BACK ISSUE
Remember All That Teen Angst? (feat. Fefe Dobson and Hannah Giorgis)
Sugar We're Going Down, Gotta Get Outta This Town
This week, Josh and Tracy take you back to days of dark eyeliner and teen angst to give you all things Black and Alternative. First, they unpack the meaning and history of Alternative Music with help from cultural critic Hannah Giorgis. Then, they sit down with living rock legend Fefe Dobson to talk about her music, defying categorization, and forging your own path as a Black creative.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
[0:00]
Josh Gwynn: Yo Trace.
Tracy Clayton: Yo what?
Josh Gwynn: Remember that time we took a trip to our brand spanking new state-of-the-art Back Issue laboratory?
Tracy Clayton: Oh yes, our laboratory, which absolutely 100% exists in real life. It gave us our non-scientific scientific study on the sonics of soul music, right?
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
Tracy Clayton: So that was where we tested folks to see if they could tell if somebody was black or not by the sound of their singing voice.
Josh Gwynn: Right. And I have an idea. (laughs)
Tracy Clayton: Uh-uh (negative). Uh oh.
Josh Gwynn: Did the maniacal laughing put you at ease?
Tracy Clayton: No.
Josh Gwynn: No?
Tracy Clayton: You know I hate it when you have ideas. When has it ever ended well?
Josh Gwynn: I think we should do another non-scientific scientific experiment. And I think you would make the perfect subject.
Tracy Clayton: Can I get a consent form, where I sign off on this actually happening so that when it goes wrong, I can take you to TV court?
Josh Gwynn: Okay. I promise, I promise, I promise you'll be safe.
Tracy Clayton: Uh-huh (affirmative).
Josh Gwynn: Side effects may include confusion, dissociation, dizziness, foggy memory, insomnia.
Tracy Clayton: Okay. Well, I already have those, so it's fine. (laughs)
[1:21]
[Theme begins]
Speaker 1: Beyonce? You look like Luther Van Dross.
Speaker 2: Ho, but make it fashion.
Speaker 3: But you ain't heard that from me.
Speaker 4: Fierce.
Tracy Clayton: (Singing) You see, when you do clown over stuff, the clown comes back to bite.
Speaker 5: I don't get no sleep cause of y'all-
Speaker 6: It's Britney, bitch.
Speaker 7: We were rooting for you, Tiffany. We were all rooting for you. Speaker 8: Who said that?
Josh Gwynn: Welcome to Back Issue.
Tracy Clayton: A weekly podcast that revisits formative moments in pop culture that we still think about.
Josh Gwynn: This week: alternative music, but make it black.
Tracy Clayton: Oh man. [sings] It's so hard being black in the world today. Nobody knows me, understands what I say.
Josh Gwynn: Bars.
[CLIP] Ike Wilis: The whole building blocks of rock and roll. And they start in the black community.
[CLIP] Kelis: Who cares if it's rock or hip hop or R&B, what difference does it make? Do you feel it? You know what I'm saying? If I can make you feel it, then I don't care what you call it.
[CLIP] Ify Nwadiwe: People were like, "Paramore's black music," and all the black people were like "Oh yeah!"
Josh Gwynn: Each week we'll go back into the past and revisit unforgettable moments we all think we remember.
Tracy Clayton: And learn what they can teach us about where we are right now. I am TV's actor and director Tracy Clayton.
Josh Gwynn: And I'm manic pixie dream child Josh Gwynn.
Tracy Clayton: Yours was better than mine.
Josh Gwynn: You've been brought here today to participate in a non- scientific scientific study. We have constructed a study to see if you can determine the era, the genre, and the artist of the following piece of music. Do you agree to participate?
Tracy Clayton: Yes, I begrudgingly agree. Let's do it.
Josh Gwynn: Okay. Scientist! Run that back!
[Music, fades] Chick, “Hermit”
Tracy Clayton: It sounds like the Zombie girls. Cranberries? The Pomegranates?
Josh Gwynn: Not the pomegranates!
Tracy Clayton: The Kumquats? The Kiwis! I have no idea who that was, but if I had to guess, I would say a contemporary of the Cranberries at least.
Josh Gwynn: Okay. So what would you call that music? That genre of music.
Tracy Clayton: Like grunge, the kind of music that white people wearing too much flannel and ripped jeans make in their mom's garages. Am I right? What did I win? Tell me what I won!
Josh Gwynn: You're actually right!
Tracy Clayton: I knew it!
Josh Gwynn: But as you know, I love me some Mariah Carey and Glitter, which I maintain is good. And she's always been known for her power ballads and her sweet pop love songs. But did you know that in the nineties, when she was recording her certified diamond record Daydream, which has songs like Fantasy, One Sweet Day, Always Be My Baby. She worked on a secret alternative album. Just for fun.
Tracy Clayton: Who did?
Josh Gwynn: Mariah Carey!
Tracy Clayton: You trying to tell me that she had an alternative grungy album thing that she did?
Josh Gwynn: Right! So she writes about it in her memoir, which she just released called The Meaning of Mariah Carey. She talked about slipping into this grunge alter ego and playing around with the style of punk lite, white female singers who were super popular at this time.
Tracy Clayton: Why? Why did she do that?
Josh Gwynn: Because she said that during this era, the women that were super popular, like Alanis Morissette, Shirley Manson, Courtney Love. If you look at their image, as opposed to Mariah Carey's image at this point, she's still married to Tommy Mottola as we went over during the Glitter episode and what that meant.
Tracy Clayton: Not a lot of freedom there.
Josh Gwynn: Exactly. Mariah Carey will say that every move she made was calculated and manicured. And so she recorded this experimental alternative album as a way that she puts it 'to break free, let loose, and express her misery'. She didn't feel like she was given enough autonomy to express that side of her.
Tracy Clayton: Wow. So she invented a whole new person and this person wore lots of flannel.
Josh Gwynn: But Tracy, I too have an alternative alter ego.
Tracy Clayton: Okay. So I have some questions. So we're jumping into alternative music, right?
Josh Gwynn: And we're going to talk about how it connects to blackness, because you know it does.
Tracy Clayton: What does alternative music even mean?
Josh Gwynn: That's a really good question. [crosstalk 00:05:56]
Tracy Clayton: Asking for a friend, because I clearly know what it is, but my friend is shy and she had wanted me to ask what the fuck we're talking about?
[Music begins, fades]
Josh Gwynn: You know, I think it has a lot of definitions depending on who you ask or when you ask them. But for this episode, I talked to cultural critic and writer from the Atlantic Hannah Giorgis.
Hannah Giorgis: My own personal, extremely reductive definition or framing has always been anything that would play on the soundtrack of the OC. Really just stuff that soundtracks like a lot of either teen angst or young adult angst oftentimes associated with white people, even though they don't own the genre by any means.
Tracy Clayton: Okay. So I have this playlist, this Spotify playlist that I really, really love that playlist is called Mister White Folks. I don't know why, because there are also miss white ladies on there too?
Josh Gwynn: Okay, okay.
Tracy Clayton: I don't know. Okay. So let's scroll through and see who was on this playlist. And you can tell me-
Josh Gwynn: If it applies?
Tracy Clayton: Yes. Okay. 30 Seconds to Mars.
Josh Gwynn: Absolutely.
Tracy Clayton: Evanescence.
Josh Gwynn: Absolutely.
Tracy Clayton: The Killers.
Josh Gwynn: Of course.
Tracy Clayton: My boo, Miss Hayley Williams Paramore, my alabaster Nubian queen.
Josh Gwynn: You know what-
Tracy Clayton: Okay. So I'm getting a good idea of the kind of music that we mean.
Josh Gwynn: Okay.
Tracy Clayton: But I do have a confession.
Josh Gwynn: Okay.
Tracy Clayton: So Hannah mentioned the OC, right?
Josh Gwynn: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tracy Clayton: I have never, in my black ass life seen an episode of the OC. I can't tell you what the theme song sounds like, I can't tell you who the people are.
Josh Gwynn: But I think I might have another reference that you might get because you watched Mad TV. Right?
Tracy Clayton: Absolutely.
Josh Gwynn: Do you remember-
Tracy Clayton: I know where this is going.
Josh Gwynn: Yes!
Tracy Clayton: Pretty, pretty- (singing)
[Music begins, fades] Lisa Loeb, “Pretty White Kids with Problems”
Tracy Clayton: So I remember this so vividly as if it were yesterday. I loved sketch comedy TV so much, including Mad TV. This sketch Pretty White Kids with Problems--I’m sure it still holds up because it was a show that spoofed all those scripted and reality TV shows that were basically about pretty, rich white kids with problems.
Josh Gwynn: Mm-hmm. 90210, Melrose Place.
Tracy Clayton: Yeah, and then they would have these very special episodes where, “We’re going to talk about race, and then we’re going to get back to our pretty white kids with problems. So, it feels like we’ve nailed down the type of music that we’re talking about right?
Josh Gwynn: Yup..
Tracy Clayton: I have an idea..
Josh Gwynn: Okay!
Tracy Clayton: Are you the nervous one now? Doesn’t feel good, does it?
Josh Gwynn: I am!
Tracy Clayton: Mwahaha. It’s actually a good idea. I think you’re really going to enjoy it. So, it’s basically a gift from me to you. You’re welcome.
Josh Gwynn: Oh, okay.
Tracy Clayton:I feel like, to really open this episode up and open this conversation up, we need to talk to somebody who was there, like not in the TRL crowd but performing on TRL, right?
Josh Gwynn: Okay...
Tracy Clayton: And I just like everything black. You know how I am. So I thought maybe it would be great if we have somebody who experienced it as a black person, like a black music artist.
Josh Gwynn: Shut up.
Tracy Clayton: Yup, I think we should talk to Fefe Dobson.
Josh Gwynn: Let’s go!
Tracy Clayton: Doesn’t it feel like Christmas
Josh Gwynn: You know how formative Fefe Dobson was to me?
Tracy Clayton: I absolutely do, which is why she’s the perfect person to talk to, right?
Josh Gwynn: Right.
Tracy Clayton: Right. But first, before you get to your gift, I need to know a little bit more about this alter ego of yours, because you tried to just slide it in there real quick, like I wasn’t gon’ have no follow ups. Please introduce me to this person. Is there a name?
Josh Gwynn: No, it didn’t have a name. I learned from Beyoncé that you do not give your alter ego a name. Otherwise, people are going to ask you about it until you want to kill it, like she confessed to on that one interview on Extra with AJ Calloway from 106 & Park, the only iteration of 106 & Park we recognize.
Tracy Clayton: Was there another one?
[CLIP] AJ Calloway: Sasha Fierce is done? She's not done, is she?
[CLIP] Beyoncé: Sasha Fierce is done.
[CLIP] AJ Calloway: She's over?
[CLIP] Beyoncé: I don't know. I killed her. She, yes.
[CLIP] AJ Calloway: Really?
Tracy Clayton: So we buried the lead. Beyonce is a murderer. Wow. I'm ready for that true crime series.
Josh Gwynn: The missing case of Sasha Fierce. Look, she was tired.
Tracy Clayton: Missing Sasha. She really was. And honestly, I kind of understand. I get it.
Josh Gwynn: I'm taking that lesson. And so no, my alter ego doesn't have a name. It's more just a part of me that only certain people get to know. You know what I mean?
Tracy Clayton: When did you develop this alter ego.
Josh Gwynn: In high school? I think.
[Music begins]
Josh Gwynn: I've always been a big fan of music. I remember stories being told to me and my family of when I would go crazy at the age of three, when Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey would pop on the TV, which I would like to point out is foreshadowing. I'm just saying.
Tracy Clayton: Absolutely. Same thing happens to this day.
Josh Gwynn: I am who I am.
Tracy Clayton: And have always been.
Josh Gwynn: And my parents have this drawer underneath the TV that is filled to the brim with CDs, some still unopened to this day.
Tracy Clayton: That's beautiful.
Josh Gwynn: And inside this drawer, you get a sense of who my parents are. You get traces of George Clinton and Cameo and Maze and early nineties hip hop, like NWA and Queen Latifah.
Tracy Clayton: Your daddy was on NWA?
Josh Gwynn: Yeah! My dad loved NWA.
Tracy Clayton: Okay, dad! Alright! I ain’t mad.
Josh Gwynn: And for my mom, you'd see Nancy Wilson and Sade and Anita Baker, Rachelle Ferrell, and anyone who would sing during a champagne brunch.
Tracy Clayton: I vote that champagne brunch be an official genre of music if it's not already because that is such a beautiful descriptor. I love it.
Josh Gwynn: I feel like inside of that drawer was where I got a lot of history lessons. I got a lot of cultural connection because I went to a high school where it was an all boys Catholic school. And I was one of the very, very few black kids in my class.
[music fades]
Tracy Clayton: That sounds awful.
Josh Gwynn: I was a queer black kid at this really religious school where there weren't many queer people or black people. And so I'm not going say it was fun. It wasn't a joy ride. It's taken me a really long time in order to feel secure in who I am and secure in how I feel and secure in my being. But at that time, I didn't feel like that. You know that being the only one in a room can be really isolating.
Tracy Clayton: I've heard that it can be. Yeah, as a black girl from Kentucky, absolutely. [Music begins, changes]
Josh Gwynn: And so when I found this music that was all about being alone and being misunderstood, let's just say it came to me at the right point. At the right time. I wanted to get out of the body that I was in, out of the skin that I had, out of the bones that made up my body. I just felt such a incongruency with how I felt and how everyone else seemed to feel. You know those moments where you can see someone experiencing something outside of yourself? And you're like, “That, that's how I feel!” There was a song by Linkin Park called Crawling.
[Music begins]
[CLIP] Linkin Park, Crawling
[music fades]
Josh Gwynn: And you can hear Chester Bennington's voice. And it just feels full of anxiety and anger. And he wailed these emotions that I felt inside. And it felt like he was holding up a mirror to me and didn't even know it.
[music changes]
Josh Gwynn: Then you have grad school me, which is many years later, right? Jump ahead to New York City. I've left Southern California. Me and my friends are gallivanting around Brooklyn with our earrings and undercuts. One night, some friends and I went to this bar, right? Cause they were going to have an emo karaoke night. And the idea was that it was going to feel like a concert. You were going to have a live backing band. They were going to play the music and sing the backup vocals.
Josh Gwynn: They were going to have to play the music and sing the backup vocals.
Tracy Clayton: Yes. You had background singers?
Josh Gwynn: Yes. While you got to sing songs by like Paramore, Dashboard Confessional, Yellow Card, Rage Against the Machine.
Tracy Clayton: I might go outside for something like that. That sounds amazing.
Josh Gwynn: There was a problem though. There was one little problem.
Tracy Clayton: What was it?
Josh Gwynn: It was nothing but white people in that room. I was the only black person in that room.. And it took me back to how I felt in high school where the white gaze just felt so suffocating.
Tracy Clayton: Yeah. Like you can feel it on your body.
[music ends]
Josh Gwynn: And I just kept thinking to myself like, "What am I doing here? These people judge me. Are all these people are looking at me? Am I the one that's wrong? I wish there were more black people here. Why does it have to be like this? [crosstalk 00:14:57] Karaoke." Yeah, I've been here before.He just out trying to have a good time, sing the songs. And you got to go through all of this existential race checklist. You know?
Josh Gwynn: You know?
[Music begins]
Tracy Clayton: That's just too much.
Josh Gwynn: It's a lot. And so I sat there and I had to make a decision, is it worth it? The three minutes and 30 seconds that I will have of fun versus engaging with the super uncomfortable, problematic racial politics that are playing out in front of me. Again. So, you know what I did?
Tracy Clayton: You decided that it was in fact worth it. So you pulled out your thing, flipped it and reversed it. And then everybody clapped, and that was the best time of your life.
Josh Gwynn: I pretended like I didn't even want to go up and sing in the first place.
Tracy Clayton: What? There were backup singers.
Josh Gwynn: It was just, it felt too heavy. It felt too...
Tracy Clayton: Too loaded?
Josh Gwynn: Too loaded. And when you find yourselves in situations like that, you're doing this work of is the experience that I want to have worth it? Does it weigh the same as the work that I'm going to have to do in order to have it?
Tracy Clayton: All this unpaid labor. It's so wild how it pops up everywhere. But you know what though? A slight deviation, I think I would rather be a background singer than like the front, the foreground person. So if I was there, I would've been like, "All right, we got this."
Josh Gwynn: If you were there, I probably would have felt a lot more comfort, The thing about anxiety is that it's really trying to protect you, right? It's trying to tell you, "I remember when you felt unsafe in a situation like this. I remember what this [crosstalk 00:16:55] experience did to you. So let me let you know you need to get the fuck up out of here."
Tracy Clayton: Right, right, exactly.
Josh Gwynn: And I listened.
[Music ends]
Tracy Clayton: Dang. It's really interesting how dynamic this conversation is, right? Because when I hear other people talking about black people listening to different types of music, it always sounds so contemptuous. It's like the people that are having a conversation, they assume that these black folks who are talking about what it was like to be into quote unquote white music, it seems like a lot of people think that they're just like, "Oh, I'm such a special snowflake, poor me." You know like, "I'm a fish out of water." And it's not, you know what I mean? These are things that impact you and your life, especially as you're growing up and you're growing and forming the person that you're ultimately going to become.
Josh Gwynn: Absolutely. Because it wasn't my black friends or my black family that had an issue with the music that I listened to. They just wanted to know if it slapped really good.
Tracy Clayton: How's the baseline?
Josh Gwynn: Exactly. It was the white people and how their expectations of blackness would impact me and how I'm supposed to act and how I'm supposed to perform and how I'm supposed to be. And I talked to Hannah about that.
[18:11 Interview with Hannah Giorgis]
Hannah Giorgis: When we have sort of broad national conversations about black people in alternative spaces or with alt leanings or these sorts of things that we talk about as being kind of separate from the broader quote unquote black experience. I struggle with that sometimes because the sort of implication underneath that is the other black people judged me for this. And I was told that I was white and I'm not black enough. And I found the resistance that I've met and the resistance that a lot of other people I've met has been more often from white people in these spaces.
Josh Gwynn: There are lots of reasons that this type of music speaks to a lot of black people, especially in moments of political strife and especially when people feel politically isolated, because racism is a part of everything! And it isolates us and it gaslights us. And it makes you feel like you're alone in your pain. And this is the type of music that focuses on isolation. So wouldn't it make sense that some black people would like it?
Hannah Giorgis: The other thing that racism does is it robs us of life literally, but also of individuality and anteriority and of raw emotion and to be seen as all these things that are fundamentally human and all of those things that are so often expressed in this music. And so when there is racism in these spaces, when it does push black folks out, what it means is that we lose access to one way of expressing all of those things.
Josh Gwynn: Okay. So when Tumblr was big, RIP Tumblr.
Tracy Clayton: RIP Tumblr.
Josh Gwynn:I found this super cut with all these bands from like Blink-182 to Yellow Card.
Tracy Clayton: Oh my gosh.
Josh Gwynn: If that meme, "I hate it here," was a genre of music, it would be this music.
Tracy Clayton: Perfect, chef's kiss.
[CLIP] Blink 420, “This Town”]
Tracy Clayton: But if anybody feels this way, it's fucking black people. You know what I mean?
Josh Gwynn: Okay.
Tracy Clayton: If anybody wants to literally get out of here, guess who it is. Hi, me, me right here. The one whose rights you stripped away. The one who can't walk into a karaoke bar without being stared at by a bunch of white people. Get me out, untag me. I want out. It really makes sense when you think about it, especially today, and you don't have to think that hard, that the feelings of isolation and not fitting in and needing to go someplace else where you're not always bombarded with being rejected by your government or by your boss, or having a culture that everybody steals and then punishes you for. You know what I mean? It makes sense that black folks would latch on to those things.
Josh Gwynn: And Tracy, so I don't think anyone is trying to say that these bands were necessarily considering the quote unquote black experience when creating this music.
Tracy Clayton: We are not suggesting that at all. That is a good point. Disclaimer. Blink-182 was not speaking for the people, just want to say.
[Music begins]
Josh Gwynn: Okay. But, I just think that the lyrics and the feeling of urgency that fills the genre, just so happens to parallel a lot of black Americans’ experiences here, ironically, right?
Tracy Clayton: Yeah. They're all singing about feeling out of place in a world that was created for and run by them.
Josh Gwynn: Right?
Tracy Clayton: And so I hear, and I'm just like, I actually really, really get this.
Josh Gwynn: It makes sense for me, but does it make sense for you?
Tracy Clayton: I mean... Pretty, pretty. Pretty white people.
Josh Gwynn: What was the experience of the black artists that worked within the genre? You're working within the genre that talks about isolation and feeling alone. So how does it feel to be in the genre with all these white people alone and isolated?
Tracy Clayton: Right.
Josh Gwynn: Even you as a black person within the genre, which is, let's say it.
Tracy Clayton: Black people started it. .com., .net.
Josh Gwynn: It's a grandchild of rock and roll, which means that black people started that shit.
Tracy Clayton: Period. Yes.
Josh Gwynn: We invented these spaces. We invented rock and roll. We invented the blues, which is another genre that also explores feelings of isolation that come with being different or destitute or poor, or the effects of racism. For example, just to teach the kids a little bit.
Tracy Clayton: Teach the babies one time.
Josh Gwynn: You wouldn't have rock and roll without folks like Little Richard.
Tracy Clayton: Shut up.
Josh Gwynn: Shut up. Who according to the New York Times combined the sacred shouts of the black church and the profane sounds of blues to create some of the world's first rock and roll records.
[music ends]
[CLIP] Little Richard, “Tutti Fruti”
Tracy Clayton: The version that we just heard, A Wop Bop a Loo Bop, Wop Bam Boom.
Josh Gwynn: Tutti Frutti.
Tracy Clayton: The original lyrics, he had to clean it up, right? Because it was too profane as he was saying earlier. The original lyrics were Tutti Frutti, good booty. Nasty.
Josh Gwynn: But Then you flash forward to the late 60s and you have Jimi Hendrix and his guitar.
Tracy Clayton: Ah, I love Jimi Hendrix so, so much.
Josh Gwynn: You know the song All Along the Watchtower, right?
Tracy Clayton: Yeah. There must be some kind of way out of here.
Josh Gwynn: Did you know that it was a cover?
Tracy Clayton: So, did Jimmy cover it?
Josh Gwynn: He did.
Tracy Clayton: Who did it first?
Josh Gwynn: Bob Dylan. So Bob Dylan did it in 1967 and it sounded like this…
[CLIP] Bob Dylan, “All Along the Watchtower”
Bob Dylan: There must be some way out of here. Said the joker to the thief.
[Music ends]
Josh Gwynn: And then six months later, Hendrix did it and it became his most popular and signature song.
[CLIP] Jimi Hendrix, “All Along the Watchtower”
Jimmy Hendrix:There must be some kind of way out of here. Said the joker to the thief.
Josh Gwynn: I think about all the times that white people covered our music without licensing or stole songs or pretended to invent genres. The fact that Jimmy Hendrix covered the song six months after Dylan put it out and it became [crosstalk 00:24:33] what it was, makes me just, it's like a flex, I just feel so good.
Tracy Clayton: Jimmy was like, "Oh, I re-did your little song. Here you go. This is how it should've sounded." Right.
Josh Gwynn: Exactly. And it led directly to the 80's. And you have folks like Fishbone, which is an all black rock band from South Central.
Tracy Clayton: Hold on. So, I know Fishbone. I assume they were from California, but South Central LA like...
Josh Gwynn: Like NWA South Central.
Tracy Clayton: What?
Josh Gwynn: They came up with bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And in 1991 released the song called Sunless Saturday, which they performed on Saturday Night Live and then they released it on MTV. And Spike Lee did their music video.
Tracy Clayton: The Spike Lee?
Josh Gwynn: The Spike Lee
Tracy Clayton: Spike Thee Lee?
Josh Gwynn: Lee Thee Spike.
[CLIP] Fishbone, Sunless Saturday
Josh Gywnn: The nineties was crazy.
Tracy Clayton: The nineties was a lot.
Josh Gwynn: There was a lot going on. You had Lenny Kravitz, which can we just take a moment and just admire Lenny Kravitz.
Tracy Clayton: I just...
Josh Gwynn: Lisa Bonet, just write a book.
Tracy Clayton: Teach me your ways. [crosstalk 00:26:07].
Josh Gwynn: Do a seminar.
Tracy Clayton: Just put your healing hands on my forehead and transfer it by osmosis, Lord. How she do it?
Josh Gwynn: I would pay for advice. [crosstalk 00:26:16].
Tracy Clayton: I mean, I'd pay for several things. Maybe we should move on.
Josh Gwynn: But, we had folks like Lenny Kravitz who debuted his first album in 1989. There was this review from All Music from Stephen Erlewine, who said "Kravitz had yet to become a classic rock caricature, but he could still surprise on this uninformed, endearingly unwieldy first record, where he split the difference between John Lennon, Curtis Mayfield, David Bowie and Prince, sometimes exhibiting too clear of a debt to his idols ."
Tracy Clayton: Hmm. So, he sounds too much like the music that his own people created.
Josh Gwynn: I feel like it's really interesting because when black musicians play rock music, they often get compared to white musicians. And when white musicians go the other way, they just get called unique and soulful?
Tracy Clayton: Bloop.
Josh Gwynn: Something that we talked about in the blue-eyed soul episode.
Tracy Clayton: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's not equal I’m not surprised
Josh Gwynn: It's not equal, it's not Splenda. It's not sugar. It's not, it's not. It's not. But, all that was put aside when Lenny had his huge ass hit that was in every commercial in the 90's, which I think is an indication of how big it was.
[CLIP] Lenny Kravitz, “Fly Away”
Tracy Clayton: Car commercials. I can hear it. I can see it. I wish that I could fly into the sky, so very high. I want to go to. Lenny, take me with you. I'm air guitaring, y'all can't see it.
Josh Gwynn: It was every car commercial, every airline commercial. [crosstalk 00:27:54].
Tracy Clayton: And when you make a car commercial, that's how you know that you done did something.
Josh Gwynn: And then, the 90's continued to be really crazy. You had folks like Hootie and the Blowfish.
Tracy Clayton: Hootie!
Josh Gwynn: [inaudible 00:28:11].
Tracy Clayton: [inaudible 00:28:17].
Josh Gwynn: Do you know how upset I was when I found out that the band had no Hootie and no Blowfish.
Tracy Clayton: Yeah. I don't care. The black man's name is Hootie for the rest of his life, which is disrespectful. I realize it. But I was just like, how could his name not be Hootie? And I remember really being hype because I was like, "Okay." This man is like, "Yeah, I'm black, and I play guitar. And my whole band is white, but I still kept my black ass childhood nickname. Hootie."
Josh Gwynn: Where's Hootie? Another True Crime Podcast. And so, when you see black faces pop up in these pop punk spaces, right? It feels novel. And it feels like an infiltration, but it's not, it's a reclamation.
Tracy Clayton: It's just us coming back home.
Josh Gwynn: It's us claiming what's ours.
Tracy Clayton: It's us walking in this house and being like, "What are y'all doing in my living room? Get the fuck out."
Josh Gwynn: And so, when I looked online as a kid at pictures of the Warp Tour, for example, I didn't see any black faces in the pop punk bands that toured around the country. But then I was watching the TRL one...
Speaker 15: On the countdown. Time to meet our next guest. Only 18 years old. She rocks, she's rolls. She's from Canada and she's not Celine Dion. That's the good news. This is Fefe Dobson, everybody.
Josh Gwynn: I remember seeing her and being like, "Who is this?" You know when kids have their first birthday and you haven't given them sugar for the first entire year of their life, and then they eat the cake and they look at you, like "You've been lying to me this whole time?" That's how I felt when I saw Fefe Dobson. in this music that she had, you hear what was happening at the time. You hear Avril Levine, you hear the angst and the anger that teenagers have with their parents at times. [crosstalk 00:29:58]. But, when you were watching it, you saw this fresh face black girl who looked like she should have had a Neutrogena skincare campaign.
Tracy Clayton: You know what? I was just going to say, she looks like she would have been a print model or something. Gorgeous. The one that you would not figure would grab a guitar and start screaming and screeching and singing.
Josh Gwynn: And that's why I love her.
Tracy Clayton: And it's your gift. [inaudible 00:34:31] the chorus. It's Fefe Dobson, and we are going to talk with Fefe after the break. So, come back.
[Music begins]
[Music fades]
[30:35 Interview with Fefe Dobson]
Fefe Dobson: when they heard my voice, but they saw my image, they were like, "Okay, well, Brandy Spears." I mean, they actually use that term.
Tracy Clayton: What?
Josh Gwynn: Brandy Spears?
Fefe Dobson: Yeah. Brandy Spears because she's got a pop voice, but she's black.
Josh Gwynn: A Brandy image?
Fefe Dobson: Yeah.
Tracy Clayton: Right. Expectedly. Wow.
Fefe Dobson: And I was like, "Whoa, that's kind of scary. You're branding me before I even know who I am at all." I was at that point, 15 years old and who doesn't love Brittany, who doesn't love Brandy. But I mean, it was like, that's not who I am. But I couldn't really articulate that because I wasn't sure exactly who I was or what I was doing.
Tracy Clayton: That's Fefe Dobson. She talked with me and Josh about what it was like when she was trying to break into the industry, recording her own demo tapes via karaoke, which is the smartest idea I've ever heard in my life. The invention of this Brandy Spears person was the only way that the record industry knew how to interpret her, so that they could sell her music. She sat down with us to talk to us about her experiences, entering the pop punk space, the obstacles that she faced and what she thinks about all of it today.
[Music ends]
Tracy Clayton: So, I feel like the question of how does a black girl get into guitars and rock, it's lazy and kind of gauche, how do you respond to that question? Are you annoyed hearing it? Are you tired of hearing it? And what do you say when you're asked that question?
Fefe Dobson: I mean, I just tell the truth. It's really, my sister used to lock me out of her bedroom, and I have an older sister who's about eight years older than me, and when I was like 12, 13 years, she was playing Nirvana and Guns and Roses and Smashing Pumpkins. And she would never let me in her room, but I would listen to Axl Rose holding that one last note like [inaudible 00:36:44] for ever. I'd be like, "What is that? It's so crazy." And it just, it struck a chord and I didn't realize it at that point because I was so young, but I also grew up with a mother that loved music from Phil Collins, to the Bee Gees, to Bob Marley. So, I was submerged in music. And I think the guitar was just, for me, an expression because it has a beauty in the instrument, but it also has an angst and a rebellious quality to it. So, I think that's why I related to it so much because there was so much rebellion.
Tracy Clayton: Was that reminiscent of the rebellion and angst in you?
Fefe Dobson: Oh, Definitely. Definitely.
Josh Gwynn: I know at the beginning of your career, you were signed to Jive Records, which in 2000 was the Mecca of everything bubblegum pop, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears. And I read that when they signed you, they wanted to mold you into the more of a traditional bubblegum pop star and that you said no and left. Can you tell me about that time?
Fefe Dobson: Yeah. I got signed basically on karaoke and yeah. Making karaoke tapes at home because that's all I could do. And when they found me, my karaoke songs, some of them had Britney in them. And you had Paula Abdul and Janet and all this stuff, and of course, Celine Dion, fellow Canadian. [crosstalk 00:00:33:56]. So, then they sat me down and was like, "This is what's going to happen." And I was just like, "I'm sorry, I got to walk away from this development deal because I have this gut feeling that there's something missing in this music." And it was guitar. It was rock.
Josh Gwynn: How did you find the strength at 15 to be like, "This isn't right."
Tracy Clayton: Yeah. To just say, "No." I'm still trying to learn how to say no. And you're 15 and just like, "Hmm. No. It's not going to work."
Fefe Dobson: I don't really know. Because I was offered money and I knew that would help my family. We have, we were in very tough situation and my mom's a single mother and I knew I could have helped us. I just knew that my career would be over before it started if I didn't follow my instinct. And I don't know how I said, no. I ate the free lunch though, first. [laughs]
Tracy Clayton: Got to get your reparations when and where you can.
Fefe Dobson: Yeah.
Josh Gwynn: You were just talking about the tension between what people saw when they saw you and heard when they heard you. And I know that a lot of black artists who do any sort of other music other than like R&B, rap and jazz, have told a lot of stories about being written as R&B artists because of the color of their skin. Did you face the same sort of white anxiety around how to categorize you and what did that feel like?
Fefe Dobson: Well, for me, my mom is white, my dad is black and I grew up with my mother. So, when I started, it was very interesting because I was judged for doing the music I was doing and people saw color. And, to me, it made no sense because I grew up in a mixed home. My dad had just come back into my life at 18. And so, I was embracing all these things and I felt like I was becoming more whole than ever. And yet, I was still being looked at as, "Why is this black girl doing rock and roll?" I remember doing an interview at German Interview right before a TRL show actually. And the guy asked me, "How does it feel to be black?"
Josh Gwynn: What?
Tracy Clayton: Oh, that was the whole question?
Fefe Dobson: Yeah. Yeah. It was the whole question. And I'll never forget it, I just will never forget that moment of like, "Why is that your question?" "Where are you going with this?" And my manager got all the time, "You really think this black girl is going to work doing this kind of music?" And now there's no boundaries, like genre, what is genre?
Tracy Clayton: Was there a particular moment where you felt like, "Okay, I'm here. I made it, I've arrived."?
Fefe Dobson: I felt that moment going on the Justified Tour with Justin Timberlake in Europe. That was a huge one for me because I went to every NSYNC concert. And I used to write in my journal when I was in high school, I was embarrassed, [inaudible 00:41:19]. I would write his name over and over again, like "One day Justin Timberlake's going to know me. I swear." And kids in my class were like, "She crazy." Like, " Yeah, right. She going to know Justin Timberlake." One day, one day, one day. So, that was like one of my, I guess, manifesting goals that I had without knowing it because I didn't know how to manifest at that age, but it was something that I wanted so bad. And every time we go to show I'm like, "You're going to know me motherfucker."
Tracy Clayton: Let me write that down. Because it clearly worked.
Josh Gwynn: Okay.
Fefe Dobson: And then, I got on the tour and it was that very moment that we pulled into the venue and he was walking behind me to meet me into the dressing room to introduce himself. And I remember I just kept thinking, "This is it." This is exactly what I was looking for as a kid. And maybe it didn't really turn out the way I had thought, exactly, when I was younger, it was going to turn out. But it showed me a lot. And it proved to me that, if I really put every piece of my heart into something, that I could possibly see great results.
Josh Gwynn: I know that there's ups and downs to probably every step in your career. Your first album, you have to establish yourself. Your second album, you have to prove that everyone wasn't wrong the first time. Then there's sustaining it on the long term, which is even its own set of challenges. Do you feel freer or more limited, where you are now, than where you were when you started your first album?
Fefe Dobson: I feel very free because I'm independent right now. And I haven't made a choice of who I want to sign with, for this album. And that's a very powerful feeling because I'm going to deliver what I believe in. And whoever wants to come on board, I'm open arms to them, but I want them to believe in it. And I want there not to be just one person in my corner and in an office, but multiple people. So I feel a freedom because I own my music.
Tracy Clayton: You do seem to be very, very even-keeled and just very... You've wrapped your head around how the industry is. And to even be able to say no to a record executive at 15, what have you learned about yourself from your experience in such a fickle industry?
Fefe Dobson: First of all, I've learned how tough I am. My mom used to tell me, "You're going to have to have real thick skin for this industry you're about to go into," and you really do. You really do. But also that I have a quote tattooed on my arm by June Carter, and it says, "God has a plan for you. This too shall pass. Press on." And I think that's a big one, is that when you feel like your world's crumbling and everything's falling apart, things change, seasons change. It always does. So don't give up, basically.
Josh Gwynn: So, what's going on with your music, now? I know that you're in Nashville, which is a mecca for songwriters, a mecca for country artists. Are you dabbling in country? Is that what's happening?
Fefe Dobson: No.
Tracy Clayton: You said it like, "How dare you?"
Fefe Dobson: No, I love country music, but no, man, I'm doing my rock pop stuff all the way. I've been working on a new album with Jim Johnson, who is an amazing, legendary producer and just finished doing a song for a movie coming out with Linda Perry, who's also a legend. Yeah.
Josh Gwynn: I have one more question. Do you know that everyone that I told that I was going to interview Fefe Dobson went insane?
Fefe Dobson: Really?
Josh Gwynn: My friend Sierra sent me this text, which I think sums up everyone's reaction pretty well. She said, "Man, I remember when I discovered her. I felt like I won the lottery and that my life would be different."
Fefe Dobson: Oh, that's amazing.
Josh Gwynn: What would you say to someone who was so impressionable and looking and searching at that age and now find themselves in adulthood and kind of in the same situations? You walk into these white workspaces, and it's kind of junior high all over again.
Fefe Dobson: Fuck them.
Tracy Clayton: I love it. I love it.
Fefe Dobson: Stand straight. Keep that chin up. Just fuck them.
Tracy Clayton: I love it.
Josh Gwynn: Thank you so much. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Tracy Clayton: Yeah.
Fefe Dobson: Thank you.
[41:36 end of Interview with Fefe Dobson]
[Music begins, fades]
Josh Gwynn: This is the part of the show where we usually invoke the spirit of Tyra Banks and learn something from this. But for this episode, I think we should invoke the spirit of No Doubt, and…
[CLIP] No Doubt, “End It on This”
Tracy Clayton: I agree. And I will allow it.
Josh Gwynn: Okay.
Tracy Clayton: What have I learned? I learned that maybe pop punk music can save my soul right now, as a Black woman who's going through the ringer in this fucking country, who is angry and doesn't always have an outlet for it, aside from yelling at people into the void on Twitter, which honestly doesn't help that much. But if I just put on some Us and My Chemical Romance, shout out to my boos, and just, literally, even if it's just screaming in my head, it just scratches an itch. You know what I mean? I feel lighter afterwards.
Josh Gwynn: Yeah.
Tracy Clayton: And if there's anybody in the world right now who needs a connection to that anger, it's Black people. It's women. It's queer people. It's us. Because when we keep that shit in, it turns into physical ailments. It turns into worsening mental health. It turns into depression. And it's one of the reasons why Black people are more likely to die, of every illness, more often than other people. I didn't understand that when I was younger, because I was just like, "Okay, how can this be?" How are we most likely to die from heart disease and high cholesterol and this disease and that disease?
Tracy Clayton: It's because we are stressed out. Our nervous systems are taxed. You know what I mean? Also we're tired. Carrying all this inside, is just so, so much. And then, white people want to take rock and roll and take the blues. We need that, sir. We need that. Return it. Give it back.
Josh Gwynn: I'm going to take that back. I'm going to need that back.
Tracy Clayton: Very much in the spirit of this is ours, and we started it, and y'all, my perpetrators. There's a song that I want to share with you, with myself, with the people, with the Lord and the angels, everybody. There's an album that my ex-husband, Mos Def, did, called Black on Both Sides. He's not a [inaudible 00:44:06] now, so we had to get divorced.
Josh Gwynn: Okay. Okay. I get it.
Tracy Clayton: I don't talk about it. The album actually turned 20 years old, but he's got a song on there called Rock N Roll, and Rock N Roll basically says everything that we've been saying only, in rock and roll form.
[CLIP] Mos Def, Rock N Roll]
Tracy Clayton: Bob Dylan, Elvis, John Lennon. He's just like, "That's not rock and roll." Nina Simone is rock and roll. You know what I mean? And also, he had... Maybe he still has it. I don't know... but his own little alter ego band situation, a rock and roll-
Josh Gwynn: Alter ego.
Tracy Clayton: Yes. Called Black Jack Johnson. It's so, so good.
Josh Gwynn: Wait.
Tracy Clayton: Listen. Is that not the best?
[Music begins]
Tracy Clayton: So we learned a lot today. Earlier you told a story about you being younger and walking into the karaoke place with a full band and background singers and not feeling comfortable enough to get on stage and sing, right?
Josh Gwynn: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tracy Clayton: Today, would you sing on that stage?
Josh Gwynn: It wouldn't be an easy thing for me to do. I'm going to say that. It would still be difficult, but what I've realized and what I've understood from what we've talked about today is that It's not a problem with Black people who enter those spaces. It's a problem with the people who maintain those spaces and make them exclusionary, to where Black people feel excluded and not welcome.
Tracy Clayton: Right, right.
Josh Gwynn: One thing that all of this has made me appreciate are the spaces in which Black and brown and queer people are centered. That's more interesting to me, now. I have no more interest in going to that karaoke bar. It doesn't matter to me as much as it did then.
Tracy Clayton: I love it.
Josh Gwynn: So I think what I would do is start my own karaoke night, where we would sing Fefe Dobson-
Tracy Clayton: Oh, my gosh. Can't wait. Can we do this?
Josh Gwynn:... and Lenny Kravitz and Fishbone and Black Jack Johnson.
Tracy Clayton: Aah. Can we do this karaoke night, somehow?
Josh Gwynn: Let's do it. But Black people would get in free, and white people would have to pay five bucks.
[CLIP] Mos Def, “Rock N Roll”
[Outro Music Begins]
[46:41 Credits]
Tracy Clayton: Back Issue is a production of Pineapple Street Studios.
Josh Gwynn: This show was created and is hosted by Tracy Clayton-
Tracy Clayton: And Josh Gwynn. Our lead producers are our Josh Gwynn and Emmanuel Hapsis.
Josh Gwynn: Our managing producer is John Asante.
Tracy Clayton: Our senior editor is Leila Day.
Josh Gwynn: Our associate producers are Alexis Moore and [Xandra 00:46:47] Ellen.
Tracy Clayton: Our intern is Briana Garrett. Special thanks to Gabrielle Young.
Josh Gwynn: And our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky.
Tracy Clayton: This show features music by V1, the only djDonWill. You can follow him on all the socials @djdonwill. And you can follow me on the socials @brokeymcpoverty.
Josh Gwynn: And you can follow me @regardingjosh. Subscribe to this podcast, wherever free podcasts are sold.
Tracy Clayton: And follow the podcast @backissuepodcast on Instagram.
Josh Gwynn: Bing.
Tracy Clayton: When you tweet about it... I do hope that you'll tweet about it... use the hashtag #backissuepodcast on Twitter. Write. Subscribe. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell your frenemies. Tell your grandmama nem. She doesn't know what a podcast is. That's fine. You can learn there, Grandma.
Josh Gwynn: Bye.
Tracy Clayton: Bye.
[Music fades]
ENDS [00:47:49]