Eliza Green
Preservation Society

Song About Me by American indie band TV Girl is a song that deconstructs the misogyny of the band which made it. Song About Me communicates themes of misogyny and female perspective through sampling and intertextuality. Through sampling Roxanne Shante’s diss song Roxanne’s Revenge, and the female persona Maddie Acid, TV Girl introduces the female perspective to their song to criticise the misogyny present in their lyrics and music. These themes are explored, but remain unresolved.

UTFO’s 1983 single Roxanne, Roxanne is a rap song in which the three members of UTFO describe their attempts to seduce a woman named Roxanne through exercising their rapping skill: “Roxanne, Roxanne, I wanna be your man” (1:12). The song lacks female perspective, as is it framed through the male members of UTFO recalling their encounters with Roxanne.

The men do not seem to have a real interest in Roxanne as a person, but rather the status that would be gained by being with her: “If I was grand I’d bang Roxanne” (1:05). The song itself is framed as an attempt to seduce Roxanne, ending “And if you think it's soft, then Roxanne feel it!” (4:20). Over the course of the song the listener finds that all three men have been turned down by Roxanne, and in turn, they degrade her. Roxanne is repeatedly called stuck up, and is later called a crab. These insults indicate that while Roxanne is desirable, she is readily disrespected for not reciprocating this desire. This behaviour is misogynistic as it objectifies women and values them only as sex objects.

In 1984 Lolita ‘Roxanne Shante’ Gooden released a diss song to respond to and criticise UTFO’s Roxanne Roxanne, titled Roxanne’s Revenge. According to Tyree and Williams, “diss songs are used by artists to verbally abuse, lay claim to territorial identities and, more importantly, call into question the credibility of fellow artists.” (1). Shante follows the song’s chronology assuming the persona of the titular Roxanne. She uses this persona to criticise UTFO’s portrayal of women in their music, giving voice to the female perspective and asserting her own identity (Tyree and Williams 3). In Roxanne’s Revenge, Roxanne has personality, intelligence, and agency:

“Because my name is Roxanne-a, and I came to say / I'm rockin' to the beat-a, and I do it every day / I'm conceited, never beated, never heard of defeated” (2:48-2:55).

While UTFO presumes Roxanne to be stuck up for rejecting their romantic advances, Shante questions their misogynistic entitlement to Roxanne’s romantic and sexual attention, and turn to vitriol when she does not reciprocate: “But all you wanna be is Roxanne's guy / Because I turned you down without a frown…” (3:58) “And you talk about me, and make me look bad?” (4:07). Tyree and Williams discuss how women rappers used dissing “to engage in a “dialogical process” with male rappers to challenge their problematic conceptions of women and indict them for their mistreatment of women.” (3). Through the diss on UTFO, Shante is able to make a criticism of the entitled and disrespectful treatment of women in music. She ends the diss with a final question: “I ask you a question, I wanna know why, why’d you have to make a record ‘bout me…?” (4:23). Throughout the song, Shante describes the apathy that Roxanne expresses being met with anger by UTFO. Shante questions why UTFO degrade this woman on a public platform despite her doing them no harm. In doing so, she makes a greater question about music as a platform of misogyny and the degradation of women.

TV Girl’s Song About Me is the second song of their sophomore album Who Really Cares (2016). The lyrics follow a one-sided dialogue between the TV Girl persona, and a woman he was previously in a sexual relationship with, likely an ex-girlfriend. The TV Girl persona, performed by frontman Brad Petering, finds out that the ex-girlfriend believes that he is “bad-mouthing” her in his music, while he feigns apathy. The song samples Roxanne’s Revenge, and attempts to answer Shante’s question: “why’d you have to make your record ‘bout me?”

The thematic meaning of TV Girl’s Song About Me is amplified through the use of intertextuality. Intertextuality refers to meaning generated through knowledge of and intersection between texts. Crawford writes that intertextuality is “the understanding or ‘decoding’ of any one text may often refer to, or even require, the understanding of another text or texts” (1). TV Girl samples the line “why’d you have to make your records ‘bout me’” from Roxanne’s Revenge, looping the line to create the chorus. With knowledge of the sample’s context, parallels can be drawn between the misogyny of TV Girl and UTFO. Just as Roxanne was objectified and degraded in Roxanne Roxanne, the persona’s ex-girlfriend is likewise degraded in this song, with sexually explicit details being shared about their intimate history: “And I remember her bent over and knowing it was the last time” (1:37). Within the narrative of Song About You, the “songs about you” (0:24) to which they refer can be assumed to intertextually be referring to the discography of the band TV Girl. Much of the band’s discography are songs which have lyrics that describe women with vitriol, condescension, and derision, cynical recounts of failed relationships. In a review of the band, Levy-Pearlman writes that “TV Girl obsessively fixates on women; first, as an elusive mirage that the artists can’t obtain, and secondly, as an object of scorn responsible for men’s suffering” (par 6). The degradation of these women, like with UTFO, comes after their rejection, “I didn’t like her anyways” (“Anjela” 0:57). Because of these parallels Shante’s critique of UTFO which is sampled in Song About Me is able to be recontextualised to be in response to the TV Girl persona and the music of TV Girl as a body of work.

Schloss (2004) describes looping as sampling a melodic phrase and repeating it with little or no alteration, creating a loop (124). By reorganising the sample, this can ‘Africanise’ the sample into a cyclical rhythm, resembling a call and response (156). Here the refrain works to criticise TV Girl’s persona, consistently reminding the listener to question their bitterness and hypocrisy in regards to the women which they speak about. The looping of the sample also allows for the TV Girl persona to control the narrative, as he can reply to this select line and argue against it in detail, with the repetition then giving the line a petulant affect. This is symbolised by the distortion of the sample which disrupts the pitch, juxtaposed with the clear vocals on the track. In reply to the refrain, he defends his ability to make songs about her. The persona begins to explain himself, before deflecting by suggesting that it shouldn’t matter to her or to anyone, repeatedly singing “if it was all in my mind” (0:58), suggesting that it then doesn’t matter what he’s saying about her. This lyric responds to Shante’s line from Roxanne’s Revenge:

“So, if you're tryin' to be cute and you're tryin' to be fine / You need to cut it out 'cause it's all in your mind”. (3:14-3:20).

His reply is condescending and dismissive, “who really cares” (0:56). This lyric is also the title of the album Song About Me was released on, which suggests that this approach is the unchangeable perspective of the persona which allows for TV Girl to continue writing vitriolic songs about women without remorse.

The last verse of Song About Me counters the persona’s attitude and argument by reintroducing the female perspective through a female vocalist, Maddie. Maddison Acid is an anonymous vocalist on many TV Girl songs, often speculated within fan communities such as Reddit to be lead singer songwriter Brad Petering using a pitch changer to song like a woman (Lazy-Baseball-974). This voice presents the perspective of the persona’s ex-girlfriend, beginning her verse by replying to the first line of the song: “yeah I heard your song and I wasn’t impressed” (2:52). Her vocals are as clear as the male persona, which signifies to the listener that she is an equal, and that what she has to say is just as important as what he has said. Like Shante, she utilises rap in order to express herself and rebut the persona, continuing the dialogue. Her argument is similar to Shante’s: “so you got your feelings hurt and now you’re feeling depressed…” (2:55) “now you want revenge you wanna put me on blast?” (3:00). However Maddie is able to directly confront the persona because of her personal understanding of him, and unlike the looped sample, she is able to reinforce her argument with specificity and detail.

She brings up his hypocrisy, that he has “played” girls in the past, treating them just as if not more poorly than the women who he writes songs about treated him, and that his tirade against them is pointless and unimpressive. She calls him a “big bad soldier” (3:17), demeaning him by comparing his misogynistic behaviour to a child playing pretend. Her line: “declaring holy war on every girl who didn’t mean to fuck him over” (3:18) highlights both his escalatory behaviour of publicising his relationship grievances in songs and the unfairness of this behaviour. This lyric implies that it is not just her that is being spoken ill of but many women who the persona has been in failed relationships with. She reinforces this in the line: “And talk shit about girls who only wish you well” (3:23), which implies that the girls who he speaks ill of do not see him in the same negative light. Through an intertextual lens, one can draw comparisons between the girls in TV Girl songs, and through Maddie’s perspective view them through a more compassionate lens, as well as critically assessing what is said about them by the persona, who is clearly biased against them. It should also be noted that Petering wrote the lyrics for the Maddie persona, and so the female perspective in this song is ultimately created by or controlled by the man behind TV Girl. TV Girl’s self-referential and personal lyrics point to an understanding of the misogyny present in the music of TV Girl, and the TV Girl persona.

It is heavily implied that the two are no longer in contact, as neither he nor Maddy talk to each other directly about their grievances: “I heard that you heard that I was writing songs about you” (0:21). This is signified musically, as the verses the two sing are entirely separated between the chorus. Maddy signs off her verse “from Russia with love, Maddy” (3:29). This lyric can be interpreted as Maddy having put physical distance between the two, sending her reply from another country. This may also be a reference to the James Bond film From Russia with Love. The reference puts further distance between the two as the reference makes the reply appear disingenuous, as though he won’t be able to reach her as her real location remains ambiguous. Maddie maintains a disaffected affect throughout the song, minimising their relationship: “just because we had sex and it didn’t last” (2:56). Presumably she is among the girls who “only wished him well” (3:24), and this reading is reinforced by the ‘with love’ of the sign off. Although Maddy harbours no resentment towards him, she has moved on from their relationship, and encourages him to do the same.

Song About You is a self-reflexive song that shows TV Girl maintains self-awareness about the misogyny in their music, but will not readily address it. After Maddy’s verse, another chorus follows, and the song ends without him having to address her criticism. Or perhaps TV Girl simply can’t address her criticism, and the smug retort of “who really cares” is all the persona is able to argue. The song ends as it begun, with the issue not being resolved. This is signified by the song ending with Shante’s sample looping once again, the rhythmic cycle continuing with Shante’s question remaining unanswered. The following song on the Who Really Cares album is Cigarettes out the Window, a song about another ex-girlfriend: “my girl Liddy” (0:25). This shows that TV Girl has not put an end to its misogynistic tendencies. By providing the female perspective on the music of TV this early on the album, it reminds the listener to be mindful of the misogyny of the persona, but also allows for the misogyny to persist unchecked. A motif of the album is to “be careful who you screw” a lyric found in Not Allowed (1:39), and For You (2:00). Through the Maddie Acid persona, and the sampling of Shante’s Roxanne’s Revenge, TV Girl is aware that this behaviour is immature and unwarranted. Nonetheless the music will continue to bad mouth and hold contempt for women.

Who really cares? TV Girl’s meticulous lyrics and sampling shows an engagement with the female perspective, but that is not enough to change the persona of apathetic misogyny and pain, nor the reinforcement of these beliefs through music. Shante remains un-beated.

Works Cited:

Crawford, Garry. “INTERTEXTUALITY.” Dictionary of Leisure Studies, by Sharon Henderson Callahan, 1st ed., Sage UK, 2009. Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6MzE2MDE5MQ==?aid=256978.

From Russia with Love. Directed by Terrance Young, Eon Productions, 1936.

Lazy-Baseball-974. “Who is Madison Acid.” Reddit, 21 July 2023, https://www.reddit.com/r/tvgirl/comments/154p0ez/who_is_madison_acid/.

Levy-Pearlman, Devorah. “TV Girl Has A Problem With Women.” My Spilt Milk, 14 May 2019. https://www.myspiltmilk.com/articles/tv-girl-has-a-problem-with-women.

Roxanne Shante. “Roxanne’s Revenge.” The Ol’ Skool Flava of… Nia, 2008, Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/album/6vqwsHyibju75gYK0LRmbb.

Schloss, Joseph Glenn. Making Beats: the Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop. E-book, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2014, https://hdl-handle-net.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/2027/heb32682.0001.001.

Tyree, Tia, and Melvin Williams. "Black Women Rap Battles: A Textual Analysis of U.S. Rap Diss Songs." Women & Music, vol. 25, 2021, pp. 64-86. ProQuest, https://ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/black-women-rap-battles-textual-analysis-u-s-diss/docview/2576372227/se-2.

TV Girl. “Anjela.” French Exit, 2014.

TV Girl. “Cigarettes out the Window.” Who Really Cares, 2016.

TV Girl. “For You.” Who Really Cares, 2016.

TV Girl. “Song About Me.” Who Really Cares, 2016.

UTFO. “Roxanne, Roxanne.” Hits, 1996, Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/search/roxanne%20roxanne.