In terms of what women have available to them with regard to “straight” “men,” it can perhaps be no grand surprise that, muse-wise, what inspires certain female songwriters to speak on their relationship (typically one gone wrong) can often lead one to contemplate just how bad the dating pool is when even a person attractive enough to be famous can’t seem to hold a fugly bloke down.
The most quintessential example of this au présent would undoubtedly be, um, Gerald Gillum–who wisely (one supposes) changed his “name” to G-Eazy for fame purposes, just as two of his most high profile ex-girlfriends felt inclined to do as well (Lizzy Grant and Ashley Frangipane being too “basic,” one imagines). For reinvention is the mother of all conjurings to the fame-bequeathing universe. Plus, Gerald is a moniker just too in keeping with his G-Sleaziness. Not that a name alteration can change the fact that his inability to treat women well (blame it on his mother leaving his father when he was in first grade for a classic case of psych 101 motivations) has, for our gain, at the very least, spawned the Lana Del Rey song “In My Feelings” from Lust for Life and the standalone single “Without Me” from Halsey, which she more than somewhat hypocritically performed at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show before slamming the brand for being anti-LGBTQ+ when, in fact, this is the most heteronormative song she’s ever created.
Where Del Rey was simply “caught in her feelings”–a moment of weakness that began at Coachella in 2017 and ended quickly enough for her to discuss that brief vulnerability on the abovementioned track she managed to get onto the record in time (along with “Coachella-Woodstock In My Mind”–the genesis of which was famously documented the weekend of Coachella when North Korea also saw fit to test ballistic missiles), Halsey’s single goes much deeper than that. Picking up the pieces of what Del Rey must have wrought (for we all know it’s true what the honorary Californian crooner sang: “Who’s doper than this bitch? Who’s freer than me? You wanna make the switch? Be my guest, baby.”), Halsey bemoans, “Found you when your heart was broke/I filled your cup until it overflowed.”
So yes, G-Eazy did try to make the switch from LDR and ultimately found it inadequate. Or maybe he just has a natural and latent desire to move on to another female singer so as to finagle another song written about him and his no good ways. For there can be no denying that the surest way to get a woman to write about you in her work is to treat her like shit. Which is also something Taylor Swift knows all about (yet managed to avoid being treated as such by Eazy after he grossly name checked her in a song that included a lyric about how she was on his “wish list“).
Thus, even if G-Eazy falls easily into the annals of forgettable pop culture history (which he is surely poised to), he will forever be immortalized in the searing tracks from these much more famous and artistically credible (yes, even Halsey) women.
And even though Halsey is perhaps overly arrogant (in a way that LDR has actually earned the right to be) in her assumption that she was the one who placed him in his current “high” place by noting, “I’m the one who put you up there/Name in the sky, does it ever get lonely?,” no one can blame her for feeling Justin Timberlake-level vindictive (there are certainly overtones of “Cry Me A River” here) as she goes over how hard she tried to make it work in the face of pure foppery. So it is that she regrets, “Gave love ’bout a hundred tries /Just running from the demons in your mind/Then I took yours and made ’em mine/I didn’t notice ’cause my love was blind.”
“thank u, next” these songs are not, for no one can say that Lana or Halsey is grateful for this particular ex. So maybe Pete Davidson needs to look only to this pièce de merde to understand why “when something happens to a guy the whole entire world just trashes him without any facts or frame of reference.” Well darling, just reference these two songs, and maybe, in the future, one by Ariana Grande herself about G-Eazy–should he manage to remain in the spotlight much longer for anything other than fuckery.
