Glitter Your Mama - Lonely Lady
Glitter Your Mama (GYM) describes Lonely Lady as "a modern-day 1950s housewife—lost in routines and reruns...and has become just another product on the shelf in the pantry of her sub-suburban life." The quaint acoustic melody paired with the husky voice of GYM lulls us into a false sense of safety. The same way the woman in the narrative is by her circumstances. The song begins with the depiction of how every day starts for the wife, a picture of domesticity: "I wake up with a cheek against my head/staring at embroidered daisies." But then small, seemingly harmless things ruffle you as you listen, like the lyric, "The dance we do before you go to work / you ask me if I cleaned your shirt / and I do." After that, every lyric in the song oscillates between unsettling and harmless. Which is exactly what it would feel like as someone who cannot live for themselves. To shut down the feeling of loneliness and fear because you aren't allowed to be anything other than what is asked of you. I love the mellow, southern drawl of the artist's voice. It calms you and also adds to the image of the 1950s suburban wife that everyone imagines. With a synth giving a modern edge to the otherwise bare instrumentation of a guitar and a piano, though, the calm feels deceptive. As the song explores the way a tradwife loses her sense of self in trying to please everyone around her, the loneliness of a life lived for someone else is clear in the otherwise soothing melody. Like a balm over an ache. Lonely Lady by Glitter Your Mama is like a lullaby to the wife, just a small reprieve to keep the nightmares at bay.