Janelle Monáe, “Dance Apocalyptic”
“Dance Apocalyptic” is the second single off of Janelle Monáe’s new album (and her first in three years), The Electric Lady, which is due out in September. Billboard called it “the album that will turn the singer from iconoclast to icon,” and the Atlantic Records COO told Julianne Escobedo Shepherd it will have “a lot of songs that can get played on mainstream radio.” With that poppy guitar riff, this certainly qualifies.
The first Electric Lady release was “Q.U.E.E.N.,” a track with Erykah Badu (go watch the video if you haven’t yet). In it, Monáe sings, “Am I a freak for dancing around? Am I a freak for getting down?” From Shepherd’s story:
With “Q.U.E.E.N.,” she says, “I feel like there are constant parallels with me as a woman, being an African-American woman, to what it means for the community that people consider to be queer, the community of immigrants and the Negroid-the combination between the ’N’ and the android. All of us have very similar fights with society and oppressors, with those who are not about love, who are more about judging. There are two different types of people: Some people come into this world to judge, some people come into this world to jam. Which one are you? It’s a question we should all ask ourselves. My job is to create art that starts a dialogue, to create songs and lyrics that ask society these questions, by using myself as a sacrificial lamb.”