Daddy Is White

This is a very personal song for Vega (it's a rare track, released on volume 4 of her Close-Up series). Her birth father had a heritage based in the UK, but he and her mother divorced when she was very young. Her stepfather, whose last name she still bears, was from Puerto Rico.

Now, it's one thing when your parents come from different ethnic backgrounds, but their differences show up in your face. In Vega's case, they did not: "I am an average white girl... When you look into my face, it's clear what everyone else knows/ Daddy is white, so I must be white, too."

But... was she? "I was raised half-Latin," she explains. "This caused me some problems."

To her white friends, she was not entirely white. But to her Latino friends... she wasn't that, either. (She also had "foes"-- bullies, we assume.)

"When you look into the mirror/ What comes looking back at you?" She also wondered, herself, about who she was.

The issue of identity is pervasive. She says that she could feel herself being weighed and judged as she simply walked around by the passers-by: "I feel the tension in the street, I feel it ticking all around/ I feel it filling up the sidewalk, in the spaces in between... my face and your face and the public places we get seen."

The last verse tells a brief story of two "strangers" at a bar: "He called her 'baby,' she called him 'boy.'" The result? "It ended as a fight." Too bad, because it began as a "conversation" and they wound up "broken-hearted" which implies that initially, there was a flirtation that might have bloomed.

Vega's understanding was that the situation deteriorated because "he was black and she was white." But I think she may have-- however inappropriate her response-- been reacting to him calling her "baby," which she perceived as sexist. Perhaps there are still deeper layers; perhaps a way of addressing someone of the opposite gender is acceptable in some communities and not in others, and that is what Vega meant.

The larger issue is the need to define oneself, and others, in terms of culture and race. It is a need we seem to have as individuals and as a society... 

...and as mommies, daddies, and kiddies.

Next Song: Brother Mine

As Girls Go

The subject of this song is either a man dressed as a woman ("transvestite") or a man in the process of becoming a woman ("transsexual"). A "transgender" person is one who identifies as the gender opposite of which their body would suggest, so that's another possibility, but less likely.

The speaker's entire focus, in the lyrics, is determining which is the case-- is this a man dressed as a woman, or becoming one? She is forced to admit that the subject "make(s) a really good girl," in the sense that he can "pass" as one. She does withhold some praise with: "...as girls go." So maybe this man makes for a convincing woman, just not a particularly attractive one...?

"Still kind of look like a guy," she says, now that she thinks of it. "I never thought to wonder why," she adds, implying that all this time this subject has been somewhat masculine for a woman, yet the speaker thought that he was just a masculine-looking woman, not actually a man in the guise of a woman... until now.

"If I could pull this off," usually means, "If I can accomplish this task," but most often in a sneaky or over-ambitious way: "If we could pull off this bank heist, we'd be rolling in dough." In this case, the speaker means it literally, about some article of clothing the man is wearing. If she could pull off his clothes, she would "know for certain/ the real situation..."

"... behind the curtain." This is a clever reference to The Wizard of Oz, in which the Wizard says, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." Why mention this movie? It stars Judy Garland, a star with long-standing popularity in the gay community. Her character is named "Dorothy," and for decades if someone wanted to know if a person was gay without being open about it, they would ask, "Is he a friend of Dorothy?"

Well, we were wrong about the results of the womanly guise being unattractive. Now we learn that the speaker feels (or at least says) the subject is "so beautiful" and even "stunning," even if the effect is artificial and "not exactly natural." Perhaps, since vinegar did not work, she is trying honey now.

(As an aside, I would use this expression-- "Not exactly natural/ Stunning nonetheless"-- to describe the album as a whole. While many of the sounds are synthesized, the result is arresting.)

Interestingly, now that the speaker has acknowledged the subject's attractiveness, she calls him a "damsel in distress." This fairy-tale reference might mean that he himself is self-conscious about whether he is "passing" as a woman. (Personally, I think a stronger line would have been "damsel in this dress," which would have made the listener think about that idea... while also expressing that, in this dress, he is a damsel-- while in, say, a sweatsuit, not so much.)

The speaker then gets a bit invasive with her curiosity: "What happened to you/ To make you more girl that girls are?" This seems somewhat personal and even judgmental, as if it would have to be an accident that made the person was this way... not just that he was, as Lady Gaga said, born this way.

Then the speaker probes further: "Would you ever show or tell?" She really does want to "pull this off"! Maybe she is at a drag show, but she seems to be hoping it turns into a strip show. She now couches her curiosity in a compliment. She wants to know, she says, because the subject is "so good" at passing.

Then she lays it all on the line: Did the subject have gender-reassignment surgery or not? She admits that her curiosity is inappropriate, and that she is investigating the "dark," and private-- perhaps even psychologically painful-- "side" of the subject's "life." But she doesn't care! She asks anyway: "Did you ever keep the date/ With the steel side of the knife?"

Finally, it seems that the subject has called an end to this invasive line of inquiry. We know because now the speaker suddenly pretends she doesn't care: "Doesn't matter to me/ Which side of the line/ You happen to be/ At any given time."

This sudden nonchalance is almost insulting-- along with the flippant sense of, "You know what, forget it; I've decided I don't care," comes the demeaning implication that the subject jumps back and forth between being a man and woman haphazardly. It implies that this is all just a fun game the subject plays with his gender identity instead of a deeply wrenching, even existential, internal struggle.

That said, this last could be also be a come-on: "I am so attracted to you, I don't care if you are a man or a woman... or one and then the other and back again! Let's go!"

However, if I were the subject, I would find this seduction highly suspicious. All this time, the speaker has wanted to see, to know for herself, just what was between the subject's legs. She has asked and dared and even threatened to disrobe the subject right there! And now she wants to sleep with him because she's attracted to him? Oh, please. She just wants to satisfy her ridiculous, insulting, obsessive curiosity, and getting him in bed will allow her to see him naked and know.

She says it doesn't matter? It has until just now!

I think the speaker is trying to be funny, and thinks she is. She probably is having fun and "just playin'."

But I imagine the subject of this harassing harangue of questions wouldn't find it funny at all. He was brave enough to trot out his new identity in public and is deeply insecure on many levels: Is he passing? Is he pretty? Is this really what he wants and who he is? Is it all worth it, given his deeper uncertainty?

And then this woman sees him and starts asking all these personal questions! Ones that go right to the heart of his insecurities. "So? What is it? Are you a guy or a girl? You kinda look like a guy. Come on, tell me. Go ahead, let me see. Peekaboo! Haha! Please? You know, you're pretty. Beautiful, even. Why are you so mixed up? You can tell me. Wow, you're even more feminine than a woman usually is-- are you overcompensating? (sigh) So, already, yeah? Did you get the ol' snippity snip or what? Fine! I don't care. Be a boy, a girl, or whatever. You're no fun."

It's really somewhat disturbing how hyper-focused the speaker is on the issue of the subject's gender. Why not ask anything else about him-- whatever happened to, "So, what do you do?" or "See any good movies lately?"

I certainly hope that subject spoke with someone else-- a friend or therapist-- who could assure him that this one person's massive inappropriateness should not in any way make them assume that most people look at him as a sideshow. Just this one obnoxious twit does.


Next Song: Song of Sand