So, how can we apply this logic to “Don’t Worry About the Government”? By focusing not only on what Byrne sings, but also on the multiplicity of things those lyrics gesture towards and ultimately, evoke for listeners. These are the gendered and racialized politics of desire. So when Baby Keem says “Bitch sit on my face I attack that,” not only is the speaker instigating oral sex, he is tethering his bravado to his interest in centering his partner’s fulfillment. As for “Orange Soda,” a rap staple of 2020, there’s a legacy of the link between Black masculinized sexual prowess and the focalization of female pleasure in rap and hip-hop culture. The politics of the song exist via its marketing and ownership context.
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In fact, filmmaker Ben Sisto made an entire documentary about how the song, which has been released multiple times over the past 40 years by various artists, presents “one of the most complicated … copyrighting cases in music history.” So we are mostly unsure who first let the dogs out, and why people were so receptive to the question when it was presented for the umpteenth time by Carribean men in Hawaiian shirts. While we attribute “Who Let the Dogs Out” to the Baha Men, they did not originally release the song.
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This article is about the Talking Heads and the resonance of their music as President-elect Joe Biden takes office, but to further illustrate the presence of political power in all music, indulge my discussion of these two songs. What’s so political about the Baha Men’s calypso earworm “Who Lets the Dogs Out,” or contrastingly, Baby Keem’s laid back cunnilingus-centric banger “Orange Soda”? I’m glad you asked. It reflects the varied ways personal experience shapes our perceptions of the world, how people navigate those perceptions and exercise their agency. Music is implicitly or otherwise political.
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In “Don’t Worry About the Government,” Talking Heads frontman David Byrne larks about the pleasure of pausing the work day to entertain the company of “loved ones” who, like “civil servants,” (wink, wink) “work so hard and try to be strong.” It’s sentimental without being saccharine, and sonically, it has allowed me to occasionally reenter a world that has been deemed mostly inaccessible due to necessary pandemic restrictions-a world in which I marvel at “the clouds that move across the sky” and conjure gratitude for “people that are working for me.” But as I revisited the song after the insurrection and again when hearing about the aforementioned “civil servant” at the State Department, I couldn’t help but wonder: is “Don’t Worry About the Government” truly an optimistic ditty about anchoring your joy in moments of levity and cultivating respect for community members? Or is it an ironic song about needing to distract ourselves from the frustrating limitations of our institutions?
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It was a rogue act that has launched an internal investigation, serving as fodder for a bevy of memes and leading me to further ruminate on the 1977 classic Talking Heads song “Don’t Worry About the Government.” Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to falsely indicate that their terms would end that evening. On January 11, 2021, a fed-up State Department employee edited the biographies of President Donald J.