As the music industry has grown more seasonal, content producers and consumers alike have become fixated with what this year's "Song of the Summer" will be. Traditionally, this is an upbeat, light-hearted arrangement, with a rythmic, sturdy hook.
Of course it is. Summer is a simple season of simple pleasures and has songs to match.
What interests me is why other seasons don't have "Songs." Winter is the closest, but usually it's a novelty track from a celebrity Christmas album. Picking songs for the other three seasons is difficult, which is why Psychoeuphorology Today is taking up the challenge.
After all, no gets Michelin stars for cooking a nice ribeye.
For spring, I've chosen to go with a throwback jam. After all, most of the recent releases have summer in mind.
I've picked the 1998 classic, Back That Azz Up by Juvenile.
Like spring itself, the song is subtle and forward-looking. It marks the first significant exposure for a teenage Lil' Wayne. Furthermore, the video is prescient in understanding the democratization of music which would mark the coming decade.
By setting it at a local New Orleans-area concert, it anticipates the renewed emphasis on massive live spectacles that underpin the festival concept.
Furthermore, though Back That Azz Up was released in during the Golden Age of Video Ho's (1915- Present), the video features local women of varying attractiveness in street clothes, united in their desire to Back That Azz Up. Furthering Juvenile's feminist heroics is his use of consensual syntax. He asks of women, "won't you back that azz up?'
This aspect is poignant on the heels of Blurred Lines, in which Robin Thicke suggests he likes to date-rape models.
Back That Azz Up is a song for today and every day. Oh, and in case you missed this in all the high-mindedness, it's kind of a banger.
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