Today’s Song: The Nuance of Pop & Evocation Around Drama with Bronze Avery’s “Messy”

Bronze Avery is not just airing out his grievances, but dancing to them on “Messy” – and you should too!

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Listen: “Messy” – Bronze Avery

There are a specific brand of people in the general populace who identify as “hating” reality television or those who deem it “bad” or “trash.” Despite this resilient negation of anything to do with it, there is still an utterly human fact that we as people cannot shy away from – we love drama. Drama in this case being the interpersonal problems people extrapolate from their experiences. We as a species love drama, especially when we are in no way related to it. Orlando Born, the LA-based artist Bronze Avery, explores this idea, perhaps inadvertently, in his single “Messy.”

Bronze Avery is an electro-pop artist who made waves with his debut EP “American Dream” in 2015. He has since been releasing a cavalcade of hypnotic dance hits and vulnerable sad bops, all while being unsigned. Avery’s music tows the very fine line between expressing hardship but finding solace in dancing it out. The best offense is a great defense of one’s psyche. While most of Avery’s singles seem to resonate that aforementioned mantra, none so much as “Messy.”

Released in 2019, “Messy” articulates the experience of a one-sided relationship. In Avery’s case, his partner has been unfaithful, inconsiderate, and just plain hurtful to the degree where he musters up the power to ask, “what if the roles were reversed?” He asks himself if I had done the same thing, would they forgive me? Would they be as patient and understanding as I am? “If I fucked my ex like you did last week. Another 3AM call, but this time it’s me. If I dropped the filter, hurt you good. Would you come around like you know I would?” As listeners, there’s a degree of separation which allows us to be intrigued but have no stakes in our opinion. Yet, there’s also an undercurrent of accessibility in that we have all “baggage.” We as people have unique, nuanced thumbprints of trauma, but we find solace in the similarities of our feelings surrounding it.

“If I ever got a little bit messy. If I could even let me. Would you go off and leave me? Would you go off and hate me?”.Avery takes it a step further in his projection. He airs his skepticism about the world at large via a generalizing chorus. Not just my partner, but will anyone be willing to accept me, fully, wholly for exactly who I am? Avery is cognizant of his mistakes, his “messy” and projects an honest and heart-wrenching fear we all explore in the world of intimacy.“If I ever got a little bit messy, and let my shit just go free (Mm-oh). Quit picking up everyone, Who the hell would I be? Ever I ever got a little bit.” Despite the song’s nods to specifically romantic intimacy, Avery’s concerns seem to validate intimacy as a whole, across all relationships. It takes someone special, with a confident sense of self to juxtapose an enthusiastic, layered composition with a vulnerable question about self-worth.

As we move further and further into 2020 and into a new decade, the zeitgeist of “pop” music seems to be shifting. We see the malleability of the pop genre in 100 Gecs, Rina Sawayama, and Bronze Avery who allow the imagination for the malleability of “genre” as a whole. In an interview, Bronze Avery stated, “I don’t want to be labeled as an RnB artist.” Avery’s words are in direct correlation to the notion that society compartmentalizes the majority of black musicians as RnB, with no exceptions. The word also, however, begs us to think about the way we perceive art and to not be so normative and confined. Pop music has always been understood as “feel good” but Avery asks that we allow it to go further. In so many words, there is no better backdrop to dance than our pain and insecurities.

Bronze Avery is acutely aware of society’s love to be involved, and judge situations that we have no real part in. His heavily nuanced track “Messy” illustrates the complexity of intrigue and accessibility from the similar nature of our feelings. He doesn’t back down, he’s brazen, heartfelt, and rings with palpable veracity. One thing is for sure, few artists are not only doing it but are even capable of the layered honesty, and fun like Bronze Avery. We all, collectively, should be excited for what comes next from him.

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