#amirqua

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“Loveeeeeee Song” : Tones of Marxism in Modern Capitalist Angst Expressed Through Pop Music

“I don’t want to give you the wrong impression / I need love and affection”

— “Loveeeeee Song”, Rihanna feat. Future, 2012

Graft:

Love (#365efe), and, affection

Network:

loan | loaf ($$$) | vend | affect (to move toward) ٠: ir ٠: direct | ion (state of action)

Hear me out : Rihanna and Future’s “Loveeeeeee Song” as an anachronistic critique of the governmental bailout of “too-big-to-fail” corporations and corporate personhood.

It was a fleeting idea. But I imagined some tug-of-war between the extant capitalist infrastructure and an expanding state body resulting in the carrying through one of the more drastic fiduciary duties of a free government when it comes to intervening in a laissez-faire market, said government being a corporation itself, and said duty being bailouts.

Rather than an appeal to consumers, the singers’ lyrica embody corporations’ market appeal, this time pandering (rather seductively) to the government to subsidize their losses.

“I don’t want to give you the wrong impression /

“I need love and affection /

“And I hope I’m not sounding too desperate /

…

“I’m not asking for the world, maybe /

“You can give me what I want, baby /

“Come hold me tight and when I’m drowning, save me

Basically if you (the government) are really bout that capitalist life, let’s get down to brass tacks. Or gold stacks? Nah, just fiat green backs.

Both the government and the corporations were faced with a question that placed them at the center: How do we save a market when we’re the ones it depends on, saddled as we be with debt national and international alike?

That marked a change or maturation to a subsequent stage of capitalism in America, a quiet renewed fusion of interests intended to seal the fissures that formed, to fill in the places where the companies’ lifeblood hemorrhaged like a Victorian hemophiliac.

“We both grown so how we feel we can let it show

Public-facing, despite socialist (and I use that term lightly) emergency fiduciary infrastructure, one can imagine the corporations’ request that the illusion of a free market be preserved:

“If I’m your girl, say my name boy, let me know I’m in control /

Did the bailouts stipulate governmental shares in tradable companies? I don’t think so. In fact I could be wrong. But:

“Typically, the government also sets higher regulation and oversight of the company, requiring them to restructure…or cap salaries of executives for a time period. Governments provide bailouts in order to maintain regulation of the overall market and economy, and to avoid further collapse of the financial system.”

(Cornell Law 2020)

So I imagine “Loveeeeee Song” captures a subconscious collective angst experienced on the part of free market companies when the federal government intervened.

“Why window shop when you own this? /

Then there’s government bureaucrats leaning over one’s shoulder in the business sector.

“Don’t slip, don’t slip /

And a latent desire for subsidy and privately held means of production to be handed over to the state?

“I just wanna be in your possession /

Marxist sentiments within a capitalist system would be the equivalent of a Freudian death wish or a red scare. But ideally only rears its head as a fleeting but purportedly fatal-to-capitalism-and-freedom solution as one lays out paths toward a return to solvency with minimal disenfranchisement.

Rihanna and Future’s tune was released in 2012. Four years after the TARP bailout that included Chrysler motors. Not as timely a response if we’re limited to our own borders.

But Spain endured a similar economic hardship in 2012. This all being spun from straw here, there’s still room for artistic commiseration with a neighbor across the pond. And in some fateful wyrding way that may have been wrapped up in the liminality of the song.

Some of these musical artists are impressively innovative and inspiringly aware.

Maybe “Loveeeeeee Song” was a way of processing the shock to our exceptional exceptionalism. Some of us will need bailouts in life. Some of us won’t. I know I’ve been the one in need more than a few times in my life.

Anyways, we can learn to understand ourselves through others. Enduring similar situations bridges convivial realms that seem inaccessible by mundane standards yet grant us access when filtered through different media such as art and music.

So…ludibrium or laudi?

٠ع إِ ن ة ئ