Everyone Shut Up and Listen to "Silk Chiffon"

If you see me walking through crowds with a cheek-bursting grin, I’m probably listening to MUNA’s “Silk Chiffon” featuring Phoebe Bridgers. I’m dancing along power lines. I’m releasing every negative emotion I have felt in the last twelve hours. I’m transcending into the sky. It truly is a song that makes you feel the glee of a toddler jumping up and down just because they want to. The day the song came out, I sent the Spotify link to the first six people in my recent messages insisting that other people experience joy too. Reader, stop reading and listen to “Silk Chiffon”, and maybe it will prevent you from frowning at strangers, because for three minutes and twenty-six seconds you will feel your fantasy.

Okay, promise me you listened? Alright, I’ll believe you.

Back up, baby, back up for some quick band info. MUNA is a band composed of three members: Katie Gavin (vocals, songwriter), Josette Maskin (guitarist), and Naomi McPherson (guitarist, producer) who all met and formed MUNA in college at University of Southern California. In a Flood Magazine interview, Gavin and Maskin recall first bonding at a party in college and discovering they both had the same favorite Fiona Apple song, “Not About Love.” (The superior taste that that has.) The band celebrates that their music derives from the close, loving friendship between the three of them. Maskin tells NPR in a 2019 interview that the act of playing their music together is a way to extend, listen, and allow the vulnerability of each other, saying that the instruments respond to lyrics like conversation between friends, "I'm there to make sure Katie knows she isn't alone. I'm the other voice. My guitar is saying, 'It's all the same here. I have felt that way, too.' I think about feeling that kind of ache, and not having anyone to turn to.” All the bandmembers identity as queer (McPherson as nonbinary), infusing the elation and complication of queer identity into their two albumed discography.

The credits! Previously, they’ve opened for Harry Styles’ 2017 leg of Live on Tour. Currently, they’re Phoebe Bridgers’ opening act as well as cosigners of Bridgers’ record label, Saddest Factory. (“Silk Chiffon'' is their first single as a part of Saddest Factory Records.) Next year, they’re touring with Kacey Musgraves and King Princess. They’re featured in the Promising Young Woman soundtrack. Truly, they’ve worked with all your favs. But MUNA itself is about to become your fav with “Silk Chiffon.”

Now is the time I explain to you specifically how “Silk Chiffon'' featuring Phoebe Bridgers is the best song to reach human ears. From the second the song begins! The electronic fade in. The warbled “oh, when she’s on me.” The carefree acoustic strum into the opening lyrics, “Sun down and I'm feeling lifted/Downtown, cherry lipstick,” and we’re already vibing. We have the juxtaposition of the sun’s position and the mental state of the protagonist. The sun is in the belly of the sky and one is feeling brighted, boosted, bubbly! The way that Galvin sings “lifted” not “uplifted” is pure beauty to me, in that the connotation of “uplifted” is sort of Pinterest inspirational misquoted Bible verse territory, yet “lifted” to describe an emotion is lighter, like looking up while smiling at someone. (Plus, “uplifted” has too many syllables). I love verbs as adjectives! Next, we get some more scene setting focusing in on a “downtown” atmosphere and making the feeling tactile with “cherry lipstick.” So succinct! So wistful! Precisely the attributes an indie-pop song should have. We’re already there, at the very moment of feeling this way at sundown. The image expands from detailed close-ups to wide lens with, “Watch her silk dress dancing in the wind/Watch it brush against her skin,” now the speaker is revelling in noticing details about this woman. The wind and silk in harmony, nature and humanity create an image together. Tender moment, we have here. (Ahem, The Female Gaze). Also, what a dream to have someone fall in love with you because you're wearing a great outfit. The way Gavin’s vocal quick release to emphasize “silk dress” is a light stomp of each foot, going “beat beat.” The double stressed syllables clip at your ears, so that the melody of just those two words loop in your head. The first verse concludes with “Makes me want to try her on…,” skipping straight to the infectious pre-chorus, “Like, life's so fun, life's so fun,” articulating that gazing upon “her” makes one understand that life can be enjoyable. The way that the lyrics, “Life’s so fun, Life’s so fun” have never entered my ears before September 7th, 2021 is madness! The song embodies the idea that fun is a virtue which is best exemplified by pop music, and that is why we scream and dance at concerts, because sometimes you feel like “life’s so fun” and music encourages that. If you’re not already shimmying at this point in the song, seek help.

Further, we get outfitted with the next lyric, “Got my mini skirt and my rollerblades on/Bag on my side 'cause I'm out 'til dawn,” epitomizing a very Los Angeles aesthetic. People wearing mini skirts and rollerblades is probably the photograph in a Psychology textbook section about the importance of friendship to the psyche, because the image is simply gleeful. (Unless you’re watching Sharp Objects, then it is tremble-inducing.) “Bag on my side ‘cause I’m out ‘til dawn, “ elicits some imagination work of what bag? A tote? A crossbody worn on the shoulder? You decide, but just know you’ll be carrying it until dawn.

“Keeping it light like silk chiffon,” is stunning simile work in that you understand that you’re having an easy, breezy, Cover Girl fun time as if you’re the lightweight delicate beauty of the fabric, silk chiffon. Silk chiffon is also sheer with a shimmery quality, catching light with ease, making the fabric feel momentary. The lyrics capture the relationship of “Don’t have to worry about no one/ She said I got her if I want,” in this flirty air that you can casually embrace. In addition to the lightness of the fabric, MUNA sings, “She’s so soft like silk chiffon,” emphasizing the luxurious quality of the precise weave of silk. Silk chiffon is a typical evening gown fabric because it holds dye really well, so the richness and association with occasion affirms the meaningfulness of this moment. Even so, silk chiffon can be fragile, fraying or lose shape over time, yet this delicacy demonstrates the momentary nature of this romantic feeling— not in a pessimistic way, but that it is a luxury that this feeling exists at all.

The chorus “siiiiillkkkk chiff!ooonnnn/ oh, when she's on me” is the most pleasing glitter-filled sound. The “Silllllkkk” makes me want stick it and glide Hoedown Throwdown style. (Which is of course ascending to the highest plane of existence.) But the loveliness of the chorus image that intimacy with this girl is like soft fabric is the best kind of saccharine (and sapphic!).

Enter electric guitar and Phoebe Bridgers. “I’m high and I’m feeling anxious/Inside a CVS,” is instantly iconic but also grounding in that it’s setting up the idea that fun is escapism from the world, from ourselves. The CVS reference is cited in connection (on Genius) with Bridger’s penchant for walking around fluorescent lit stores to relax as described in her NPR 2018 Tour Diary:

When I was mixing my record in Nebraska, before I really knew anyone there, I drove myself to Target on Halloween and spent three hours walking around. I think I bought socks. In The White Album, Joan Didion writes about the role of malls in the "sedation of anxiety." At shows, there is always a weird amount of time between load-in and soundcheck. Not enough to do something, but too much to do nothing, so usually I go for a walk. Nine times out of ten, if I see a CVS, I will go in, and nine times out of ten I will buy nothing.

Then in Bridgers’ verse this Diodion sedation of anxiety feeling erupts into a joyous conversion in the next lyrics, “When she turns 'round halfway down the aisle/With that 'you're on camera' smile/Like she wants to try me on,” articulating the infectiousness of the presence of someone like this. Then Bridgers sings the pre-chorus this time, infusing herself into the brazen, sincere world of the song. Bridgers and MUNA join in the chorus, which feels like a reunion with your best friends even though you know you saw them last week. Bridgers remains for the rest of the song getting to sparkle with MUNA in the chorus. The outro slows to acoustic reflection of the intro. And then you immediately have to play the song again.

I’m never shutting up about how this song has galvanized me. In “Silk Chiffon,” MUNA really commits to the idea of bubblegum pop, which is usually pejorative in that it is often a term applied to female-driven music to dismiss it as trite. But there is such buoyancy in “bubblegum pop” that it is not disposable but serotonin generative. It’s supposed to be insulting, but the image of bubblegum in that it is a quick release of a pink explosion is accurately described but not accurately valued. Truly, the idea of constructed magic that can scoffed at is reminiscent of the lyrics from MUNA’s song “Pink Light,” “But there's a pink light in my apartment/It comes mid-morning as a reminder/ That at the right time, in the right surroundings/ I will be lovely, but I can't help thinking…” and that’s one reason we create art—to construct the right time, right surroundings, to be lovely. Sure, maybe the loveliness is ephemeral, but it still happened, and our anxious thoughts might follow, but there is still loveliness to be had. In that, the idea of bubblegum— a breathful pink creation that pops is a way to delight in something momentary. It’s the very idea of fun. It’s like life’s so fun, life’s so fun!

Now, go listen to all of MUNA’s music. Go quickly! Rejoice.