[MUSIC] Lenny Kravitz, "Black Velveteen"
Jul. 2nd, 2009 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonald"Black Velveteen," the final single released from Lenny Kravitz's successful 1998/99 album 5, is the only Kravitz song that I can bother to care about. I tend to agree with the general consensus that 5 is an indifferent and disappointing album, but the sample-heavy electro-rock of "Black Velveteen" gets me.
After I take in the music I next go to the song's lyrics, which turn out to be more disturbing than I'd have thought on a first casual listen. Sexbots, it seems, are in. Really.
This sexbot has a "[n]ice piece of kit/Electronic clit/Just sit down for a fit, doesn't mind doing dishes and recommends nightspots and will dance and have sex any time, will be better than any anything living. Misogyny, anyone? I was all but certain that this was a critical commentary on the future of gender relations, and indeed, this 2000 interview with Kravitz confirms that he intended this song as a critical commentary on the future of intimacy in a high-tech and amoral world.
Even so, "Black Velveteen" still leaves me feeling a bit awkward, by the detail in the song but mostly because of the knowledge that, yes, we're getting close to this goal. I wonder if the way I feel re: "Black Velveteen" is the way that Swift's contemporaries felt about "A Modest Proposal".
After I take in the music I next go to the song's lyrics, which turn out to be more disturbing than I'd have thought on a first casual listen. Sexbots, it seems, are in. Really.
Black velveteen
Simple and clean
Oh what a bad machine
Black velveteen
Supple and lean
The 21st century dream
Ready to please
Free from disease
She's waiting on her knees
This sexbot has a "[n]ice piece of kit/Electronic clit/Just sit down for a fit, doesn't mind doing dishes and recommends nightspots and will dance and have sex any time, will be better than any anything living. Misogyny, anyone? I was all but certain that this was a critical commentary on the future of gender relations, and indeed, this 2000 interview with Kravitz confirms that he intended this song as a critical commentary on the future of intimacy in a high-tech and amoral world.
"Black Velveteen" is about technology and we're getting so pulled in by computers and technology and our kids have their face in the computers all day. We have our face in computers all day and the human relationship is being diminished by this so I figured, well ok, we're so into computers, and we're so into technology and now we're also beginning to play God and get into cloning and all kinds of things. So we don't like to have relationships we like to have them but we don't like to keep them and we don't know how to keep them. We give up quickly. Divorce is an easy option. So why not just create your own mate? And synthesize a human being. You get tired of it, you turn it off and put it in the closet, you know, like the vacuum cleaner. (laughs) You pull it out when you want it. Oh you don't want this one, and then you want, you start, it's probably going to happen one day. We're going to get to a really sick point of designing fake people.
Even so, "Black Velveteen" still leaves me feeling a bit awkward, by the detail in the song but mostly because of the knowledge that, yes, we're getting close to this goal. I wonder if the way I feel re: "Black Velveteen" is the way that Swift's contemporaries felt about "A Modest Proposal".
