“WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”
I was introduced to this at once traditional and also very Broadway-esque song by RAYE because my brother sent me an Instagram video of this guy performing the song in his grandma’s bathroom, using the triple mirrors to create a chorus (there are a lot of talented artists on Instagram, but this guy is definitely up there for me). I hadn’t heard the song before, but later, walking home, it came up on a playlist I was listening to, and without the incredible performance of someone creating a chorus using a bathroom mirror to distract me, I was able to more fully hear the song itself.
In it, RAYE wants to know when her husband is coming, when she’s going to meet him, when she’s going to get married, which, if said in a more earnest, yearning tone, would make me run for the hills. When I was younger (and Very Christian), this was all many of the women I knew were talking about. I went to a Baptist college and there was the whole idea of Ring by Spring and getting an MRS degree: going to college just so that you can meet a guy who is probably going to have a good job and marry him!!! Reader!!!! I come from a feminist home!!! I have mostly understood marriage to be a trap to avoid. I am engaged and about to partake in the tradition only because we have been together for years and I trust him and if we’re gonna have kids, I wanna be a family unit, but listen, if I was young(er) and single, at least in my current brain, you would not catch me out here asking a man to come find me.
What is so good about this song though, and why I have been listening to it on repeat, is the tone of it isn’t yearning and it isn’t—well, maybe it’s a little earnest, but it’s also this loud bright haunting thing, a song that could be played in a movie where the husband turns out to be the villain and now he is on the run. WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! she wants to know, and what’s taking him so long. WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! and is he hooking up with somebody else right now. Maybe it’s my penchant for story, for drama, that makes me see this song as less this traditional cry for hetero marriage (!!!) and more as something a little bit darker, a little bit more extravagant.
The music video is this weird fever dream where she’s part “retro pop” singer (as the opening shot announces), dancing and singing in black-and-white and then running after this guy who is slowly and mysteriously walking down a hallway. Whenever she catches up to him, she ends up right where she started, and then, finally, she does get a hold of him, but he disappears, leaving just his coat behind. Then, there’s a couple in wedding clothes, but they’re just mannequins, and the whole thing is kind of weird and haunted, until she realizes that she has to find herself to find love (some man has written this message in a book she reads, a book that might also be the Bible??).
Okay so maybe this is a kind of traditional, kind of Christian song, and traditional Christian culture weirds me out as a queer person and as a feminist and as someone who believes everyone should be able to do what feels true to them, as long as they’re not putting someone else in harm’s way. Maybe the essential idea of the song is too traditional, but perhaps the reason the guy performing it in his grandma’s bathroom resonated with “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”, and the reason it was on that playlist where I found it, and the reason why after I listened to it one time, I listened to it ten times is because it goes beyond this tradwife vibe in its energy and its strangeness and its willingness to go all the way out in a world where people are mostly trying to play it cool, to keep their cards close to their chest and fit in. RAYE in this song instead screams her angsty feeling from the proverbial rooftops, wonders, publicly, while dancing, Hey, I’m lonely—when is this feeling going to end?
It reminds me of the songs I listened in high school, when my mom would come in and turn on the TV to wake me and my sister up. She’d put on a church service that my sister would sleepily turn to MTV and then we’d both watch music videos until we had enough energy to face the day. This song reminds me of the exuberance of “Lady Marmalade” and P!nk’s “So What” (or anything by P!nk, honestly). It reminds me of how to be too much as a woman, to scream and to wear whatever you want and to think about how you feel is its own sense of empowerment, maybe, one that might be—like this song—catching.
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The grandma’s bathroom rendition: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPjJaLrEcpa/
Another great rendition: https://www.tiktok.com/@h3rizonmusic/video/7559326827060202759
A cute Chicken Shop Date interview clip lol: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/81CUak4DpsE
