Pop music’s relationship with sex has historically been more centred on, say, a 15-year-old Christina Aguilera rolling in the sand and imploring us to “rub her the right way”, or Rick James asserting “give it to me baby”, than a nuanced conversation about consent. While morally disappointing, it is hardly surprising; consent is fundamental to sex but has never been particularly sexy. A new project by Sadie Dupuis of indie band Speedy Ortiz aims to tackle the issue head on.
Recording under the name Sad13, Dupuis’s debut solo record, Slugger, posits that consent can be both an uncomplicated interaction and a more hampered complexity.
The drive behind this record comes from the position of wanting to educate, as a result of the schooling and society’s neglect in this area, Dupuis explains. “Affirmative consent is an absolutely central and vital part of a healthy sex life,” she says. “We aren’t taught to be caring and respectful in seeking our own pleasure.”
As a record, Slugger has a somewhat off-kilter pop aesthetic; it’s scrappy and danceable, but also intricate. It feels like a risky record, though Dupuis insists it is not. Though not considered a particularly compelling theme for a pop album, negotiations before sex can feel stilted and transactional; it was decoding these interactions that persuaded her to make Slugger.
Throughout pop’s chequered past on the topic of sexuality, men’s dogged pursuit of women is often stylised as romantic; and prior discussion about whether to have sex is actively removed from the discourse. At times, consent is obscured by “I can see it in your eyes” presumptions. Dupuis worries that the glorification of pushing sexual boundaries in pop music has displaced the topic.
“Blurred Lines came to mind as I was writing Get a Yes,” she says. “It is a response to pop songs that view silent communication, reading a look in someone’s eye, as mysterious and sexy, instead of potentially dangerous.”
Responses to Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke ranged from YouTube parodies to photo essays in which women displayed lyrics from the song that were said to them by their actual rapists. If something good came from the track and video – in which a fully clothed Robin Thicke is surrounded by parading semi-naked and hair-twirling women while he intones “You’re an animal!” – it was consent becoming a talking point in music.
But it was not just the opportunity to pursue this talking point that spurred Dupuis to make Slugger. She wanted to make consent exciting: “I’ve broached the topic of consent in several Speedy Ortiz songs, but wanted to do it really explicitly here – a song celebrating how exciting good communication about sex can feel.”
But she thinks we’re still very much behind when it comes to communication and sex. “We implicitly understand that characters are having sex in most TV shows and movies, but we rarely see the conversations and negotiations that lead up to that point. I think it would be huge to see consent centralised in more mainstream media representations of sex.”
Slugger addresses the plain affirmation of sexual consent, with lyrics such as “Don’t even put words in my mouth / You can’t guess out the gate what I’m all about / That’s why I try to say every time what I want from you.” But what if you can’t say what you want? Perhaps what is more exciting about Slugger is that it doesn’t reduce consent to the singular act of getting a yes, but explores the nuances that exist within. It makes a rallying call for people to candidly consider with what they want sexually.
This theme has been a consistent for Dupuis, but has it been exorcised in making Slugger? Not quite. “It’s always going to be important to me,” she says, “until expectations for human capability aren’t unfortunately tied to gender identity.”
