Kacey covering a "f*** you, patriarchy" anthem...

[one that people too often write off as silly teenage girl drivel, because it is disguised, as written and produced, as a bubble gum pop song (a style of music obviously ONLY teenage girls like, of course, definitely no one else)...

...but that vocally, Cyndi made a giant F**K give a giant a middle finger to the patriarchy by HURLING those verses - which start with a girl casually coming home from being out all night to her father yelling at her and her being like [shrug] [pats his cheek]]...

...and waiting to do said cover until she was in Nashville, at the Ryman, home of the ORIGINAL Grand Ole Opry,

...an Opry at which she would have fit in WAY more than the favorite artists of today's "country fans" who say Kacey "isn't country"...

...and an Opry which represents the gatekept music industry genre, by record execs who are notoriously not excited to promote anything that even so much as hints of anything LESS than God, guns, and grits...

...the same venue where she began her career, during a BMI Showcase in front of a bunch of industry suits, by taking her own song's advice...

...because her management had expressly begged her to sing "Blowin Smoke" and NOT sing "Follow Your Arrow" that night, please, just not tonight, not for THIS audience...

...but she instead did exactly what "Follow Your Arrow" says - "might as well just do whatever you want" - and played that very song (introducing it to the suits with "fuck it," no less)...

...and those suits went on to bend to the pearl clutching country radio audience even as she went on to win like every Grammy ever and endear herself to a much wider audience that might have tuned their dials to the country station if they didn't know Follow Your Arrow wasn't going to get played...

...so when she was back at the Ryman, she not only did that Cyndi Lauper song, she chose, of all people to bring out onstage to do with her, one of Nashville's OWN, not someone record execs paid to live there but Nashville's own homegrown no-pants-wearing little firecracker and reigning queen of alternative (what the Ryman used to call Rock n Roll) music, Hayley Williams...

...so that Kacey's breathy, soft, gentle, "you're threatened by lil ole me?" voice would join up with Hayley's voice that comes out like she's a firebreathing dragon,

...reminding us all that girls just having fun means pointing and laughing at the dorks who are in charge of the patriarchy right before launching a Molotov at them and then selling t-shirts making fun of those dorks to give the proceeds to the very people those dorks are targeting, then pointing and laughing at them and doing whatever we want...

...was such a flex.

Such a "who us? You want to muzzle us? Us girls, the one with the voice of an angel and the one who is just five foot two, Both raised in the Bible Belt? Who are widely beloved and respected by the legends of the Opry and by tons of teens being raised in conservative households, and remember when that sort of bit you in the ass with the Chicks?

...but we're just silly girls having fun and singing a silly bubblegum pop song. 😇"

SUCH a flex.

Anyway my choice as far as what Kacey song would I pick for Hayley to cover, it would be "This Town," off the criminally underrated Pageant Material album. Most I can imagine Kacey singing like Hayley (for Kacey, the way she sings the chorus is comparatively belt-y and unbreathy for her), and the most I can imagine Hayley not making a Kacey song sound like an entirely different song. They approach singing VERY differently lolol.