Uffie - 'Sadmoney'
Uffie’s single ‘Sadmoney’ is a gloriously knowing slice of electro sad pop that sounds like what might happen if Lykke Li gained an addiction to Hubba Bubba bubblegum. A foil to Ariana Grande’s ‘7 Rings’, ‘Sadmoney’ offers up a portrait of someone consumed by consumerism rather than empowered by it.
A former label mate of Justice and other major French electronic artists, Uffie returned from a near six year musical hiatus in 2017 with Charli XCX collaboration ‘Babygirl’ and there’s certainly a sense of the British star’s smart, self-aware approach to pop in this latest single. Her sighs of “I wish I’d never found out about Gucci” may seem glib, yet they contain a fathomless pit of seemingly inevitable desire for something that ultimately makes her feel worse.
The sense of weariness feels linked to the tendency towards millennial burnout currently in the zeitgeist, this generation’s ‘9 to 5’ with the anger replaced by a miserable acceptance of the status quo. “I’ll be pretty till it kills me” she sings, resigned to her fate of ‘death by attempting to reach unattainable beauty standards’ (a death that is an all too real possibility, just ask those women getting bum injections in Brazil).
“I just want to feel like someone else” she laments, and without wanting to get into a hacky thing of ‘Instagram is bad you guyssss!!!!’, the constant sense of comparing oneself to others, especially amongst young women, and attempting to buy cosmetics, diet products, surgeries or magic fucking beans to make yourself more accepted and acceptable is real. It’s out there.
Pop songs along the lines of “wow ur so perfect, it’s what’s inside that counts” are fine. They’re fine. But a pop song that’s able to capture the root cause of why people are needing that kind of reassurance in the first place without trying too hard? That’s a special thing. Down with capitalism, but until then let’s buy Uffie’s merch.
Uffie Releases New Single ‘Sadmoney’ is out now, and her new EP 'Tokyo Love Hotel' Out On February 22nd.
Words by Hattie Long