I've never really been into Swedish popstar Tove Lo, so I wasn't fully prepared for how much I would be obsessed with her new song "Disco Tits." It's a really odd disco-inflected pop song: the monotone vocal sample that opens the song is a choice. With raunchy lyrics about "hard nipples" and lots of drugs, it seems like every couple lines of the song has a new hook that will loop around your brain for the rest of the day. If a lot of Carly Rae Jepsen's work is about the floaty feeling of love, Tove Lo's "Disco Tits" takes that tingly sensation and mixes it with cocaine and poppers for extra amplification. Basically, "Disco Tits" is a gay pop fan's catnip and I'm here for every second of it.
There's currently a debate going on about why "gays love mediocre pop music," a.k.a. fun, fast songs about love and sex largely performed by women. Although I admit it's kind of embarrassing that I have tried on several occasions to convince people that Lady Gaga's critically reviled ARTPOP is a new American classic, I don't really think all that music that we love has to be lumped together as "mediocre," even if it's ultimately being celebrated. That feels like an order established by straight men and repeated by gay men to diminish the accomplishments of women artists. As queer people, I think we should be proud of not just who we are, but the things we like. Let's give a little more credit to women artists who make dance-floor-ready pop music and not carry so much baggage about it.
