GoldDigger: Fitz and The Tantrums and the Parasitic Archetype

Fitz and The Tantrums, an indie-soul band signed to Dangerbird Records, released their debut full length album, entitled Pickin' Up the Pieces, back in 2010.  I first heard them in late January 2011, and after giving the LP a couple of spins, I grew to be a fan.  And I still am one; a year later and I'm still pumping my fist whenever I hear one of their songs come through my speakers.  Yet there's a certain element to their work that is more than a little disconcerting.

Of the ten songs on the album, nine are about relationships, and most of those songs detail breakups (which is not that surprising, considering their first EP was called Songs for a Break Up, Vol. 1).  I certainly have no problem with the kiss-off tune, but when telling an ex-lover to leave, one does run the risk of resorting to problematic or offensive gender stereotypes.  For most of the tunes, the band avoids this problem.  Two songs, however, see the group slip into that troubling mode.

What I find a bit curious is that in both of these instances, Fitz and The Tantrums use the same gender stereotype: the gold-digger.  According to Orrin E. Klapp, in cultural works the gold-digger belongs to a category of villain characters he terms "chiselers or parasites".  Members of the class of villains are characterized by "exploitation of an unfair advantage in an underhanded way by a person whose relationship to society is essentially parasitic" (339).  In the case of the gold-digger, the character gets into a relationship in order to get at the partner's money.

This character type appears in popular culture with a great deal of frequency, especially in the world of music.  Prominent examples include Eartha Kitt's "Santa Baby", Kanye West's "Gold Digger" and, most recently, Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You!"  The gold-digger is almost always a female character, although there are a handful of male examples (Morris Townsend in Henry James' Washington Square, for one).  It is true, however, that this tends to be a female-exclusive character, which has the effect of reinforcing the notion that women are shallow and materialistic.

I shall discuss the two offending songs in the order they appear on the album.  The first track, then, telegraphs the use of the gold-digger character in the title: "MoneyGrabber".

"MoneyGrabber", the lead single to Pickin' Up the Pieces, is easily the best known song from Fitz and The Tantrums; it's also a song that's a little hard for me to critique, because I really like the song.  In fact, "MoneyGrabber" may be my favorite song from 2010.  A killer opening piano riff and an impassioned lead vocal performance will do wonders, I suppose.  Yet the song remains problematic--I mean, the gold-digger character is embedded in every fiber of the song.

It's possible that part of the reason that "MoneyGrabber" didn't really bother me until I actually began to think about it is that the verses seem to be aimed at one particular person.  In that respect it appears to take the form of the personal put-down song, a type of song to which I admit being a fan of.  Michael Fitzpatrick seems legitimately angry at the title character: she was "talkin' double" with her "hands in the pocket".  The lyrics are terse, but they do give the impression that the speaker had been taken advantage of.

However, the verses do contain some troubling lines.  Two examples stick out.  In last line of the second verse, the speaker goes beyond the gold-digger stance and combines it with accusations regarding her sexual nature: "I don't pay twice for the price of a cheap-time whore".  This is not merely an off the cuff insult; the speaker implies that at the end of the relationship, the title character was good solely for (dirty) sexual uses.  This takes the song off focus and suggests that he has more problems with this particular woman.

A line in the first verse, however, I find more disturbing.  According to the speaker, the "MoneyGrabber" was "always made to want it all".  In stating that her gold-digging ways extend into the past, the speaker presents the possibility that being a materialistic woman out to take a poor sap's money--or more generally, being greedy--is somehow a part of her genetic makeup.  Is one supposed to infer that she was born to be a gold-digger?  So much for free will there.

For the most part, though, "MoneyGrabber" keeps its focus on one subject.  The only time that the song makes any generalizations comes in the first lines of the chorus: "Don't come back anytime/I've already had your kind".  It is a nasty generalization, and the whole "you and your kind" business is never inoffensive, but it's not entirely ridiculous.  After all, humanity in general tends to get greedy.  This doesn't forgive its transgressions, but it keeps the song from going too far.

But, yeah, I still dig the song, a lot.  Maybe I'm just able to do the mental gymnastics and see Fitzpatrick as being deep in character.  He's just initiated a bitter break up, and now they're in a heated argument by the front door.  He's sure angry, perhaps justifiably, but in the heat of passion he says a lot of things he may come to regret not too long later.  It's possible, I'll admit, but now I'm engaging too much in apologetics.

Actually, I may just be trying to reconcile the fact that I love "MoneyGrabber" despite its use of the gold-digger stereotype, yet I hate "Rich Girls" precisely for the sexist lyrics.

Well, okay, it's not entirely because of the lyrics that the song bothers me.  The tune doesn't gel with the rest of the album's musicality and it lacks the musical punch that songs such as "Pickin' Up the Pieces", "MoneyGrabber" or "Don't Gotta Work It Out" possess.  In fact, had they replaced this song with "Darkest Street" or "We Don't Need Love Songs" from their EP, it would have greatly improved the record, though some track reordering may have been called for.

But that's not why I'm talking about "Rich Girls".  No, that'd be the lyrics.  Whereas "MoneyGrabber" largely refrained from generalizations, the chorus of "Rich Girls" revels in them:

Don't matter what you do
'Cause the rich girls will break your heart
The poor girls will take your money
I confess and I repent
For the things I've done; this soul is spent

From this chorus alone, one can see a disquieting viewpoint emerge.  Because what one does is irrelevant, one can infer an either-or proposition: Either you take the haughty rich girls, or the lower-class girls looking for cash.  That's quite the narrow view of women, isn't it?  Even if the last two lines of the chorus suggest that the speaker may be to blame in some way, from the rest of the song, I can only conclude that he's "repenting" for bothering with women at all.  Even I can't take that broad bitterness.

I shall skip over the first verse, the one that deals with rich girl Susie, not because it's uninteresting or unproblematic but because it doesn't involve the gold-digger character; Susie just won't give the speaker the time of day.  The second verse, about poor girl Shawnee, is where the stereotype comes into play:

Shawnee came from a broken home
Her mama's sick and her daddy's long gone
Got a job but it don't pay no bread
Lookin' for a man who's well-fed.

At first, Shawnee appears to be a sympathetic character: a tough life growing up, an ailing mother she may be caring for, and working a job which pays little to nothing.  In fact, had I fallen asleep during the chorus, I might have thought that "Rich Girls" was actually a song condemning wealthy women who have it made in favor of the struggling working class women.  I could certainly see the appeal to that kind of song.  Who doesn't love a good takedown of the snooty one-percent crowd?

Granted, that still would involve writing stereotyped characters, which is, yes, still an issue, but in that case it wouldn't include the gold-digger character and I wouldn't be a writing a blog post on it.  Instead, that fourth line starts the turn.  I mean, I would imagine that someone in that situation would not object to finding a partner who happens to have money, but is that Shawnee's number one criterion?  Well, let's look at the other half the verse:

She got the low-rent, underground padlocked studio
Blues and a bus fare to take her to school
She sure needs a steady man
Always got a perfect plan
For you to pay up for playing the fool

It's at this point where the gold-digger character shines through.  The speaker asserts that Shawnee consciously seeks out someone with cash and is more than willing to leave him a sucker.  On top of that, that Shawnee "needs" a man with dough suggests that the only way for the poor girls to get money is to start panning in the river.  Combining the gold-digger with the notion that women really do need men, that, that's quite the feat.

Furthermore, what in Shawnee's character would indicate that she would take advantage of people in that way?  What on earth has she done besides be poor?  I don't know if she's a good person or not from the song, but should I just assume she's a bad apple?  Am I supposed believe that non-wealthy women are just naturally gold-diggers?  At least in "MoneyGrabber", the song made it sound like the woman was in fact evil.  What in "Rich Girls" suggests the same for the poor girls?

When all is said and done, the speaker in "Rich Girls" comes off as an immature teenager who, after some failed relationships, comes to the conclusion that all women must be arrogant or greedy materialists.  There's a jaded edge to the subject matter, which is odd, since I think the performance is kind of jokey.  If that's what they were going for, then I think it makes the song even worse.  If it were sincere, I could still write it off as roleplay (thought it would be more difficult).  But the tone makes it more like a "sandwich" or "women's rights" joke.

I don't want to give the impression that these two songs are representative of the band.  Taken as a whole, the oeuvre of Fitz and The Tantrums seems to be about the spectrum of heartbreak, from rage ("News 4 U") to regret ("Tighter") to a bit off both ("Breakin' the Chains of Love").  On top of that, other than "Rich Girls", every song they've put out sounds fantastic.  Yet the use of the gold-digger stereotype is fairly prominent in their body of work, and may turn listeners off to some great new music.

I'm still a fan; there are just some lyrical issues that must be discussed.  With any luck, their next album will rectify them.

Works cited:
Fitz and The Tantrums. Pickin' Up the Pieces. Dangerbird, 2010. CD.

Klapp, Orrin E. "American Villain Types." American Sociological Review 21.3 (1956):
     337-40. JSTOR. Web. 21 June 2012.