Gonna Sweat When She Dig

Pixies “No. 13 Baby”

If the Pixies came out today, the critical narrative would be all about how they’re “problematic.” The girl sings about a black guy with a huge dick; the guy mangles the Spanish language and flagrantly objectifies Latin women. There’s a troubling tension in the way he sings about women in general – lusty, angry, bitter, self-loathing. Maybe today we’d label it “incel rock,” and then make fun of the male singer’s pudgy body without ever thinking about how it’s crucial to the context. No one would ever consider that the musicians knew what they were doing, or were deliberate about what they were saying, or whether the tensions in their music spoke to something about their lived experience or vivid inner life. The historical and cultural allusions wouldn’t be taken seriously. It would all be flattened: This is fucked up and uncomfortable, therefore it is at best a guilty pleasure. The urgency and physicality of the music wouldn’t matter, nor would the melodies or raw charisma of the singers. It’d be “What Pixies Get Wrong About _____” or “The Pixies’ _____ Problem.”

Art is messy because humans are messy, and the Pixies reveled in that filth. But that mess could also be strangely wholesome! “No. 13 Baby” is a song about lust from the perspective of a young boy observing a woman who lives next doo. She awakens something in him. She’s an intriguing other to him – six feet tall, Mexican, strong, tattooed. He’s attracted to her in part because she’s an outlier – not white, not demure, not a normie. But it’s also just raw and physical. He’s obsessed with her tits, and the fact that she’s topless in public. It’s likely this is the first time he’s ever seen naked breasts in real life, albeit through his bedroom window or over the fence separating their yards. In the chorus, he’s praising her boobs in awkward Spanish while swearing off boring white girls. “Don’t want no blue eyes! I WANT BROWN EYES!!!” The song knows this is the declaration of a silly teenage boy. The song also knows his arousal is not a joke. Black Francis sells the horniness and the humor in equal measures, often in the same shriek.

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