I think what really GETS me about Miss Americana is that the lyrics do really have double meaning.
If you’re not paying attention, you’d be like, ‘oh, yeah, it’s about high school love’... but then you listen closer with the context of her singing about AMERICA, or rather, TO AMERICA and it’s politics. “You know I adore you, I’m crazier for you, than I was at 16, lost a film scene.” This is really obviously symbolism of, ‘I was so caught up in my own life and being distracted by my career I didn’t really notice you, American politics, needed my attention.’
I now kind of read the chorus in two ways, too. She could so easily just be singing to the Heartbreak Prince as a love interest, saying, “It’s you and me,” and that the rest of the world doesn’t approve of her being with him... but the chorus is so much more layered when you approach it from the singing about her society / her country angle. It’s like she’s saying to America, ‘remember when I was known for my 4th of July parties? You were my whole world’, but then the Republicans claimed her for their own in her silence, and people were bullying her and talking about her, so ‘they whisper in the hallway she’s a bad bad girl.’
So when she says, “the whole school is rolling fake dice”, (which is !!!!!) This is her saying she realises the new America she lives in is run by those who manipulate the system, (just like she said in that Guardian interview as well??!). Then she’s like taking a dig, like, if ‘you’re doing to play stupid games with power, then your prize isn’t a real prize, either’.
This analogy is made even more clear and easier to see in the second verse with, “my team is losing / batteries and bruising / I see the high fives between the bad guys,” and “American stories, burning before me / boys will be boys then, where are the wise men?’ Because guess who said, ‘boys will be boys’ famously???? A certain President.
The whole analogy is genius when it’s then mixed with the American high school symbolism as well? Because to anyone who isn’t American, the MOST American thing is movie vision of ‘high school’, of cliques, of cheerleaders and bleachers.
And there ain’t nothing more cliquey and high school than two party politics at the moment, huh?
ellievsbear
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gummygunk
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