“Joking” to Andy Cohen, among others, about how her latest album cover and title serve as an homage to all the plastic surgery procedures she’s had over the years (despite being the young age of twenty-nine), it’s not all that “tongue-in-cheek” when one takes a look at the artwork for Anitta’s Versions of Me. As her fifth album, there are five versions of herself behind a main one. All of the faces being presented as busts… in progress. Until this latest version came along to stand out more than all the others… so far. And this one might be the most sex positive yet.
In another promotional move for the album, Anitta recalled to Pitchfork, “I did, like, eight plastic surgeries and my body was completely changed—and I loved that.” This being said of her transformation for her second album, 2014’s Ritmo Perfeito. Obviously, there were many more transformations to follow and, evidently, those many surgeries only helped fortify her already strong sense of self with a jolt of additional confidence. Present from the moment Versions of Me kicks off with “Envolver.” A global hit, the song finds Anitta espousing the benefits of commitment-free banging, complete with warning her current boy toy, “I’m not going to involve you/I know once we do it, you are going to come back.” She’s that “cocksure” of her sexual prowess. And if the accompanying visual for “Envolver” is any indication, she has every right to be since she can move like that. Self-directed, the video’s intricate choreo (made more intricate by cross-cutting sequences) showcases Anitta in all her booty-poppin’ splendor (in fact, Megan Thee Stallion might need to start worrying).
The pace of the tempo picks up on “Gata” featuring Chencho Corleone. With its reggaetón infusion (and sample of Plan B’s “Guatauba”), Corleone’s repetition of “uba-uba-guata” complements Anitta seductively adding, “Ella e’ una gata.” More than likely a reference to Anitta’s smooth, sphinxlike abilities when it comes to getting what she wants, it can also easily be interpreted as her identifying with a cat in heat when it comes to her sexual appetite. This much is made undeniably apparent on the following, um, banger, “I’d Rather Have Sex.”
Making “34+35” sound like a children’s song, Anitta still has to contend with the raunch of someone like Madonna on her own odes to sex, including “Justify My Love,” “Erotica” and, what else, “S.E.X.” The latter also employs sexual sound effects for good measure, just as “I’d Rather Have Sex” uses a creaking bed. Unlike Ari’s philosophy on thank u, next’s “make up,” Anitta doesn’t believe that a fight will ensure the sex is even better once they make up. Instead, she urges, “We can go right, we can go left/Stay up all night in an argument, nah/I’d rather have sex, yeah/Rather have, yeah, yeah/If we gon’ flex, might as well flex.” It’s certainly a more “evolved” perspective than Grande’s, who still believes in inflicting the foreplay-oriented drama in order to achieve the ultimate orgasm. And Anitta is most definitely unlike any other female pop star in this regard, never singing a song about pining over some fuckboy when she, instead, is the fuckgirl. A Brazilian Samantha Jones, if you will (except that even Samantha fell prey to monogamy a few times).
Using another sample, this time from the classic Mexican folk song (popularized for whites by Ritchie Valens), “La Bamba, “Gimme Your Number” featuring Ty Dolla Sign is another nod to Anitta’s sexual prowess. As such, she sings to the mid-tempo rhythm, “You know you want this/Way too hot to ignore like a temptress/The way I walk through that door in this tight dress/Ain’t too hard to slip off/And you touching on my body, I can’t help but want some more, yeah.” In turn, Ty Dolla Sign lends the responding chorus, “Para bailar la bamba (ooh, yeah)/Come on and give me your number/If you don’t answer the text, yeah/We can’t have fun next time, now I got your number.” So yeah, essentially, it provides the perfect soundtrack to any modern “meet-cute” sequence, likely in Miami.
Another mid-tempo, reggaetón-happy track arrives in the form of “Maria Elegante” featuring Afro B. Because no Spanish-language album is ever truly quite complete without the mention of the name Maria. And here, Anitta flexes her gift for mixing languages by singing, along with Afro B, “Pull up looking very elegante/With that baby and the booty gigante/She know that I be coming muy picante/See the shine, I get diamante.” Highlighting how English and Spanish have become so intermixable as the cultures have blended together over the decades, “Maria Elegante” echoes the earworm propensities of other Spanglish hits like “Hips Don’t Lie” or, more recently, Camila Cabello’s Familia singles, “Don’t Go Yet” and “Bam Bam.”
A shift in the sonic tone thus far on the album is noticeable on “Love You,” a far more “rock”-oriented ditty. More down-tempo, the beat keeps threatening to burst out until finally doing just that with the chorus, one that is highly out-of-character for Anitta’s persona. For she finds herself admitting, “The sun will always go down/The sky will always be blue [that is, if one can really call it that color now, in its polluted state]/And, and as hard as I pray to change it/As much as I hate to say this/I, I, I, I will always love you.” Not exactly in keeping with her “I fuck who I want and move on” vibe. Nor are the lyrics, “And I cried so many times/To find the peace of mind/Love me in the hurry/On my own.” Throughout the song, the beat then continues at a “let’s soldier on reluctantly” sort of pace, almost to mirror the resignation with which she endures this pining.
Maybe that’s why the contrast of “Boys Don’t Cry” is necessary afterward, with Anitta negating the likes of MARINA and Camila Cabello asserting that men are afraid to cry, lest it compromise their “masculinity.” In Anitta’s world, boys cry all the time because she makes them. Heartbreaker that she is and all. Which, speaking of MARINA, adheres to the tenets of 2012’s “How to Be a Heartbreaker.” Anitta knows the rules from that song for sure as she goads, “When the girls don’t need your love/Who says boys don’t cry?” Miley Cyrus has adopted a similar approach to her romantic life (as her divorce from Liam Hemsworth clearly indicated)—which is perhaps why the two harmonized so well together on the song when Anitta joined Miley for a performance of it during her set for Lollapalooza Brazil… you know, right before Miley released Attention and got COVID from her worldwide gallivanting.
As the eponymous track from the record, “Versions of Me” is especially powerful and important (or so one would think) because it managed to oust Girl from Rio (also a song featured soon after this one) as the record’s title. The fact that Anitta felt this name said more about her than her place of origin perhaps speaks to the idea that we’re never just “the place we came from.” We’re the places we’re going, the places we’ve been, the places we currently are. All of these experiences—stemming from a new geographical location at any given moment (particularly if you’re a pop star with a readily available jet)—serve to create new versions of ourselves. So, too, does plastic surgery. For the most part looking like Eva Longoria (and sometimes Mýa) as a result of these procedures, Anitta maintains that no matter how many surgeries she undergoes, she’s always going to be fundamentally “herself.” This made clear via the statement, “Even after millions of plastic surgeries, doctors and interventions… my inside just stays the same.” That sameness still amounting to a defiant, no fucks given kind of girl. Which is why she taunts the so-called object of her affection, “I-I-I’m over the top/Don’t really care if you li-like it or not.” With production from BURNS, who has produced the likes of Britney Spears and Lady Gaga, the sound of this particular track seems as though it could have been pulled from Ava Max’s Heaven & Hell. A dichotomy Anitta assures she is with the chorus, “I’m in your mind and you’re caught up in my drama/You want all these versions of me?/All these versions of me/I-I-I’m a whole lot.” Emotionally and physically, as it were.
The carefree acoustic guitar providing the backing music of “Turn It Up” spurs Anitta to return to her Spanish tongue as she, once again, mélanges English. She also revives her favorite theme: impermanence. Whether in romance, sexual dalliances, what have you, Anitta is here to remind, “We don’t need forever, baby/I know that nothing’s here to stay/But right now we should take all we got and turn it up all the way.” Which is obviously what everyone has been doing regardless of socioeconomic status based on Earth about to basically implode on itself from an environmental standpoint.
Being that Khalid is featured on “Ur Baby,” a semi-slow jam is to be expected. This one being more mid-tempo, Anitta opens in her expectedly lascivious way with, “I don’t know why you gotta be like you don’t want it, yeah/You know that I can give you what you want, yeah/So put your name in it, I wanna scream it out/Just come and get it/I know what you want.” Well shit, Rihanna never sounded this sexual, and she’s supposed to hold the crown for that sort of thing. Guess she put it down for too long and Anitta, an Aries, decided to take over for Rih’s Piscean sex drive.
It’s also like Rihanna that Anitta’s hometown and country has influenced her style and music from the beginning, as she spreads the gospel of Brazil’s capital worldwide. This much is made apparent on “Girl from Rio,” which samples unabashedly from “Girl from Ipanema.” Said in a similar intonation to “I want it, I got it,” Anitta declares, “I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it/It runs in my blood, oh.” That “it” being an inherent charisma and aesthetic pleasingness that doesn’t necessarily coincide with Brazilian model stereotypes. Ergo, Anitta sings, “Hot girls, where I’m from, we don’t look like models/Tan lines, big curves and the energy glows/You’ll be falling in love with the girl from Rio.” Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise if this was soon the official song promoted by the tourism board.
And yet, just because you fall in love with the girl from Rio doesn’t mean she’ll fall in love with you. As “Faking Love” featuring Saweetie is sure to emphasize via the bridge, “Feel like I’m running out of ways to say/That I ain’t feeling any type of way about you.”
Flexing her Portuguese on “Que Rabão” featuring Mr. Catra, Anitta reincorporates sex noises à la 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny.” Additional contributions from YG, Kevin o Chris and Papatinho round out the eclectic, frenetic sound of this track, among the most divergent on the record.
Then there is the single that started it all, “Me Gusta” featuring Cardi B and Myke Towers. It draws us closer to the finale of the record, with Cardi embracing her own Latina roots as she brags, “Me gustan lo macho y que coman cuca/Que haciendo el amor me jalen la peluca/Él me dijo que le fascina mi bunda/A mí me gusta el dinero, no te confunda.” The video that came with it in 2020 took place in Salvador, Brazil, among the first to dip its toe into Filming During The Pandemic. And my, how “whole-hog” it went with turning the streets into a runway despite alleged COVID restrictions. But anyway, we’re supposed to pretend all of that was a “lifetime” ago (despite still continuing on).
The dulcet tone and sound of “Love Me, Love Me” (an inverse message to “Love You”), in many ways, echoes the soft, gentle conclusion to Camila Cabello’s Familia with “everyone at this party.” Perhaps Anitta wants to prove, in the end, that she’s just a teddy bear who only desires to be loved beneath all that braggadocio. Just like the rest of us. And all our varying versions serving only as posturing to avoid an unbearable reality: we’ve never found someone willing to stick around “forever.” Which is why Anitta insists, in a rare moment of “weakness,” “Let’s make it last forever, baby.” Failing that, at least Versions of Me will last as long as there are still people on Earth to listen to it. Not quite “forever,” but it will have to do.
