The full release of trans indie/punk rock musician Mal Blum’s 2nd full-length album, The Villain, is set for July 11th. Fans have been waiting for over a decade for a new album to be released, but luckily, we have two singles to tide us over while we ride out the home stretch.
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“Killer” and “I’m So Bored” have critics categorizing Blum’s forthcoming work as a breakup album, as well as a conversation on toxic masculinity and what it means for transgender men.
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“I’m So Bored” was the first song in this album to drop, and it’s very much a break up song. The song describes a break-up, but the person narrating tries to rationalize it as a sour grapes situation, where there is no reason to be upset over it as they were bored with their ex anyway. Throughout the song, however, we get hints that we’re listening to an unreliable narrator, who mentions crying themselves to sleep thinking about the other person and being emotionally preoccupied with their absence.
The lyrics of “Killer” comment on the relationship between being transmasculine and toxic masculinity being perpetuated as a way to pass. There’s also some commentary on how TERF-dom, while claiming to reject toxic masculinity, often perpetuates it through one-dimensional, backwards views on gender.
The line “I killed the ants in the garden” is a reference to how killing bugs is just normal behavior for boys although killing animals at a young age is often viewed as a sign of sociopathy. Blum’s narrator frames themselves as a the typical man embracing violence despite the danger it poses to society.
In the news, we see a lot of commentary and explanation on how TERFs view transgender women, but this song makes many references to the viewpoints they hold toward transgender men, who are often not given as much of a public spotlight in the whole debate on trans rights. For the most part, TERFs view transgender men as “misguided women” who are seeking to transition in order to escape sexism, which is a very harmful belief that perpetuates patriarchal ideas and causes damage to the feminist movement.
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