Aterciopelados’ Andrea Echeverri continues her solo career with the August 20th release of her latest, Ruiseñora. The album’s first single, “Florence,” plays like an after-school special: a pro-girl-power, self-love campaign. These things, female empowerment and the like, are important and should be talked about. But Echeverri seems to be expressing herself at the level of children: don’t cling to fairy tale models, love yourself before you love others, let’s all be equal, yada yada yada. Well, yeah.
I don’t say, “Well, yeah” because I think everyone practices this kind of enlightenment. That would be naïve of me. I say, “Well, yeah” because Echeverri is still an artist, after all, so her one-dimensional, borrowed feminist bullet points aren’t carrying any creative or political weight. I think Echeverri has the intellect (and the spotlight) to push the discourse to another level, a more thought-provoking level.
Feminism has the ability and power to transcend into so many different mediums, more experimental and innovative ones. Not all feminism needs to be avant-garde, but this feels lazy and painfully literal. If the album were marketed to children, then I’d say, “Bravo, kids need this.” But we’re all adults here. We deserve to be smacked in the face by capital T Truth, not gently patted by PC truisms.
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Download Andrea Echeverri’s Ruiseñora below: