Seven Songs a Week: Friday: Arca

Hello, Welcome to Seven Songs a Week.

Today's song is "Nonbinary" by Arca. Venezuelan musician, Arca release "Nonbinary" as the lead single off her forth studio album "KiCk I." The song shares Arca's belief of her non-binary identity is more than just an identity. I found out about Arca after realizing that she produced for some of my favorite artists like Kelela or Fka twigs. I feel in love with Arca after listening to "A Message" by Kelela, the juxtaposition of Kelela's angelic voice and Arca's mechanic production made "A Message" one of my favorite songs of all time. I linked the video to "A Message" down below in case anyone wants to check it out because we are not talking about "A Message," we are talking about "Nonbinary."


Single Cover for "Nonbinary"

Arca is abrasive and unabashed with her lyrics in this song, she begins stating "I do what I wanna do when I wanna do it." Arca doesn't regret her mantra because she has "the bags to prove" which is a double entrendre for money and eye bags, She worked hard for both. Arca goes on to mention that her body looks the way it does and she does not care if people don't approve nor does she care about assumptions made by strangers. "You don't know me...you'll never know me" Arca proclaims to people saying she had to easy to her careers "...I worked hard. Yeah, I've been lucky and I've been unlucky. It's both." This lyrics references her career with cosigns of Kanye West and Björk but still being a queer artist with little acclaim for a ten year career. One can also consider her luck being non-binary itself, it isn't good luck nor bad luck but both and neither at the same time.

Arca continues with making teasing those arguing with her stating "who do you think you're dealing with,...cause you're not "dealing with." there's no deal...it's real on my side." Arca deals with herd mentality in the next few lines with telling the listener to speak for themself and calling them a puppet for believe what other people think. She tries to get into the listeners' head repeating the lyric of "Speak of yourself..." trying to break them from their flawed thoughts. In the outro, Arca restates how she is non-binary in everything she does because "[she] can be friendly or [she] can be fake...[she] can be sexy or [she] could be sad [and] act bad just to be sweet." Arca leaves us with how fun it is to be non-binary before giggling and playfully calling her hater a pejorative.

Arca released the "Nonbinary" video on April 20th, 2020. The video, directed by Fredrik Hayman, alludes to the birth of goddess Venus multiple times while the lyrics crawl through the video in a crude manner. In the first clip, we see Arca nude on lying on her back with a scissor in her side. This image reminds me of Alexandre Cabanel "The Birth of Venus" in which we see a nude woman on her back, surrounded by chaos. In the next scene, We find Arca in labor, something attrributed to women, cisgender women. Even though Arca is a non-binary transgender woman, she is still a woman and is placing herself in traditionally feminine roles and artworks in this video as shown in the next clip. Arca references Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" in the penultimte scene again taking something extremely feminine and making it her own with metal, robotics and her own non-binary body. Last but not least, we see Arca arguing with herself during the intro which can be seen as her fighting with herself because of her gender dysphoria and insecurities about herself or her fighting with her haters. I have linked all of the art pieces I have referenced below as well as a behind-the-scenes clip that became a meme on twitter.

Alexandre Cabanel's "The Birth of Venus"

Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus"

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A post shared by Arca (@arca1000000)

I find this song to be a great opener to Arca's new album as it is a sort of thesis statement for the entire body of work. I reference the lyrics with my friends all the time and the song is a great listen, although, I will admit that Arca's music is definitely an acquired taste.

I give “Nonbinary” 5 references to Venus out of 5.

I hope you enjoyed my review. How do you feel about "Nonbinary"? Leave a comment and a request for Saturday down below.

I listed my sources below in case you are interested in reading more.

Take Care,

Jonathan