IF YOU LIVE in Ireland and listen to pop radio in your car, it’s likely you’ve heard this song.
Ava Max’s Sweet But Psycho is tearing up the Irish charts, sitting comfortably at number one since it blew up on Spotify late last year.
Let’s have a look at some of the lyrics.
Oh, she’s sweet but a psycho, A little bit psycho, At night she’s screamin’, I’m-ma-ma-ma out my mind.
This hypothetical female psycho is described as “hot but a psycho” who will “rip your shirt within a second” and is “grab a cop gun kinda crazy”.
First and foremost, we’ll get the problematic thing out of the way. Besides endorsing the ‘hysterical woman’ stereotype, mental health organisations took issue with the singer wielding an axe in the video.
Max plays a woman obsessed with a man, trying to injure him with an assortment of bats, darts and knives. In an open letter, the UK’s Zero Suicide Alliance said it “helps to encourage and support stigma”.
We understand this may not be intentional but even when it is not intended, perpetuating existing stereotypes has a disproportionately negative influence that reinforces stigma, and stigma is bad. It’s oppressive and alienating with life-threatening potential.
Closer to home, See Change Ireland’s National Stigma Reduction Programme for mental health urged Irish broadcasters to ban the song for ‘misrepresenting psychotic illnesses’.
However, it’s not as black and white as the lyrics would have you believe. Max told Idolator that she means it in a GOOD way.
I think everybody has a lot of sides to them and it’s basically about a girl who’s not afraid to show all of her sides and her dualities, and about a guy loving all those sides.
She’s a girl who’s misunderstood in the relationship, and she’s basically being told she’s psycho and she’s out of her mind when she’s feeling it, but really she’s an outspoken girl and she’s speaking her mind. And that’s how I am in real life.
Good job that’s the thing that bothers me about the song the least.
The 24-year-old has produced the musical equivalent to a constant drill outside your office, and has been celebrated with 278,44,285 streams on Spotify (at the time of writing) as thanks.
There’s a new trend on Instagram in which teens give a potato a makeover to the song.
17. A very popular trending hashtag involves people doing...makeup tutorials on a potato to the beat of Sweet But Psycho by Ava Max pic.twitter.com/ijF6BSwiND
— Sally Kuchar 📚💄🌴📝 (@sallykuchar) 25 January 2019
Now, while we have to assume radio stations will play the song as it’s been number one for over a month now, must it be on every second?
this sweet but psycho song is annoying and overplayed tbh i mean it was good before every radio station played it 10000 times a day and it's literally everywhere
— anne💍 (@goodnightjdb) 25 January 2019
Spin haven’t listened.
We can only wait until the next mildly problematic song comes to play.
But, as usual, we have to put it to you. Do you like the song? Or have you heard enough?
