Deep Voices 112: Bug Music

Buzz buzz

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In a recent episode of the talk show Hot Ones (one of the world’s top two chicken related interview shows), SZA showed up in a brown bug mask. Sean Evans, the host, welcoming her, says, “SZA, if that is SZA, welcome to the show.” “Is it me?” she responds. “I’m tired of being me.” She explains that wearing the mask, “brings me so much peace of mind … being a person is so daunting. Being in your own skin, the whole Sheboygan... I’m just tired of being not a bug.”

I wrote a few weeks ago about my initial reaction as a teenager after reading Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, about how it did not occur to me that Gregor Samsa was not actually a bug, and that it may have only been a metaphor. It seems that SZA and I had the same read. She may have also read it as fan fiction.

I learned of SZA’s bug situation on my friend Dana Meyerson’s Instagram, where she was posting, I think with empathy and perhaps a smidge of jealousy, about SZA’s new insect form. In response, sent Dana a link to listen to one of my favorite songs, 1979’s “I’m a Bug” by the Urinals. “I'm a bug/So are you, baby,” are some of the best lyrics penned ever in my opinion. A love song for insects, or for those tired of not being one. 

Dana suggested that Bug Music be a Deep Voices theme and here we are. All the music on this week’s playlist includes an artist name, song title, or album title with a mention of a bug—Mosquitos, Max Roach, “Termites,” Spiderland. Below, I’ve tried to get to the heart of what makes a bug song.

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Each week, with Deep Voices, I send out an hour-long playlist. There’s always a mix of genres and eras, with the emphasis of the unheralded. I’m doing my best to herald it with interviews and essays. Paying subscribers to Deep Voices get an additional monthly playlist compiling the best music of the month. I work hard to discover and compile thrilling music that may not otherwise come across your airwaves (or streaming service). A paid subscription to Deep Voices is about a dollar a week: cheap! If you enjoy the newsletter, please consider supporting with a paid subscription.

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Playlist notes:

• After the Urinals, the first pieces of bug related music I thought of were SPIDERR by Bladee and Spiderland by Slint, two huge albums for me that don’t really have much to do with each other. And yet! 
  
  Bladee, a Swedish semi-superstar, caters to a Gen Z audience, with cartoonish, overblown beats and a nasal voice Auto-Tuned into Muppet territory. What he often chooses to sing/rap about is being sad and not normal and trying to push through it and try to be happy. I love him, obviously. SPIDERR (not sure why the second R, but my working theory is that he feels like he’s not your average spider), is my favorite of his albums. The cover has a large shirtless man with a bulging six pack clutching a spider and its egg sack. It looks like he’s presenting it to you in the same way you’d give a teacher an apple: Here, a benevolent gift that conveniently fits in the palm of your hand.
  
  “BLUE CRUSH ANGEL” is my favorite song on the album. It’s a quiet, pensive song (relatively). He says he, “Felt I almost lost my mind, had to take some time.” Later, more koan-like, we get my favorite line: “I put a window in the wall.” What a better way to talk about learning to see. 

  In 1991, Bladee was a couple years away from being born. That’s the year Spiderland was made by Slint, a group of boys in Kentucky. Which is a ways away from Sweden. No word on if Bladee has heard the album. 
  
  Much has been written about the mysteries of Spiderland, an itchy, nervous, album of genuinely entrancing guitar music. Most of the time, vocalist Brian McMahan pretty much talks quietly (with moments of irritated explosion), with lyrics that are slightly clearer in terms of basic sentence structure than what Bladee is talking about, but whose meaning is perhaps more opaque. On the album’s opener, “Breadcrumb Trail,” McMahan talks about happening upon a carnival and taking a roller coaster ride with a fortune teller who vomits when they get back to solid ground. I think it’s flirtatious? But the song is eerie and mystical and searching in the way that a bunch of young men think might make them seem more mature than they really are. The song’s power falls somewhere in the liminal space between where they are and what they’re reaching for, which they don’t ultimately grasp. 

  
  When I think of spiders I think of talented web weavers but I think of lone wolves. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spider with a spider lover or a spider friend. I imagine coupledom happens, but it’s out of sight. When I see spiders, it’s often with their grand creations, these majestic works of art, made of silk from their bodies, which can take down prey of all kinds but are, in a human world, entirely too vulnerable. That is what I think of when I think of the members of Slint and of Bladee, special artists whose work’s intricacy is undeniable. But it’s also inherently teetering on destruction, emotionally. Beautiful but easily destroyed. The work of visionaries often must stand undefended. I am unsure where exactly Spiderland is, but I am sure they’ve all spent plenty of time there. 

• Of all the songs on here, I think that Pariah’s “Caterpillar” is the one that most sounds like its animal inspiration. The percussion creepy crawls, skittering along like multiple little legs. I put that song before “Bleached Butterfly,” a song that feels very much like it’s spreading its wings. 
  

• One of the more delightfully confusing elements of the disco classic “Lady Bug” is that this song is by Bumblebee Unlimited, a bumblebee themed disco group. What does a ladybug have to do with a bumblebee?

  But the thing about “Lady Bug” that I love is that it’s so…good? Not a given for an insect disco novelty song. It begins with such a powerful introduction. There’s a conga beat being pounded out, then the bass saunters in, then the guitars, then the hum of a synthesizer, and eventually a clomping piano. It builds slowly, and the final product, once it gets going, has an orchestral swell. It’s a virtuosic instrumental, and I have no idea that, after composing it, the producers thought that what it needed was a bug-themed vocal performance. 

  Those producers, Patrick Adams and Greg Carmichael, were masters of disco, the force behind dozens (hundreds?) of iconic tracks. Some of them were silly, some straight forward. They had a group called Universal Robot Band, who had exactly zero robot related songs (but one “Flintstones” one). How did they arrive at ladybugs? And why ladybugs on an album by a bee-themed group? The cover of the album, which is called Sting Like a Bee, literally features a woman in a sequined yellow and black striped outfit. 

  
  The song’s vocals are so weird. A squeaky woman’s plea: “Just let me be your ladybug/24 hours a day I’ll give you love.” In the background people are saying “buzz buzz buzz buzz,” which, to further confuse things, I am almost positive is a bumblebee sound. Towards the end, there’s some smooching, shouts of “I love you” and “I love you too,” and then a quiet “sting.” Definitely not ladybug stuff. A ladybug wouldn’t hurt you.

  
  You know what, as I write this, genuinely baffled by this interspecies disco, I am realizing I am suffering again from the poison of literalness. Who cares? Let the bug take over. I need to change. Metamorphose. SZA was onto something. Buzz buzz…