The recently released BTS video for “Disco Tits”, the first glimpse of Tove Lo’s upcoming third studio album Blue Lips, extends her legacy of Sweden’s “darkest pop export”. The LA-via-Stockholm singer-songwriter’s brand of minimalist, radio-friendly electropop may stand squarely within the country’s lineage of melodically precise Top 40 hits (ABBA, Ace of Base, Robyn, Icona Pop), but Lo pushes the envelope further by also attempting to export Swedish gender egalitarianism within the relatively unprogressive genre of club music.
Lo remains radically - and somewhat nonchalantly - uninhibited with regards to drug use, partying, and sexual experimentation on the uptempo disco-tinged track: ‘I'm sweatin' from head to toe/ I'm wet through all my clothes/ I'm fully charged, nipples are hard/ Ready to go’. In the accompanying music video, however, which sees her taking on the open road with a talk-show host Muppet, she insists on maintaining equality when losing control: “The puppet is something that you can control, you know, you as a human decides the puppet’s move. Who is controlling the other - that’s what it kinda represents, but in a weird, and cute and funny way”.
After correcting the Muppet’s pronunciation of her name and sarcastically referring to the American way as the ‘right way’, Lo invites him to taste her "favorite [non-vanilla] flavors”. When he throws a tantrum and calls her a bitch at a diner, she slaps and then punches him in the face. They then experience hedonic highs together as equals: on the dance floor, in the bedroom, and on the open road. Imagine the music video with the muppet replaced fully by a human actor, and you get a better idea of her straightforward commitment towards equality.
For now, Lo’s feminist messaging is more explicitly embedded in her visuals. The song’s cover art continues her commitment towards representing the intensity of female sexual experience without playing to the male gaze: “I want to get to a place where women can be naked the same way that men can – funny naked or naked just to be naked.” No shaming, no double standards. There’s also her vulva iconography, her ‘desexualized’ masturbation sequence in her censorship-baiting short film Fairy Dust, her uterus dress, her gender-bending euphemisms (her previous LP was titled Lady Wood; Blue Lips is presumably a similar play on ‘blue balls’) and her refusal to follow in the footsteps of other female pop stars that often allow their pursuit of physical perfection to overshadow their work (even if she is far from shy about showing off her body). If this aspect of her ouevre becomes more explicit in her lyricism, Lo will be the undeniable shoe-in as the contemporary pop icon that best embodies the struggles of third-wave feminism.
