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lovejustforaday · 4 months ago

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Gay Pride Anthems (According to Me) - Pull Up to the Bumper

Pull Up to the Bumper - Grace Jones

Genres: Synth Funk, Dance Pop

My next choice pick for a gay pride anthem rides the fine line between "implicit" and "explicit" in tackling a rather delicate act that happens between two consenting adults. It's also kinda about cars too, which is fine I guess (if you're into that sort of thing).

Yes, today we're gonna ram it right into someone's tailgate, and hone in on Grace Jones' 1981 dance hit "Pull Up to the Bumper".

THE ARTIST

Miss Grace Jones is, definitively, one of the most important queer icons of the 20th century. She is also perhaps one of the least likely, coming from her background as a pastor's daughter from Jamaica, one of the most violently homophobic countries to this day.

The Jones family moved to NY state when Grace was a child. Her earliest adulthood ventures were into the 60s bohemian hippy lifestyle, complete with experiments using LSD which she herself described as "experiments in living".

Soon after, she found herself as an upcoming star in the very queer world of NYC disco during the late 70s. During this time and after, she was a frequent patron and performer of gay clubs and bars, earning her stripes early on as an honorary member of the community. Mind you, Grace herself has always refused to label her sexuality.

Along with 1980's Warm Leatherette, Grace's 1981 Nightclubbing record, along with its surrounding fashion photo shoots and music videos, helped to reinvent the artist from a typical 70s disco diva into the one-of-a-kind, bold and sophisticated, genre-bending multimedia pop artist legend that she became in the 80s.

For all that has been (rightfully) said about what Lady Gaga did for bringing transgressive, queer, and avant-garde fashion to the public eye, Grace Jones herself had already been doing the same several decades earlier. Yes, in an age of new romantics and glam rockers wearing their mother's makeup, Grace Jones still managed to tower above all others as the one true queen of androgyny.

Her 80s image also very explicitly celebrated blackness in the most literal sense, appearing in outfits, makeup, and photo shoots that heavily accentuated and even occasionally exaggerated the lustrous dark tones of her skin. Pronounced, avant-garde, and striking images that interrogate race and gender were kinda her bread and butter in the 80s.

That said, I do have to mention that at least some part of how her signature image was delivered was inseparably informed by her collaborator and then-lover Jean-Paul Goude, a French photographer and (with emphasis) white man whose legacy I might very generously describe as....complicated (ie: pretty damn racist). 😬

Unfortunately, some of the work Goude produced with Grace as his muse, however pure his intentions (which I highly doubt), pretty unambiguously falls heavily under the umbrellas of fetishism, other-ing, dehumanization, and even minstrelsy. Perhaps worst of all is the 1985 music video for "Ladies and Gentleman : Miss Grace Jones" which features, and implicitly celebrates the aesthetics, of footage from mid 20th century minstrel shows and their deeply racist stereotypes.

Does it make it at all any better that the queen Miss Jones herself clearly saw merit in his "art" to continue working with him for so long? Could it really be an attempt at satire or subversion that simply doesn't land today like it did back then? Look, I don't know; I don't know how Grace herself understood his "art", and I'm white, so I'm quite out of my depth on this issue.

But I can definitely say that some of the photo shoots and especially the aforementioned music video make me fucking wince, and Goude himself has said a lot of very weird, plainly racist shit over the years, and his work clearly mimics the disdainful white gaze of minstrelsy which is frankly not fucking cool however "ironic" or "satirical" it is.

That said, Grace herself is a very powerful woman who has always been a master of controlling her narrative, known to make frivolous male interviewers back down with their tails between their legs. She doesn't need me to defend her, and it's as clear as day that her 1980s curated artistic image was still very much of her own will and design, as the striking avant-garde taste-maker that she was and continues to be to this day.

But the most notable example of her image is the ICONIQUE cover art of Nightclubbing. Grace's skin appears a metallic indigo, with the straight slants of the shoulder pads of her suit, and the sharpness of her cheekbones and iconic flat-top fade creating an all around highly geometric and strikingly surreal figure. She appears nude under her jacket, flashing the inner sides of her breasts, while sporting a cigarette with a piercing, stoic glare, gleefully playing with signifiers of gender, vulnerability, and power. It's simply one of the most effective cover arts I've ever seen; a perfect, minimal execution of a strong concept, and an image that'll no doubt burn itself into your memory permanently. It's 100% Grace Jones.

But enough already about Grace's image; what is there to say about one of the best songs on her Nightclubbing record?

THE SONG AND WHY IT SLAPS

"Pull Up to the Bumper" is one of two singles off Nightclubbing, both of which are easily the strongest tracks on the record.

Incidentally, the other single "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)" is an even bigger highlight in my opinion, but we're focusing on songs that are the GAYEST, and that most definitely describes "Pull Up to the Bumper".

The song itself is a classy, metropolitan synth funk number with a groovy, wobbly bass, brittle early 80s synths, and a reggae-inspired percussion section. True to its metaphor, it also samples car horns and highway noises. Much like the cover art of the record, its a brilliant execution of concept. I feel like I'm putting the pedal to the metal in some seriously luxurious six inch stilettos.

It's also a complete and total earworm. Those choruses? Easy enough to learn on the first listen, and so rhythmically satisfying. That little pre-post-chorus synth line jingle that goes "DO do do do doooooooOOOOOOET"? Immaculate, and I wanna hear it at least a dozen times more on every listen.

Grace sounds seductive and powerful as all hell on this track. I mean, she always does, but she REALLY does here. She possesses this really stoic contralto that makes it all the more sensual when she is inviting to the listener, like a mighty queen granting permission to be seen and bask in the glow of her goddessly stature.

A lot of funk songs like this tend to be described as having a "fat" or "meaty" bassline, but to my ears this one sounds incredibly thin, velvety, even wispy at times. There's a decent amount of negative space between notes and beats that gives the whole experience a kind of light and skippy feeling, and then there's that hollow-sounding style of early 80s mastering and production that can be heard in a lot of new wave and post-punk at the time. All of this of course adds to my enjoyment of the track - it's really got a one-of-a-kind, breezy vibe, but at the same time very tight and controlled.

And it's also just, so incredibly horny in that very refined and subtle kind of way. Truly, music for getting nasty after discarding your haute-couture on the carpeted lounge floor.

WHY IT'S GAY

It's about butt stuff. No really; the "bumper" in question is an ass, and every other lyric is just an extension of this metaphor: "Drive it in between", "Let me lubricate it", "Now that fits nice". Need I say more?

Then again, butt stuff itself can be totally straight too, so the men chanting along certainly helps to up the gay factor. Hold up - the last song had men chanting the chorus as well. Is this a thing? Does men chanting the chorus in unison automatically make a song more homoerotic? It's even in that one really gay song by that one gay guy that you possibly just maybe might've heard from last year. Huh. What to do with this information?

Of course, Grace Jones herself is also one of the most beloved pop divas of her time, and she was an early avant-garde and androgynous fashionista trailblazer who opened so many doors for challenging femmes and gender-bending fashion to make it into the spotlight. Even when not singing about necessarily "queer" topics, her image and her energy make it so that everything she touches has a sprinkle of queer residue that won't rub off (as it shouldn't!)

Honestly, the fact that a song that this blatantly celebrated "buggery" was a US charts dance hit in 1981, coinciding with the beginning of a resurgence of anti-LGBTQ hate and paranoia in the wake of the then-newly announced AIDS crisis, is kind of a miracle unto itself. I guess the car metaphors got it past the filters.

Of course, dance genres have always been more predominantly queer spaces than in other genres, as queer folks have often sought refuge upon the dancefloor. Perhaps its not so surprising that an artist like Grace made it to the top of the dance charts during a time when the community so desperately needed to be seen.

All in all, what we got here folks is a rather precious artifact of queer history in the 1980s, a time when gay anthems were needed more than ever. During an age of misinformation, scare tactics, and persecution, Grace Jones was a beacon of hope, a proud, powerful, and prominent image of an androgynous iconoclast who very much took part in and celebrated the queer community.

Now if you'll excuse me, this song has reminded me that my gay ass DOESN'T have a driver's license, and I have a bus to go catch. Toodles!

#music review #dance pop #1981 #80s #1980s #grace jones #pull up to the bumper #nightclubbing #synth funk #song review #gay pride anthems #lgbtq #pride month #gay anthems

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