It’s not about anything that you do or anything you have or how you look or what you accomplish. And what I know is we all are worthy and deserving of regard and respect. "My favourite definition of the word worthy," she says in her Songversation podcast "is deserving of regard and respect. "And I had to learn to take care of myself in the face of a society and industry that doesn’t love me." "I sobbed, because it was a graphic illustration that I lived in a world that didn't value people like me," she wrote. Kelly's sex crimes were being swept under the carpet. In a blog post earlier this year, Arie recalled how she broke down in tears way back in 2002 when she saw how easily R. It's a theme that dates all the way back to her very first hit single in 2001, Video, in which she dared to distance herself from the pursuit of bling, singing: "My worth is not determined by the price of my clothes, no matter what I'm wearing I will always be India.Arie".įor Arie, accepting her own worth has become a symbol of defiance against an uncaring and materialistic world. Rollercoaster comes from Arie's eighth album, Worthy, the title track of which posits the controversial view that worthiness is not earned but is innately human. Referring to 2018's NFL "take a knee" protests, Arie asks us to take another look at the chaos that surrounds us and then, in a spoken comic aside, she asks: "And Colin Kaepernick's knee got y'all losin' y'all minds? Come on!" There's a bit of a reactionary in all of us, but even if some of these disjointed ideas are her own, at least India.Arie has a sense of humour. "The next thing they turn around, they clonin' you and me". "They're clonin' animals, we're eating' the meat," she sings. Are these her own views? Or is she satirising the Trump-voting, border-wall-building so-called moral majority, ignorant of the facts but suspicious of everything and everyone?
In a roll call of tangential examples of modern culture, from "mumble rap" to "genetically modified broccoli" (not a phrase you'll find in many pop songs), parts of the song come dangerously close to the ravings of right-wing Conservatives complaining that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Some of the lyrics to Rollercoaster could be interpreted as rambling and reactionary.
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Mass communication floods our senses with an overwhelming torrent of new ideas and there are countless influencers - celebrities, intellectuals, politicians, business leaders and spiritual charlatans - proposing the path to navigate it all. Indie.Arie's Rollercoaster is a modern take on the immortal Sixties graffiti gag "stop the world - I want to get off", but rather than just escaping from the madness, it's an entreaty for all of us to better ourselves and "make love, peace and respect the priority".īeginning with a keyboard melody that recalls the opening of The Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever, layered with overlapping mock news soundbites hinting at senseless racial violence in American streets, Rollercoaster quickly launches into an irresistible beat and the opening couplet succinctly sums up the bewildering experience of living in the 21st Century: "Every time I turn on the news, I can't seem to tell a lie from the truth".