Friday 8/21: Orville Peck - "Fancy"
Today we share our thoughts on a new song by Canadian musician Orville Peck.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
This week, while Eli is away on vacation, the newsletter will feature contributions from a series of writers we love.
Today we are joined by writer Geraldine Long to discuss a new song by Canadian country artist Orville Peck
Geraldine Long:
My first listen to Orville Peck’s “Fancy” was secondhand, heard flat and clipped through a Discord call. Despite this, the track still packed enough punch to itch in my head for the rest of the night. A cover of the Reba McEntire track of the same name, Orville Peck transforms this iconically country sound into something somber and more of the tone of Johnny Cash. Deep base notes and a slight pitch shift give the words a darker tone than the original implied, highlighting the dismal story described by the lyric’s protagonist. The sex worker Fancy of Reba McEntire’s conception is perhaps more at peace with her choices than the one in Orville Peck’s version. The carefully chosen pronoun changes pack another subtle punch: leaving “lady” and “woman” but shifting “half-grown kid” into “half-grown boy”. Peck’s more modernized Fancy serves as an equally modern nod to the same problematic system which gave birth to McEntire’s. The poverty which drives both Fancy’s to sex work has not changed, but deepened - and Peck has brilliantly shifted the tone to serve as a reminder.
Eric Bennett:
Let us begin with a brief history of “Fancy,” a song that has taken on many lives, but has only aged well. The first iteration, from 1970, is the slinky, velveteen Bobbie Gentry take. Decidedly soulful, it sounds like a swanky lounge, fit with gaudy decor, smoke pouring from cigarettes in foot-long holders. While the character of Fancy’s story hasn’t changed, each version has pushed a different angle of how to read her childhood. Gentry’s version doesn’t make you feel bad for Fancy but rather shows her as an anhedonic adult, living her lush lifestyle, and not worrying too much. She’s that Gif of Ariana Grande pouting, “and what about it?”
Flash-forward to 1990, when Reba McEntire’s classic version came out on her album Rumor Has It. Its pounding drum and crying guitar are iconic, and there’s a reason it feels like the true version of this song. McEntire does such a good job at milking the tragedy out of this story but doesn’t do it as an indictment of it. Fancy is proud of her life, and what she’s built out of it. She doesn’t judge her mama, so why should we? It’s so rare we get a pop song that is on the whole pro-sex work.
We’ve been overdue for a new take on the song, particularly as sex work becomes rightfully more and more normalized. Orville Peck is maybe the best person alive who could give us a truly 2020 “Fancy.” Peck is the kind of artist that had he been making music in 2002 when I was a tiny queer seven-year-old, would have changed my life. The only queerness I saw in country music was what I found in things like “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” (which, lol, too real). Peck’s queering of country music, with his deep bellow and leather mask, has finally reached the genre’s oddball classics. His take on Fancy is directly southern gothic, eschewing the stained glass light fixtures of the Gentry original, as well as the “If I Could Turn Back Time” production of Reba’s. Peck’s just has an eerie bell toll, some creeping guitar lines, and his gorgeous voice filling the void. It also feels important to point out what he changes about the song itself. He changes only some pronouns and gendered terms, leaving lines like “there stood a woman where a half-grown boy had stood” open to interpretation. It makes me think of a mother encouraging a child’s gender experimentation, letting them wear her oversized heels, doing their makeup. But the song is still about a mother turning her child out, so take this how you will. Peck’s version is slow, taking its time telling Fancy’s story, his voice emanating drama. Its finale, a swell of screaming guitars feels like a fitting blaze of glory, as he truly makes the song his own.
Where “Fancy” will go next remains a mystery, but hopefully, by then it will not need to stand on its own. Artists like Peck and Kacey Musgraves, who are pushing the conservative nature of country music further left give me hope.