heterosexual relationships. I mean, we are taught — and it was really bad when we were younger, It’s still bad, but it’s getting better all the time, I hope — but taught to build our whole lives around men and their expectations. And that it’s a woman’s job to make sacrifices not only in relationships, but in our lives. I think that we are given every message in the world that we have to do this, and be subservient or make ourselves smaller than the man in a relationship. And that the Mitski song really gets to that idea, that dynamic in a relationship without necessarily gendering it. But that can exist outside of romantic relationships too. And another song this reminds me of is Carly Simon’s, “You’re so Vain.” And I think a lot of people, like a huge number of people, have the sort of parasocial relationship with that song that you have with Mitski’s song.
Estella: Yeah, I agree. And I think in my teens, I grew up when, during that emo revival, so it was just, almost every band I listened to was a whiny man from like the Midwestor, something. Like, and I’m there in London like, “Oh he’s so deep.” And then going on to play in aband myself, I’ve dated a few male musicians in the pub and just always had that secondary role of, “Oh, but they’re the artists and they are so deep and so knowledgeable, and they’ve done all these things that I haven’t done and stuff.” And maybe pedestaling them in a way that wasn’t necessary. And I think it took for me to play in bounds with women to see even just how differently we are treated and things, soundcheck and stuff. And see what it’s actually like relying on learning things myself and not having some guys be like, “Oh, well played out for 10 years, so this is how you need to do things and this is how you play.” And yeah, it wasn’t until I joined a riot grrrl band that I think it opened my sort of personal politics in a way that maybe it hadn’t previously happened.
Melissa: Right, and I mean, so much to what riot grrrl was all about when it first started was just, “Hey, this is, you know, the scene is not just for men, girls to the front.” Preaching to this group of women who had never really been addressed, particularly the rock and roll or punk scenes, before. And suddenly having, I mean, yes, there are bands here and there that have certainly been for women, but at the same time there’s something about riot grrrl that really just put it in your face. We’re just like, screw you all. We’re here and we’re going to have fun at our shows, which I always really appreciated. And it sounds like you did too.
Estella: Oh, definitely. I loved how in riot grrrl tradition, we all started the band really knowing how to play any of our instruments. So I just started playing drums, and that my friends had just started learning guitar. We were the two main songwriters, and we got our friend into play bass. We’re like, “Here’s a bass, let’s see what we can do.” And I found that not feeling the pressure of having to be a certain standard to be able to like be making music that’s worth hearing. And I still really value the songs that we wrote together and the tours we managed to do in those short 18 months we were together. And just being in a position where we were quite young, trying to do it ourselves when we would quite often just turned up to venues and you’re not being taken seriously. Or people just assume that it wasn’t going to be good are like pleasantly surprised. That’s why, they really start from the assumption. Whereas when I play in bands with men, people would start from the assumption that it would be good.
Courtney: I have a question, for both of you. So, it seems to me that some sort of reckoning started happening in 2016, where we started really holding the big, important players in the music industry to account for not recognizing women. And I’m thinking specifically of the Grammys and the Recording Academy, the Brits, I’m thinking of the Annenberg Institute doing those yearly counts of how many women with the top hits of every year were producers, engineers, how many were written by women and sung by women, as a way of holding record labels to account. And I’m thinking of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That institution in particular is something I’ve written a lot about, although I’ve also written a lot about the Grammys, to the point of them hiring a crisis PR firm because they did not like my coverage.
Melissa: Well done.
Courtney: But the way we talked about the lack of women in music was to elevate them, as if women was a different genre. And it felt like women also had to just create a space that was all women to be safe, like a scene where men were treated very secondarily. There’s just this whole way that women are segregated prior to that. And now we can talk about a bigger ecosystem, and why women aren’t included. Another one I’m thinking of is Book More Bands, the Instagram account that does a yearly inventory of festivals and how many bands are booked that are male and headliners that are male versus women and non-binary people. So, I’m wondering, looking back now, you were talking about the second wave emo bands and stuff that you loved. Melissa, you’re talking about riot grrrl and punk, and those divide between those scenes. Indie should be in the mix in there too, I think. Does it feel like this intellectual and emotional disconnect to look back now and think about the way that we saw the male voice as universal? And the way that we as women felt we had to separate ourselves into different categories just to get recognition?
Estella: I think, yeah, even just growing, like, as a music fan, I almost consciously didn’t notice it. Or like didn’t understand how to like communicate what I was feeling. I would buy Kerrang magazine every week. And there’d be like tons of bands and in the magazine, but I would be more excited to see Brody from the Distillers or like Haley Williams from Paramore that week. And later on, more intellectually be like, “Oh, well obviously I was trying really hard to see if someone who looked like me in those spaces.” Similarly of seeing, you know, Skin from Skunk Anansie on TV in the UK. I remember watching him at a show, Top of the Pops, on the BBC back in the day. Again, that subset of like a Black woman doing alternative music as well wasn’t super reflected in like back in the day. I don’t think I really understood that that was what the search was until went to uni. And I found out about riot grrrl, cause there was a riot grrrl anthology in the feminist politics section of our library or whatever, that was like how I first came across it. And so I started following Black feminists on Twitter, who were explaining what Black feminism is and what the seminal text to read would be. And it seems that distinction was the norm, how it was just like, “Oh, well, dudes make indie rock. Or they make emo and stuff.” And seeing women as the anomaly for a long time back felt like the norm. And then also even, it took ‘til a lot later, I think, coming to realize how music history is written and recorded, and who traditionally gets to do it, has had a huge sway on who’s left out of where. It’s like, eh, when people look back across the decades, who’s left out of those narratives, like the bands that were doing things or the people, the promoters who were there. And then so easily those people, and like women and non-binary people and all the different intersections between, slowly get dropped off as if they weren’t there. It’s very easy for them to be left out of those stories. Me and Steph volunteer with Decolonized Fest here in London, which is an alternative festival. We say it’s by punks of color, for punks of color, platforming color bands, but also trying to reclaim those histories and remember all the people of color in alternative scenes who were doing it first and show that it’s not new. It’s not like Big Joanie are the first ever Black feminists to make punk. We know that there’s a whole legacy before us, whether or not that legacy it’s been given the attention that it deserves. And a lot of the Decolonized Fest is about drawing that attention back and celebrating even those artists who didn’t get celebrated in their heyday. So yeah, it’s interesting to see the shift over 2016-ish, I would say, even in, was it 2020 during our covid lockdown? BLM coming back into the general conversation, um, black lives matter, in a big way, even though I think it, that phrase and that movement started, was it 2012, 2013?
Courtney: Yeah, you’re right.
Estella: And yes, suddenly seeing, even though to me hashtag BLm was not new and has been a consistent movement. It was like suddenly the music industry was, “We might need to care about this as well.” And suddenly like, we’re, or Big Joanie was on all these Black playlists that have sprung out of nowhere. That’s obviously, I want people to be looking at traditionally marginalized people in those seams and stuff. But also it’s, the band’s been going for nine years. We’ve been there the whole time. It wasn’t just like, sprung up at the same time as BLM. So, is it weird? Yeah.
Melissa: You don’t wanna be a female rock star and you don’t wanna be a Black band. You want to just be recognized for being the fucking awesome powerhouses that you are, as opposed to being a powerhouse in a little silo.
Estella: Yeah, obviously we are three Black women and it does affect like our lives. How we just, yeah, our day-to-day lives, I’d say. How we connect with each other and the things that are sort of our like shared experiences of what… But at the same time, we don’t want it to be this band, did you know they’re also Black women doing it and they play guitar? Yeah, I guess it’s that fine line between us obviously wanting to celebrate every part of our heritage, even the fact that we’re Black British and that we all have parents who’ve got a Caribbean, each member of Big Joanie does. And then I also have one of my parents is from West Africa. And that Black British experience is important to us as well, just cause often, weirdly, people tend to assume we’re African American a lot. And I dunno if that’s a British thing, to want to have their Black people at a distance, like African American entertainers. And maybe the Black British is a bit too close to home because we all sound British.
Melissa: I think it also might just be because people are a little dumb. Particularly in the States where they just assume every Black person is African American and you’re like, okay, are they American? Like let’s start there.
Estella: Yeah, it’s like it’s a whole diaspora. The Black British experience, it can be quite specific. Again, there’s a lot of shared commonalities between people who go through that and that has shaped who we are. So yeah, I guess you want that to be something you can talk about and people be, “Oh yeah, cool. I understand these references” or whatever. And not then be shocked that we cite Nirvana as an inspiration. In the UK, in the ’90s, of course you like Nirvana? It’s not that shocking. We were all listening to the same thing. It’s not this idea of that Black people listen to one genre and one genre only.
So I feel like as well hopefully that idea of just slapping anything with a Black person in it, slapping the term urban on it seems to be thankfully dying out a little bit.
Courtney: Yeah, that was the one thing that came out of record labels adopting Black Lives Matter stances. The idea that some of them now retired the label urban.
Melissa: I have one question that’s actually sort of goes back a little bit to what we were talking about. So you said that you got really into riot grrrl while you were at university and you know, and now you’ve come full circle and you’re on Kill Rock Stars. What has that experience been like?
Estella: Yeah, it’s just been wild and surreal really. I still remember when we got the email being asked to like support Bikini Kill at Brixton Academy…
Courtney: So cool.
Estella: …here in London, yeah. Which was almost absurd to us, really. It’s obviously like you are in your like early bands trying to cover Bikini Kill, the riot grrrl band, I mentioned. We used to cover “Feels Blind” live and stuff. So the idea of sharing a stage with them just felt ridiculous. And then, yeah, being able to call Kill RockSstars home now, and being able to join that legacy of all these bands who’ve like influenced us so much. And we finally got to meet the KRS team. We went to South by Southwest earlier this year. I feel like we fit very well into what kill Rock Stars has become. And also, yeah, just obviously follow a lot of the traditions of the bands who’ve been on that label in the past. So it’s just, we’re all really proud and excited to be part of it.
Courtney: So I want to bring it back to the song. Did you already know this song when you met this person/people? And you retroactively applied it to your relationship?
Estella: Yeah, one of them was around 2016 when this song came out. There’s definitely a post to the release of this song person that I can 100% apply to. To me, listening to those lyrics, it’s really evocative of many scenarios with those two people, and it doesn’t always feel great.
Courtney: Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t always feel great to realize that, or even just the way music can make you have those feelings, go back to a place or come to a place of reckoning.
Estella: Definitely in my 30s I’ve learned a lot more about myself and what I’m willing to accept from other people. And also be more comfortable expressing like, Oh, actually I need this, or of, this isn’t really good enough from my perspective.”
Melissa: Do you feel like you could send a Mitski song to one of these people? Could it be like a subtle like, “Oh, here’s a song that’s I think you might like?”
Estella: I don’t think they’d read into it. Yeah, I don’t think they would hear those lyrics and be like, “This could be about me.” I’m not convinced that level of emotional maturity is there to really read into it in the way that I took from it. But to me, those lyrics where she says all the cookie wrappers and the empty cups of tea, I sighed and mumble to myself, again I have to clean. That resignation in that moment always is one of the, I would say, more poignant lyrics that really strikes me as “Oh yeah.: Like it just seems something I can really relate to in that sense. Now, they’ve had their whirlwind blowing in, having their moment. And then they’ve left and not thought about either tidying up after themselves of what that aftermath is. Or even if they’ve just gone off to do the next thing, that’s left to deal with as my problem in that literal sense of leaving a mess, but I think emotionally as well.
Melissa: So has this song been ruined for you? Like if it comes on your little shuffle, do you suddenly stop what you’re doing and being like, “Oh, I cannot listen to this right now.”
Estella: Well, I do love Mitski, so it’s not quite a full skip yet. The ideal scenario to listen to it would be nursing, like, a small whiskey. If I actually whiskey like a bit, sat in an arm chair, like reminiscing, just like that mother… that kind of thing, that would be the ideal way I would listen to the song. Sadly, I don’t have as classy a palette for that setting yet.
Courtney: Well, there’s another topic this brings up that has been a little bit recurring on this podcast. The idea of songs belonging to a relationship or belonging to a person. The way that they stick to a place in time, that I think is interesting. And I don’t know that I have any songs that are comparable to this, where I think of a person, although the song was not shared between the two of us. But I think that’s such an interesting idea and I think there are a lot of artists that I feel that way about. I remember the guy that I dated in college who was really into the Beastie Boys. And this album Hello Nasty had just come out, and he was so excited to play it for me. But it never became my music. But whenever I happen to bump into that album, I think about him and I can picture it in my head still. This moment, and I can feel the feeling of being in a space together with him. So, I think that phenomenon is super interesting where some people in our minds just are associated with a song in a way that you can never overwrite, almost.
Estella: Yeah, you know, there’s some artists where maybe you went to their shows together, together or whatever. Or yeah, you remember really falling over an album together. But yeah, thankfully there’s nothing that I really love that I feel they’ve permanently tarnished by association. And I know, give it time.
Courtney: I just remembered I do have a song like this.
Estella: Oh really?
Courtney: It’s Kate Bush’s “Never be Mine.” And I listened to it incessantly after a breakup with someone, and it was never his song. He didn’t know about that song. It was just mine. And I can go back to the feeling of that breakup so quick by putting that song on and it’s so sad now to me.
Melissa: Yeah, I have a song that- So it wasn’t someone I was technically dating, it was someone I had a massive, massive crush on. And this was back in high schoo. And he kept saying he was gonna call and he’s like, “Oh yeah, I know you’re going on vacation. I’m gonna give you a call before that.” Never called. Never called. And then I started hearing that oldie song, why do you “Build Me Up (Buttercup)?? Every time I hear that song now, it just takes me straight back to like being at my grandmother’s house in Washington D.C., and just being frustrated and mad that this guy who I liked so much hadn’t called. And he had, like Rama said he would. And then, and it’s just obviously that feeling of, oh my God, you build me up so much and then nothing happens. Clearly, whoever it wrote that song back in the ‘60s had that same experience that I was now overlaying onto my very pathetic dating life.
Estella: Such a good song was well. Screw that person.
Melissa: I know, that’s the problem with these things. I wish I, in retrospect, had picked a different song cause I do really that song. And now I just, every time I listen to a high school student again and I don’t really enjoy that.
Courtney: So here’s- let’s just do a little quick analysis. We’ve talked about Mitski, we’ve talked about Carly Simon. These are both songs about anonymous people, famously never revealed who their inspirations are. And I wonder, is there something that makes songs that— is it better to not know who that song is about? Does it make it more universal, more portable to your experience than say, a Taylor Swift singing “All Too Well.” And technically she hasn’t said who it’s about, but everybody thinks it’s about Jake Gyllenhaal.
Estella: For me, yeah, maybe it is preferable to have it open in that sense, cause then it is easier to be like, oh, this feels like my situation, or when this happened to me thing. Even though I think Mitski has said in other interviews as well, she’s like, like not all of my lyrics are literally literal things that have happened to me kind of thing. She does tell stories as well and be able to, I guess, yeah, embody other characters or experiences. The way that she does manage to write these songs where it feels you can relate to that person in the song, even though she’s not necessarily that person having that experience. But she’s written it in such a beautiful and relatable way. Oh, she knows exactly how I feel. That’s why she’s been able to attract this almost a bit of stan culture, who are like no, no, she’s talking to me. It’s definitely me. She really understands me. She is just minding her business. She’s just a really good songwriter.
Courtney: Again, the parasocial relationships really take over how we interact with things.
Melissa: Yeah, you uh, but so does Big Joanie ever write songs like this? Do you guys have a good breakup song? Do you have one track that you hope someone sends someone else post breakup?
Estella: Well, so Steph writes pretty much all the lyrics in Big Joanie and she does have a very little song called “Used to Be Friends.” That is about a specific decline of a friendship. But I think she has said as well, if the person it was about had it played to them, some experiences, well just specific things they did together. But then also she’s not sure if that person would be, “Oh, this must be about me.” I don’t know. That idea of exploring a friendship breakup as well, they do really impact you just as much as a romantic relationship breaking down. I love that she explores that. And then she also has a song, it’s not a breakup song, but uh, she did later on reveal that “It’s You,” another song from our first album Sisters, is about men being shit in bad. So I feel like, again, surely specific people will be, oh man. So if this is that about me, sure you could do the math! So, yeah, like so that’s quite funny, from her experiences.
Melissa: So where can people find that specific song that they can mail to exes?
Estella: “It’s You” is on our debut album, Sisters that came out in 2018. On the Day Dream Library series, so it’s available from most good record stores, it’s available online to stream and stuff. We also recorded a live version of it, that’s the B side, the sort of live more rawkus version and of “It’s You” that very much is hammering that message home. So that’s a good shout.
Courtney: The last thing we wanna ask is where can people find Big Joanie?
Estella: We’re on all the social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I don’t think we’re on TikTok. None of us know how to use it, so you might not find us there.
Courtney: You’ll get there.
Estella: Yeah, yeah, and then we’ve got our website, big joanie.com, which has tour dates. If anyone’s listening from the U.S., we are very much hoping to come over, so please keep checking back. And, cause I know people keep asking us and we’re like, we. I’m trying our best at all there. So yeah, fingers crossed what’s gonna happen and yeah. Our second album Back Home is out on Kill Rock Stars in the U.S/ and they’ve got some fancy, different colored variants that’ll be in a bunch of independent record stores and stuff.
Courtney: That’s awesome. Get yourself to your nearest local independent record store and get a copy.
Melissa: Okay. Well thank you so much for stopping by and chatting with us.
Courtney: Hey Courtney here. So since this conversation was recorded, Big Joanie announced they are coming to North America this spring. We’re so excited. Check out their website, bigjoanie dot com, and get yourself tickets to go see them — obviously.
Courtney: Thanks for joining us for another episode of Songs My Ex Ruined. If you’re enjoying the podcast, give us a review or rating on your favorite app and it will really help. And hey, subscribe to get new episodes as soon as they drop.
Melissa: Songs my Ex Ruined is a production of Nevermind Media. Executive Producers are Melissa Locker and Courtney E. Smith. Produced and edited by Stepfanie Aguilar. Sound design and theme song by Madeline McCormick. Artwork by Sophie Locker. Additional production support from Casey, Steve, Archer, Beemo, Newton, and all the other good dogs and cats out there.
