"RAGE": track by track, by Samantha Margret
Photo credit: Erika Christine Photography
On RAGE
This EP is a marker on my journey to unlearn beauty culture, sexism, and gender norms. For a long time, I struggled to release music about body shame and self-esteem. I felt like I could say the right words, but I didn’t know how to live them. Or, sometimes, I wrote songs that felt like they would spread more hurt than healing. Since shame is contagious, I was afraid that sharing mine would simply reproduce the cycle of violence contained in the way we talk about women and bodies.
All of the songs on this EP were written within a few months of each other, and they grew out of a sense of peace. That’s not to say that I’m done healing. I’m not sure any of us are ever done healing, but I had this sense that I finally saw the thing I was trying to escape clearly. There’s this metaphor I heard once about trying to help someone leave a cult: The person is like a fly in a bottle. Even if they can see the outside world, they can’t find a safe way to get there. Every time they try, they just hit the walls of the bottle, so the outside world seems unattainable and even dangerous. But, if you wrap a piece of paper around the bottle, the opening is visible. The fly can go right toward the light, and escape. This EP is my attempt to cover the bottle in paper. We’ve all been told a lot of lies about how we need to be—that if we try to escape, we will hit a hard, cruel wall. As it turns out, there’s an opening. And, on the other side, a whole new way of being embodied and free.
Track breakdown
Track 1: RAGE
I wrote RAGE in a hurried voice memo in the car. It had been one of those days where things just seemed to stack up against me. Anger is one thing, but rage is deeper. The slow sections of the song embody this generational domino effect where we pass our own trauma on to the people we interact with. That part is insidious. We don’t even know we’re hurting people and ourselves in the process. Then, the aggressive chorus shows the way that slow hurt explodes when triggered by the more visible signs of oppression.
Track 2: Lucky Interlude
As I put the EP together, I knew I wanted it to play through from start to finish as a single listening experience. I sent along RAGE and another track to my friend Steph (aka Lucky Lamond). She’s a great songwriter and pianist, and I asked if she’d mock up something that might work as a transitional interlude. I ended up using one of the files she sent me that first day as the final interlude.
Track 3: Fools Gold
Fools Gold is the least hopeful track on the EP. The line “now I know who I am after all ‘cause only fools fall for fools gold” is a reference to the feeling I get when I’m deep in my body dysmorphia. For me, that feeling is like everything I ever thought was good about myself was some kind of deception. In the pit of that feeling, it’s like the shame is the truth and everything else was a foolish lie.
Track 4: Self Disrespect
Self Disrespect is my letter to myself for when that Fools Gold feeling rears its head. This song has the clearest message on the EP. I hope it reaches some people who have trouble remembering that they’re the f*cking best even when they don’t know it. It’s for absolutely everyone who forgets their worth.
Track 5: Joan of Arc
I rewrote Joan of Arc a few times before I got it right. Joan of Arc is one of very few women we learn about in history class whose value and purpose have nothing to do with her beauty. Her story is about who she was and what she believed. That’s what I want my story to be about. Jonathan Van Ness has this great quote about how loving yourself is an act of revolution. That’s where I wanted the EP to end, or really the next thing to begin.