Track of the Week: Paris Paloma’s powerful new take on misogyny, ‘Good Boy’
“I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down, I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.” Emma Thompson utters those words at the beginning of Paris Paloma’s new song, ‘Good Boy’, borrowed from journalist Rebecca Shaw. Before the music even begins, it’s clear that Paloma has done it again.
The Brighton-based artist is far away from America, but as Donald Trump somehow got elected president again and swiftly began ripping rights away, attacking access to healthcare and abortions, her track ‘Labour’ became a new protest anthem. That’s the type of song that deserves to be written on the walls of museums.
“All day, every day, therapist, mother, maid / Nymph, then a virgin, nurse, then a servant / Just an appendage, live to attend him / So that he never lifts a finger,” she sings, and on a re-released version, a cacophony of voices joins her. It has become a chant for the times, a song of rebellion and power. It’s a finger pointed at a huge issue that so many have faced: the nuanced misogyny of day-to-day injustices encountered by women in an enduringly patriarchal world.
Since its release, the passion in Paloma has never faded. While her debut album was a collection of songs touching on a collage of issues, the problem of misogyny remains at the centre and on ‘Good Boy’, she takes aim again.
“Office worker, soldier, CEO, hе’s bleedin’ and he’s blind / And I have nevеr seen a creature more pitiful than him / He drinks power like saltwater, all because he cannot swim,” she sings, painting a sickly image with a solid core. And that core is essentially men being red-pilled. With the idea of saltwater, she’s singing about men themselves buying into this image of what it is to be a man and in turn not only becoming part of the problem, but making themselves lonely and miserable too.
By the time the track hits the bridge, it’s clear that another anthem has been born and is primed to be chanted. “Good boy!” she proclaimed, singing, “You’re working exactly as intended / Has the penny dropped? You’re never gonna get it / Unrewarded for all of your defendin’ / From your loneliness epidemic.”
Tackling how misogyny hurts men too, while still holding them accountable for being the problem rather than joining the solution, Paloma packs such incredible nuance into this track while still keeping it hooking as a solid indie-folk tune. It’s a testament to her power as an artist, able to write songs with such depth and articulate them incredibly. But just like with ‘Labour’, there’s a sense that ‘Good Boy’ is bigger than her, written on behalf of the world and demanding to be heard by it.
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