Soundtracks of the 2020s: Christin Nichols – “Bodycount”   A new power structure of gender roles

Christin Nichol’s track “Bodycount” (2024) is meant to be understood as an outlook on what the 2020s could one day stand for. Good, glamorous pop music in step with the times, with a progressive, emancipatory claim.

Whereas the term “body count” used to mean the number of dead on the enemy side, nowadays it’s also used to denote the number of sexual partners of an individual. But double standards apply for women and men. While a high body count is positively coded in the case of men, the exact opposite is true where women are concerned.

Christin Nichols reacts to this traditional double standard with a lot of anger, although she does express herself with a high degree of eloquence. She blends a plurality of positions and voices together with dazzling effect, which appropriately depicts the discursive situation on the topic. Fittingly, the lyrics are influenced by code switching (between English and German) and thus support the hybrid character of the speaker in the song, who presents herself as non-identitarian in this respect.

How Christin Nichols relates to the statements conveyed by the lyrics sometimes remains in limbo. She picks up on quotes and throws them into new contexts. The principle of the “body count” itself doesn’t seem to be explicitly condemned either, it’s more a case of it being subject to the male gaze.

Nevertheless, certain clear messages emerge from this heterogeneous diversity of voices in summation of the emancipatory agenda delivered by Nichols. This applies in particular to the two lines “Ich möchte leben, als ob die AfD was dagegen hätte” (I want to live as if the AfD had something against it) and “Ich gender dich bis du weinst” (I gender you until you cry), either of which would make a suitable motto for the present and the future. The latter line in particular adapts male patterns of linguistic discrimination and recontextualizes them under feminist auspices.

In general, the song demonstrates a fascinating feel for the power-relatedness of language, exposing the practice of exclusion and degradation by means of specific terms („und wenn wir Frauen entmachten wollen, nennen wir sie Huren“ – and when we want to disempower women, we call them whores), which men use to create clear hierarchies. Christin Nichols confronts this practice at eye level and demands her contribution instead of submissively asking for it. By engaging in the discourse, Nichols gives herself the mandate to restructure the power structure of gender roles. She does this in a pretty cool way and against the backdrop of a subtly powerful sound aesthetic that sounds contemporary without resorting to merely invoking existing patterns.

Christin Nichols makes pop music on dancefloor terms that recognizes the importance of a good melody. This is music for the times, glamorous, reflective, clever and self-confident.
 

05/2024