by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I am pleasantly surprised by the latest banger Don’t Call Me Angel. But you have to admit that there’s a lot going on with not just this song but the fact that Charlie’s Angels is being rebooted again.
First you have to accept that this is an Ariana Grande jam. Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey are pretty much just fortunate to be involved. Grande is a beast in pop culture while the other two women are mid-tier performers in comparison. Or put another way — the audience is coming to hear Grande. And I suspect Grande is a sufficient diva that the only way she get involved in the first place is if she had a dominate role. I don’t know what Lana Del Rey is even doing in this song. She’s kind of out of place compared to the other women on a thematic level.
I find it amusing that Tay-Tay, despite her best efforts to update her public persona still can’t hold a candle to the mass sex appeal of either Grande or Cyrus. Del Rey is hot, yes, but in more of a serious, smoldering way. The other two women seem like they’d be a lot of fun on a date. But Tay-Tay simply can’t embrace her sexuality in a conspicuous manner. It would be so off-brand for her at this point as to be near career suicide. Tweens wearing training bras need music to listen to, too, you know.
It’s telling how different this incarnation of Charlie’s Angels is to the original. Each of the various versions of the franchise definitely tell us a lot about the cultures in which they were produced. I look forward to seeing the new Charlie’s Angels. But it will also make me feel very, very old. You could do a pretty long New Yorker think piece about why, exactly, Charlie’s Angels keeps getting rebooted. What’s the appeal?
I would say more, but I’m a dude and what do I know.
One last note — we need a female supergroup. There are all these talented solo female singers floating around. It would be great if they would come together to produce an album instead of just having a lot of floating camos. It’s time for something like that, at least.
