Flamboyant
By Noah Gassman
*Dorian in the music video for “Career Boy”
“Have You Heard of the New Sensation?”
At the start of the music video for Dorian Electra’s “Career Boy”, we see the artist donning a short haircut and a mascara mustache looking fairly androgynous, but leaning into a masculine aesthetic. Up until this point in their career, Dorian had built up a small internet fan base with their quirky, ultra-feminine songs with topics revolving around sexual education, but “Career Boy” is different. Unlike previous songs they had written, Dorian has taken on a masculine persona. “Career Boy” is an absurd confession easy to relate to; the narrator is addicted to their job, and believes there will be some incredible reward for their labor. Dorian has no option but to love the hell they have found themself in. “Career Boy” is put together like a joke because it should be one, yet the absurd lyrics ring true to many of Dorian’s fans. The rest of Flamboyant follows a similar blueprint of personal, yet fun and chaotic music all about queer identity. Dorian Electra’s album Flamboyant is a celebration of feminist theory and shows promise for the future of queer expression within the realm of popular music.
The Start of Dorian’s Music Career
Even though Dorian has been making music their whole life, the aesthetic of their musical persona wouldn’t start to solidify until they finished their degree. After they had graduated from college, they started working for the website Refinery29 and eventually produced a few musical videos for them (Beaumont-Thomas). Songs from this time like “Viberator” were quirky and smart, and the videos all have a polished, professional quality to them. Dorian used this experience to solidify their voice and explore their gender identity until they eventually went on to pursue a career in music (Beaumont-Thomas).
The Creation of Flamboyant
The creation of Electra’s Flamboyant sounds like a musical legend thanks to the album’s independent inception. After they finished making songs for Refinery29, Dorian met experimental pop star Charli XCX in 2017 (Corcione). They hit it off and later that year, Electra was featured on the Charli XCX track “Fembot.” Dorian then played a series of after-show parties with Charli during her stint on Taylor Swift’s massive world tour for the album Reputation. Around the same time, Dorian released the song “Career Boy” independently and came out as non-binary, not conforming to any gender, in the summer of 2018 (Corcione). After playing a series of pride festivals, Dorian rented out an Airbnb in early 2019 for a week-long retreat with an army of producers and songwriters (Corcione). Save for a few singles, almost the entire album was written during this retreat. Electra describes the set up to Tidal: “We had three different rooms with different producers, so it was perfect for me because I was so ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder] that I was able to bounce around [from] one to the next whenever I had a new idea” (Corcione). Everything that could seem limiting to other musicians lead to some of the biggest strengths on Flamboyant. The week-long deadline and small environment created a space where they could remain engaged with their music despite their ADD, and while learning how to play different instruments can be extremely difficult and time consuming, using electronic instruments is more economic and creates a totally unique sound with the right producers. This idea shines through especially well on the track “Musical Genius.” The introduction of the song includes seven different digital instruments before Dorian starts singing about elitism in music and the music industry’s tendencies to overly celebrate male musicians. All this happens in a chaotic whirlwind of a song with a length of just under 2 minutes.
Themes From the Album
Flamboyant has a runtime of 31 minutes packed with quick, catchy songs focused on masculine queer culture. Dorian says they wrote the songs to demystify masculine identity while further exploring their own identity (Treadgold). The persona Dorian takes on feels like a drag performance and beacons back to the flamboyant rock stars of their youth like David Bowie, and that’s the point. Growing up, Dorian admired rock stars who would act feminine on stage without a care for their gender identity. The influence of these rock stars is clearly visible in any of Dorian’s visuals from their music videos to their album artwork .
Dorian constantly plays with these ideas of gender-specific expression. In “Man to Man” they describe a relationship between two men where it is difficult to tell if their relationship is bitter or romantic. Ultimately, the song makes it clear that the two men deeply care about each other but are unable to talk about their emotions. In the video’s climactic moment, Dorian is depicted as a man preparing to box another man, each bruised, bloody, and shirtless. Dorian’s nipples are covered with pictures of presumably male nipples adding to the ridiculousness of the scene yet they still look incredibly androgynous. The two walk towards the middle of the ring then kiss with bloodied lips. Both characters then turn to face the crowd and raise their gloves in victory. In the simple story line, both men remain victorious not through violence, but through a simple act of intimacy.
Flamboyant focuses on a variety of concepts such as corporate America, sugar daddies, queer theology, macho culture, queerness, gender roles, and personal expression all in addictive little pop songs. The songs are defined enough to tell a story, but fluid enough to open up many unique conversations. “Daddy Like” depicts thoughts of male control and hierarchy in romantic relationships even though half of the song is simply Electra repeating “Daddy Like” over and over. This repetitive pop structure is vital for Electra’s music. It keeps the listener grounded as they are engulfed in feminist theory and the androgynous auto-tune at the core of their music, and there is plenty of theory packed into this project as Dorian constantly critics the active verb of “gendering” people into either being male or female, which Judith Lorber describes in the beginning of her book, Paradoxes of Gender.
In the song “Adam and Steve,” Dorian takes notes from queer theology to comment on society’s preconceived notions on gender. Firstly, the mere swap of Eve to Steve, a change usually made by homophobic Christians, subverts the story and begs the listener to consider thinking about the story in a different light, much like J Mass III’s poem “Josephine” which looks at a multitude of bible stories through a queer theological lens. Dorian uses the idea of Adam and Steve to normalize queer identity; the chorus begins with Dorian proclaiming “God made me and he loves me” in reference to their own non-binary gender identity. The song is meant to heavily critic those who use religion as a reason to dismiss gender identity while reaffirming those who have been affected by discrimination by Christians.
What Genre of Music is Flamboyant?
If one were to try and describe Dorian’s music, the genre of hyperpop would come to mind. Hyperpop is a futuristic genre which encompasses a vast array of sounds, but is recognizable by its experimental, intense, futuristic nature. The genre has slowly been pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in pop music, both sonically and lyrically through artists like Dorian, by bursting through the conventional norms set by large record companies. Since the genre started to gain traction in the 2010s, numerous queer musicians began to receive attention from the work they were doing, specifically transgender and gender non-conforming musicians. Producer SOPHIE was nominated for Best Electronic Album at the Grammy Awards for an album exploring her gender, and singer Rina Sawayama has received critical and popular acclaim for her songs about her sexuality.
Hyperpop exists as a modern version of alternative music as in the word only exists to try and give someone an idea of what to expect. The influences of hyperpop include metal, trap, reggae, chamber pop, dub-step, and many more genres all surrounded by some sort of pop music structure. However, none of these genres can accurately represent the sound you would hear listening to hyperpop; as a whole, it exists outside of the notion of traditional genres. The solidification of hyperpop has allowed audiences for the genre to be made as it is much easier to suggest music to people when there is some sort of reference point. The genre has gained so much traction in the past few years Spotify now has a curated hyperpop playlist with all of the artists mentioned in this piece.
Note: a Spotify account is needed to hear the full songs.
The rise of hyperpop has lead to further freedom in the way queer people can express themselves. The most popular queer songs are all too often vague in their expression of their identity. Of course this can bring more mainstream appeal, but the work that comes from it is rarely explicitly about queer identity. However, more independent artists such as Isaac Dunbar, SOPHIE, and Dorian Electra have built up devoted fan bases by making extremely queer music that push the boundaries of pop and all of them have found success thanks to the internet. While in the past one had to purchase the new music they wanted to hear, or happen upon it on the radio, streaming services have made listening to unique music easier than ever before. The internet also allows communities to form despite physical distances. In the comment section for their music videos, people engage with and educate each other as they discuss the topics Dorian covers in their song. Their devoted fan base also led to Dorian playing a sold out headlining tour to support the album (Fantano).
Dorian’s Continued Work
Dorian continues to be extremely active in the field of hyperpop despite the pandemic. They DJed alongside Charli XCX for a digital music festival, and opened up for a performance by Russian punk outlet Pussy Riot. In an interview with Anthony Fantano, they spoke about working hard on new music from a home studio and working with producers from afar. They also said we should expect new music next year when they hopefully can start touring again. Until then, the world of hyperpop has retreated back to the place it started: the internet. Fans have been supporting artists like Dorian Electra, and through those DJ performances Dorian has continued to put on to engage with their audience. Dorian continuously works to create spaces where people can be themselves without the influence of a society they critic in their music. Flamboyant was clearly made with passion, and it really shows. To close out an interview with Tidal they say, “I want to make music that will attract the kind of people I want to be friends with” (Corcione). It is clearly evident that Dorian did not start writing music looking for a new job, or extreme wealth and fame. They wanted to make queer people like them know that they weren’t alone. Their fans go all out at concerts to support Electra. They are always wildly energetic and often show up with mascara mustaches to match Dorian’s. For their fans, Dorian is like any other pop musician: they are someone who understands and brings the problems their fans face into the light.
“You Gotta Let Me In”
Dorian Electra’s persona is seeped in gendered characteristics, but through their lyrics and quirky production they make it abundantly clear they do not feel connected to a binary gender. Their music deserves to be discussed alongside other works on gender identity and gender expression. They took problematic aspects commonly associated with masculinity and expertly criticized them over insane production eventually culminating in Flamboyant. Not a lyric is wasted in the album’s depictions of over the top masculinity and call for individuality. The loud, humorous and smart Flamboyant is a monumental step forward both in the world of hyperpop, and for Dorian Electra’s musical career in feminist pop.
For more about Dorian Electra, their music and their gender identity:
https://www.playboy.com/read/dorian-electra/
http://read.tidal.com/article/dorian-electra
Works Cited: