Swae Lee and Post Malone's Sunflower

I've given myself the task of writing about one song a week for 2024 because, well, I think it'd be fun.

Swae Lee and Post Malone's Sunflower

Great, now this is a fucking review of "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse".

Oh, I have impure intentions. I have an opportunity to review Swae Lee and Post Malone's "Sunflower", which thus allows me - but who allows whom? what, God? Providence? the invisible hand of Fate? me and just fucking me, really - to comment on this film. Well, fine, indulge in me and let me open my big mouth for a little while; I'm certain to offend many, so if you don't like what I have to say, let it be known that I don't put too much stock into my own opinion either. I mean, the films have undeniable cultural impact, so let's say it's a me-problem than anything else. But I digress.

That whole ending with the big guy and Spiderman duking it out in like a time machine or whatever is visual puke of color and I don't know how anyone can call it good animation.

In this sense I'm a classicist and believe animation is about, uhhh, motion. It is about the beauty of motion and giving life to commonplace things. Go see a Disney movie, for goodness' sake. Animation is not about the number of things you can move on-screen or the number of frames you need. Really ridiculous. I don't know if this is a teenager thing because this trend, of jamming lots of barf-worthy frames in a second, is abundantly clear in MAPPA's "Jujutsu Kaisen" and "Chainsaw Man" which has led me to call MAPPA the fucking worst studio at the moment. (MAPPA has saved their reputation with me slightly with possibly the best show in winter, "Bucchigiri?!", which has given an accomplished female director, with, you know, a distinctive visual style, as we should expect, much-deserved prominence.)

That's the technical complaint. I find the sentimentality in "Into the Spider-Verse" also barf-worthy. I really don't get how the plot is compelling, unless you get wrapped up in the drama of it all. Obviously I don't. To me the whole story boils down to "We have to punch another guy", and it doesn't really matter why "we" - backstories and all - have to punch the "guy" - backstory and all. If that is really what the story should be, it should be quicker, with a subtler hand. Action is punchy: keep it quick, keep it significant, and opt to impress the audience more than not. If the story is meant to be something bigger, about a young man's insecurities about his placement in the universe, get the fucking "punch the bad guy" plot out. Pick one. You can't have both. They suck oxygen from one another, such that the one doesn't have enough energy and the other doesn't intellectually engage the audience if they're beyond 18 years of age.

Which is an interesting point, because a number of cartoons are designed for an adult audience now, and they're all juvenile, excepting Genndy Tartakovsky's and some talents' at Frederator Studios, like Pendleton Ward and Natasha Allegri. It's fascinating how animation is this incredibly beautiful artform, whose history is concurrent with that of film's, and yet its projects are choked by this Neverland thinking of its audience. What makes this particularly funny is that the genre is almost perfect for criticizing this, in the way 2015's "Anomalisa" had by exploring the psyche of this really sad, eternally backwards-looking salesman.

I acknowledge it's a me-problem, or rather, people who think similar to me. I've noticed that some stories, "Spider-Verse" included, are about the protagonist realizing the potential inside of themselves, which had really been hidden all along. The matter was only whether they had the confidence to recognize so. I really don't care for these types of stories and find them frustrating. Sure, there are stories where the protagonist needs to find courage or other virtues to accomplish the deed, but this is markedly different than their just...doing it, as if the question is one of insecurity and anxiety and not necessarily of skill. Is this an issue with the generation where the term "Imposter Syndrome" became popular? I know myself and others prefer stories where the call to adventure is a means to test one's abilities, rather than a re-confirmation of their said-latent abilities. Because the latter thought seems to argue that everyone is truly a snowflake, and has no need for development, really, which leads to a world where there is no reflection on what is right or wrong, nor the competence to know the difference. Well, if we're discussing this philosophically, there is right and wrong, and there are no such things as right and wrong; fine, but there has to be some balance between both.

So, yeah, maybe someone needs to sit down next to me and watch the damn films with me, because I really don't get them, but they're critically acclaimed for some reason even though, I don't know, I get weird sexist vibes from Spider-Gwen, though I hesitate to do so as I fear I will ruin the movie for someone. Oh, I totally get how "Old man yelling at clouds" this feels, but I just don't. Get it. Fine, I'm old. Let's move on.

The first single for the "Into the Spider-Verse" soundtrack, "Sunflower", sung by Swae Lee and Post Malone - I honestly don't think I've heard any of Post's music before - is everything the "Into the Spider-Verse" film is not. Where the film is trying too hard to be playful, exercising too much effort to make the audience empathetic, and anxious to please, the song is whimsical, emotional, and relaxed. I wish this stupid movie didn't get in my way of listening to this song.

Not sure if Rae Sremmurd - Swae Lee's outfit with his brother, Slim Jxmmi - is underrated or properly rated. They're just a good band, because they're weird. They're in the Young Thug mold, where they understand that rap can be much more than an outlet for machismo. I was formally introduced to them in 2018's "SR3MM" and found that to be quite a memorable album. Both brothers have a flair for the extravagant and a love for wordplay. If anyone recalls the "Speakerboxxx / The Love Below" gimmick of that album, listeners will recall that Swae's part of "SR3MM" is less rapping and more mood music, as seen in track "Offshore". Any other singer, the shtick would be annoying. What mood music requires is one pivot point, one thing that is very specific through which the whole mood becomes a metaphor.

So I kinda credit Swae Lee first, even though Post is formally given first credit. Post is very good on the song, but it's such a Swae song, from swagger, to imagery, to grandiosity, to...idea. Sound, the reliable ol' boom bap, and lyrics, the self-deprecation and smile, are probably Post.

"Needless to say, I keep in check, / she was all bad-bad, nevertheless." Ahh, I love colloquial language. The true test of skill in poetry is the use of common language, as I feel for Hesiod and Dante. It's probably the reason why rap succeeded as America's most popular musical genre. Colloquialism disguises the drama in life with humor, as is the case in this memorable couplet that embodies the song's theme of temperance and losing control. That being said, I'm a bit of a square and have no idea what "bad-bad" really means.

Screaming at my face, losing your grip,
Thinking in a bad way, baby, don't trip,
Someone took a big L, I don't know how that felt,
Looking at you sideways, party on tilt.

What wonderful lines. The first two paint the physical situation in dramatic detail in fifteen words. The last two depict the audience how the singer actually feels. That "Someone took a big L" is such a great line, conveying the embarrassment, shame, and discomfort either the singer feels for himself or the titular "sunflower" (the "I don't know how that felt" makes it ambiguous), all by the inadvertent swivel of their head in these five words. Swae sings the "big L" with such emphasis too, in a visceral way.

Then the wistful "She wanna ride me like a cruise, and I'm not tryna lose", invoking the imagery of water and distance from the shore. You know, though Swae is invoking Snoop's "Bitches ain't shit" vibe, the self-reflection and second-hand embarrassment, and (possible) resultant concern for another human being, lends the trope some melancholy pathos. It's certainly a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too idea, that he pulls off with his particular style of crooning.

Then the autotuned(?) chorus:

You'll be left in the dust, unless I stuck by ya,
You're the sunflower, I think your love would be too much,

once again defying Snoop's Doggy Dogg World by actually trying to comfort his former lover. Or whomever.

After Swae sets the actual drama, in painstaking detail, Post sets up the broad strokes, the moral conclusion if you will:

Every time I'm leaving on you,
You don't make it easy, no;
Wish I could be there for you,
Give me a reason to,

transforming Swae's one-night-stand into someone with whom he has a deeper emotional connection, thus making the song about separation and the resulting messy feelings, whether we intend to feel them or not. The autotune, used to blur the singers' voices so that they match the crashing waves the song's imagery invokes (and, in a sense, stage the situation as something bigger than the individual participants), goes into pitchy heights as Post cries:

I know you're scared of the unknown,
You don't wanna be alone,
I know I always come and go,
But it's out of my control.

Another have-your-cake moment: Post taking the psychological interest of Swae's portrait and somehow turning it into something personal. But that's the song in a nutshell, it works with multiple meanings and ways of listening. You can dwell on the messiness of the breakup as one would a soap opera or you can project your own feelings on romance onto the song's tight frame. And the nice thing is, because the song is so breezy and is about the ephemerality of relationships, you can enjoy it and move on from its melancholy at song's end. But you won't, as you have it on repeat.