Satorial Surday - What's Up by 4 Non Blondes

Hello and welcome to Satorial Sursday here on Another Flavor! Every Sursday (that's the day Norse people with a reverse lisp named after Sor, god of sunder) we will take a look at an individual in a music video and spend a bit talking about their clothing. These posts will generally be pretty quick, but I think it's important to be able to write about extraordinary clothing in an otherwise unremarkable video.

Today we'll be looking at the singer from this video, What's Up by 4 Non Blondes:



First off, two notes about this song. I don't like the name of it. I understand that the hook, "What's going on?" and the title of the song, "What's up?" mean essentially the same thing, but I don't think it makes sense to name the song something similar to what is sung in the song. It makes more sense to just use lyrics from the song to name it. Take it from Kid Rock who named a song Bawitdaba, even though those are just nonsense syllables. He sings "Batwitdaba" in the song so that is what he named it. If you want to have a cool name that doesn't just use lyrics from the song it should be totally different like Counting Blue Cars by Dishwalla. I feel like this song title is in some sort of song titling uncanny valley and it makes me uncomfortable.

Second, the name of the band is also unpleasant to me. The name 4 Non Blondes implies that the members of the band aren't like them, but are intelligent and worth knowing. I don't like this kind of stereotyping. Also, I think the bass player of the band is blonde so it isn't even accurate. The bass player looks super-stereotypically lesbian, though, so does that cancel it out? Is it a rule that lesbians can't be blonde regardless of their hair color?

Okay, so here is the picture of the singer we'll be looking at:

The bass player I mentioned earlier appears on the right, but we're just worried about the singer right now.

Three things jump out at us, the dreadlocks, the goggles, and the hat.

The dreadlocks are just a nineties thing, I think. Didn't everyone have white person dreads back then? I think even black people were jumping on the white dreads bandwagon. It's just a thing. Nothing to worry about.

Now, the hat. The only other musician I can think of who wore a hat like that (I'm talking rock musician, I believe in the twenties literally everyone was always wearing a top hat) is Slash from Guns N' Roses. Based on that information one possibility is that, by aping a prominent cock-rock artist, the singer is trying to refer to and reject the heavy metal, male-dominated world view. The other possibility is that the singer, just like Slash, is going bald and is trying to hide it with fashion.

The most intriguing part of her whole get up are the goggles. The goggles show her affinity for steampunk, but she isn't really wearing them per se. They are on her hat. There's actually a different part of the video where she is wearing a different hat with a different set of goggles. It's crazy. So the goggles are very important. I can understand not wanting to cover up most of your face with goggles, but I'd like to think they aren't just for fashion. I think we have to conclude that either there are extremely sensitive eyes on her top hat or she has two sets of eyes, one set being hidden by these goggles. I think the second possibility is more likely since the goggles are necessary even with a different hat.

So what does this mean for us? Does it mean that the name 4 Non Blondes does not refer to the band members' hair color, but to the color of the singer's four eyes? Is the singer an alien disguised to live among us? Have I just made the most important discovery in the history of humans?

Probably.

-PTD