Regina Spektor’s ‘Small BillS’: the cute and the manic-zany as body-political strategies




John Richardson, Anna-Elena Pääkkölä

Kai Arne Hansen, Eirik Askeroi, Freya Jarmin

London and New York

2020

Popular Musicology and Identity: Essays in Honour of Stan Hawkins

178

195

18

978-1-138-32288-2

978-0-429-45175-1



In this article, we discuss Regina Spektor’s music video ‘Small Bills’ (2016) and Björk’s ‘The Gate’ (2017) with reference to the concepts of feminine cuteness and virtuality, the latter achieved with animation and CGI technology, and how these aspects are interwoven with the performers’ corporeality to suggest a critical take on capitalism (Spektor), interpersonal sensorial relations and the environment (Björk). Both videos imply interior worlds of the performers’ own invention, where the singing voice infuses and reorganizes these worlds as part of an emerging ‘body politic’. While the music videos represent different aesthetics and communicate different body-political aims, we approach them mainly through the concepts of cuteness, and to some extent also zaniness (Ngai 2012), strategies of feminine empowerment, virtuality and neosurrealism (Richardson 2012), indie pop aesthetics and envoicing strategies (including vocal masking, Hawkins 2009; and personal narrative, Hawkins and Richardson 2007). 



Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 14:45