December 8th, 2023 -
PLEASE listen to Man's Man (/Groupie)

As a warning, both songs I'll be discussing in this post are...
not explicit, but kind of risque.

Make informed choices. But also hiii :]

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I know this routes from my blog, but I thought it fit better on my music reccommendation page, so...I've tweaked the formatting of the page/page style a little bit to accommodate for that. If I do more posts/analyses/whatever you wanna call this about individual songs in the future I'll probably do the same thing, so if you've got any feedback feel free to let me know!

For now, though, I need to talk about Man's Man.

It feels like I don't even have that much to say, either! It just drives me kind of insane. Just how can I describe this song to the uninitiated?

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First of all, the vocals are addicting to me. There are parts of the song where the singer fully just whimpers like a dog as he sings which. Which.

It Compels Me.

I want to sound like that. I want to make people feel like the way I do Right Now.

That said, it's not all unimaginable envy and infatuation with this guy's voice- the lyrics behind the song compel me too, in a way that I can actually properly analyse.

I am, as a rule, fascinated with themes of unbalanced or difficult relationships, of dynamics that are wholly affected by one or all parties' baggage in such a way that is genuinely impossible to ignore.

This song revolves around these themes.

More specifically, it's self-obsessed, not out of vanity but out of insecurity. From the very first line, it's clear that while the narrator intends it to be about their love interest, it's really just about the narrator's fear of intimacy.

They're afraid. They've found someone who truly seems to care, but they're so used to leaving that sort of intimacy by the wayside that they've grown incapable of accepting it.

He always ends up winning anyways,
It's time to let the ego have a say
I told him time again to put your feelings all above me,

It's just he'd rather hear you cry,
Than hear you say you love me!

Could you imagine. Could you IMAGINE.

In this pre-chorus we first see this sentiment attributed to the narrator's ego, pushing the blame off of themself and onto something they try to describe as its own autonomous entity. Much as they try this, however, the pre-chorus is echoed later in the song, revealing the truth:

Horoscopes for answers please,
A whore before but now I see my actions don't define me
I'm existential ego free
I'm waiting for the feels to leave,

Still, I'd rather hear you cry,
Than hear you say you love me!

But what good is accepting that you're afraid if it doesn't change anything?

Just knowing that something is happening doesn't automatically mean anything becomes different, it just means you know it's happening. Accepting that you're terrified of (and unused to) spoken, clear-cut intimacy is good, but what does it matter when you're still afraid?

And, of course, even as they're seeming to accept that these feelings are their own, there's implications that they're reaching for something else to blame or something else to save them from their situation.

Horoscopes for answers, waiting for the feels to leave- they're not just afraid of intimacy, they're unwilling to confront that fear, no matter how many times they say they know it's theirs.

It isn't that they don't want a solution, it's that they don't want to be the one to create it, shifting the problem from being unwilling to accept their fear of intimacy to being unwilling to accept that something must be done.

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There's a spoken-word segment toward the end of the song that I really enjoy, really hammering home that the song is less about the narrator's relationship with their lover but more about the dynamic between them and their own jacked up ego.

You're a man's man!
You're a man's man!
You're an ass man,
You're a tits man
You don't ask, you take what you need
You're an alpha, baby!
You take that girl in that picture that you see
you deserve everything, you're a man, man
You're a man!
(You're me.)

It's like a pep talk. It's like saying it's good to be the way you are, actually, and there's no reason to be afraid, because you're actually supposed to be that way. You're a man, you don't need to hear that you're loved, you know you are.

(Except you don't. 'I love you' feels like a gun being held to your head.)

I don't know. It's just really compelling to me, a clear portrayal of someone who's trapped by their own toxic ego.

Only they can save themself from it, but they're helpless to it, a slave to their emotions to the point of active detriment- maybe it was fine that their demeanor pushed people away before, but now they have someone they want to keep, and even as they acknowledge they want to keep this person they've already resigned themself to the relationship being doomed.

They can't help it. Maybe one day they can find the right girl, the right boy, the right way to be- but they'll find it, stumble upon it instead of working towards it. They don't want to linger for the time it takes to fix it.

Man's Man is a song about fearing intimacy.
Man's Man is a song about lacking accountability.
Man's Man is a song about self-enforced suffering.
Man's Man is a song about stagnation.

And I really like it, if you can't tell.

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I have less to say about it at the moment, but I'd be remiss not to point out Man's Man's partner song on the single, Groupie (especially considering it seems to be much less popular).

And I get it, to a point. While Man's Man is characterized by (for lack of a better descriptor) sexy bass and vocals, Groupie is by contrast breathy and lowkey. Where Man's Man is keening, vying for your attention, Groupie whispers under its breath- both are undeniably sultry songs, but Man's Man gets in your face.

Meanwhile, with Groupie...if you see it, you see it. If you don't, you don't.

It is a hell of a song, though. It's dreamy, even, psychedelic in its stylings.

(Fittingly enough with its psychedelic influences, nobody's bothered to try transcribing the lyrics. Trust me, I've looked. lol.)

The main hook of the song, though, the We all want somethin' from someone, might just tell you all you need to know.

Similarly to Man's Man, Groupie seems to be about a lack of connection, a disconnect between the wants and needs of the individual and what's needed for a true, concrete relationship (this time in a more general sense).

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I guess...to conclude, I highly recommend both of these tracks. I actually think writing this post has actually cured me of my burning need to listen to Man's Man 5 morbillion times in a row, so it'll be nice to move onto other songs that I also like and give it a break.

I might write some posts like this about other songs I like in the future. For now, though...

Thanks for reading! :]

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