Subverting the Infidelity Anthem in the New Pretty Reckless Hit “About You”
I’ve written about every previous Pretty Reckless album, so I absolutely had to write something about “Dear God.” My previous article explored each album through the history of gothic literature but I want to do something different here — although, if I were to go down that route again, I would look to the updated sound and hopeful nature of the album without abandoning topics of darkness or even outright horror as similar to the fiction of the twentieth century that stood firmly in conversation with the past, the likes of Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. But enough about that. As much as I love the entire album, there’s one song that I want to talk about in particular, one song that kickstarted me, opened that third eye and made me see God, and that’s “About You.”
The infidelity anthem, easily summed up as the cheating song, is one of the cornerstones of popular music, very closely linked but not fully synonymous with the breakup song. We all know them. We hate some and love others, and every generation gets a handful to call their own. Dolly Parton did it best with “Jolene,” even though that’s more about the looming potential threat of cheating and not the act itself. The 2000s gave us some distinctly gendered mega-hits, two that immediately come to mind, with Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” and The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside.” “Before He Cheats” has become the go-to White Girl Rage song over the past two decades, beneficial in that it serves a primal urge to wrong the person who wronged you but is still both possessive and possessed, weirdly subservient in a way that undercuts its tone but makes its conservative audience comfortable, which was no doubt crucial to its success. I highly recommend the cover of this song by Amigo the Devil, which keeps the pronouns intact despite a male singer, turning it into a folk goblin bisexual rage anthem.
On the other side of that, we have “Mr. Brightside,” or, “The Tale of the Boy Who Cucked Himself.” The song spins the yarn of a guy who fears his girlfriend is cheating on him, so he follows her to spy on her and have his suspicions confirmed, or imagines himself doing it, both of which are questionable. Whether “it’s all in my head” refers to a literal admission or the classic gaslighting line a cheating partner will tell their lover, the effect remains the same. Real or imagined, he stays to watch the whole thing which feels like a… different situation. The angst of “Please don’t let this be true” is relatable, but describing the event itself and the torment of not wanting to watch but having to watch is simply a kink nobody signed up to hear about. Buddy, you got yourself into this situation. You have the ability to leave at any time. The longer you watch, the weirder it gets.
I bring these two songs up not only because they are two of the most famous cheating songs of all time, but because they both demonstratively lack something that a great many songs of their ilk lack, and that’s self-worth. That is what Taylor Momsen and crew have brought to this hapless sub-genre with “About You” and by God is it a game-changer.
The song immediately grabbed my attention, in general, because it’s one of the fastest and catchiest songs in the entirety of “Dear God.” But it still doesn’t sound like other Pretty Reckless songs of the band’s past. In fact, what makes both it and the entirety of “Dear God” so exciting is that if anything the whole thing kind of sounds like a ’90s album, with certain motifs and twang that I frankly never expected to hear again. The band wears its Soundgarden influence on its sleeve on this album, but there are heavy echoes of everything from Harvey Danger and early Green Day, to Oasis and the Goo Goo Dolls, to even a dash of Hole and Concrete Blonde. “About You” absolutely feels like a late-‘90s alternative rock song in that vein, and the mix of that familiar sound and bold new perspective makes for absolute perfection.
“About You” is a song that looks at infidelity and betrayal and finally says, “That sounds like a you problem.” I do not want to discredit or ignore anyone’s pain, and everyone has the right to fear those raw emotions that come with betrayal, absolutely, but there is a level of self-respect so frequently missing from songs and even other forms of art that explore this topic, that is equally important to both healing and just connecting with the material, in general. A person’s actions are always going to define them more than anyone else around them. No matter what someone has done to you, and the worse it is the more it probably says, whatever it is will always be more of a reflection on them than it will ever be on you. It is essential to remember that.
The entirety of the song is framed around that. That’s what both the title and the oft-repeated chorus, that single line “What does it say about you?” Being the rallying cry that is also the distilled essence of this entire idea. Even the song starting with the word “I” followed by a pause before getting into the whole mess reclaims ownership of the self. It’s perfect. It’s a “fuck you” song with “fuck yeah” energy. We desperately need more of that. It does not ignore pain. It does not ignore hurt. The simplistic chant of “if you shoot, I’ve been shot” sums that up very bluntly. But it is still completely framed from this perspective that the lying and cheating, especially at the scale the song suggests, are ultimately pathetic. There’s not a breath wasted on worrying if it’s a reflection of our narrator the singer, if they’re not good enough, if they could have done more, if they pushed them away. It treats the cheater with the absurdity they deserve, and that’s all they get, because the crap they’ve been pulling is completely on them. And by not giving them an inch, it gives the narrator everything and that is deeply important.
By describing the magnitude of hurt in so many of these songs, the cheater is awarded so much power, and you are not going to find that in “About You.” Here, you find a person who is so succinctly read for filth, so immediately summed up by their own actions as “Wow, that is a really terrible reflection on you and I hope you can figure yourself out in the future,” that you could almost feel sorry for them. But, as the song makes crystal clear in a way that may ultimately be its thesis, you are definitely not required to do that.
