Listen to Walking Trophy. Then, try and stop rewinding. Then, try and stop singing along. Then, tell me this isn’t a killer era of women in pop, universally accessible, music.
Yesterday while running around town(s) I tuned away from NPR and after a third trip around the dial I ended up at this song. I then opened the window and turned the volume in my CRV up to 25. I’m certain every person that approached me planned on finding a 40 year old woman driving the car and reliving her youth.
Instead, they found a 40 year old woman in the body of a 40 year old man driving the car and reliving his/her youth.
I then found myself thinking of Guilty Pop in general and the first song that came to mind was…and if you’ve worked with me, you’d know…was this song (Free Ke$ha, always).
I heard this song, for probably the 1,000th time in the past month, and I have to say, I’m still kind of fine with it. What’s fascinating to me is that most of the times I hear it now are with some amazing adaptation of it. Seriously, google all of these …
Dance:
> Shape of You Lia KIm
> Shape of You Kyle Hanagami
> Shape of You Bhangra Empire
Cover:
> Shape of You Hari Ravi + Anil Chitrapu
> Shape of You Akriti Kakar
> Shape of You (cover by 彭偲禹) CHINESE VERSION
> Shape of You Acoustic Cover (< neat to see his talent … dude is pretty legit)
I’m kind of feeling like this is evidence of the fact that nothing heals like music. Nothing transcends boundaries like music. And nothing brings people together like music.
And to that end, I feel like Ed Sheeran’s video for this song showcases all the progressive social steps I’d like to see us take by the time my kids are active participants in the world. Post-racial. Strong women. Let the feedback be blowback. But good pop is capable of some powerful things.
Let’s do this, as #iamgrateful and #iamthankful for the reach of a pop song like this, and it’s great to see so many unifying threads at a time where we keep hearing more about the frayed ones.