hayowei

Two come to mind. In summer 2005, I was 10, I picked up Love. Angel. Music. Baby. and American Idiot at the same time. Somehow my dad was more worried about Gwen, even though American Idiot had the parental advisory sticker (maybe because… 💅). He asked the cashier if Gwen was appropriate for kids, then played it in the car to "check." The lyric on track 1 "take a chance, you stupid ho" made him laugh and his concern kind of faded. My other one is wanting Shania Twain's Greatest Hits in 2004. I remember using those old record-store listening kiosks, hearing little song previews, and hoping I'd get the CD. I did, and spent Christmas Day playing it over and over. There's something kind of lost now about wanting a CD in November, waiting two whole months, hoping it shows up under the tree, and then spending Christmas Day listening to it front to back like it was an event. I miss that feeling a little.

Shania texted this clip of the lead single with her SMS subscriber list, captioned: "Here's what came out of that session in the studio I shared with you earlier - Shania xx," referencing the video she previously posted with producer T Bone Burnett. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhHA1X6geY0&t=47s

Totally agree and it is calculated. This kind of backlash isn't just about Billie; it's meant to discredit BIPOC perspectives and warn anyone with a platform that saying inconvenient truths will get you swarmed, mocked, and dismissed as ignorant. But personally, from a Native perspective, the backlash is missing the point. People rushed to say "she lives on unceded land" and she knows that. Her point was never about personal purity, but about the systems we participate in and who they serve. "No one is illegal on stolen land," first of all didn't originate with Billie, our communities have been saying it for years and it isn't pro-lawlessness; it's an appeal to basic humanity. It's a critique of armed raids, detention, criminalization, and violent enforcement on land taken through broken treaties, including cases where Native Americans themselves have been targeted by ICE. The rebuttal is always "everyone took land from someone else," but that skips the key fact that Indigenous nations entered treaties as sovereigns, not "conquered" peoples. Those treaties still exist, and when the U.S. and Canada ignore them, they undermine the very legal superiority they claim to stand on. Instead of reckoning with that, my feed this week was full of embarrassing takes like arguing everyone should trespass on Billie's property now because she refuses to reduce people to "legal" and "illegal" binaries. It's a reminder of how far we still have to go before Indigenous perspectives are represented, respected, or even considered. You can live in America your entire life without ever engaging Indigenous people and the backlash to this proves it.

Janet Jackson - Escapade