Wow, this 8-year-old song I’m hearing for the first time gave me lots of inspiration today. The lyrics are so intellectual and demanding, the way she repeats them emphatically, starting with the assertion, “I’m only an image of what you see.”
The song builds with a delightful steel drum melody and becomes sensual and proudly womanly before transforming into more of a house instrumental. For the second verse, empress begins to chant “I’m only a struggle if I’m in your way”… “But you made the road one-way,” capturing a really common feeling we meet when struggling for justice.
Often, the blame gets shifted to the victims of oppression when they make their everyday struggles known to the people who built the system for themselves. In this song, Empress captures how those who built up the patriarchy made it for themselves then get mad when there’s not room for everyone, just like building a one-way road.
Empress of does a great job with this song, celebrating the struggle against patriarchy.