Thoughts on Going Through It by Eliza McLamb and the genre of sad girl music

Jan 25, 2024

Eliza McLamb is known for guitar melodies, hard-hitting lyrics and pop culture commentary. Last week, she released her debut album Going Through It. She is a musician as well as a co-host on the podcast Binchtopia, along with Julia Hava. They discuss world issues and merge them with philosophical theories. I used to listen to Binchtopia a lot and I would definitely recommend it if you like a podcast that's educational but easily digestible. Julia and Eliza have discussions which are nuanced and super interesting. Eliza also has a substack called words from eliza, which I’m an avid consumer of. She’s one of those celebrities that I feel like I know personally, even though I obviously don't. It's a compliment to her, that she's good at making the audience feel like we know her through her different mediums.

Eliza has a distinct voice which I think comes through on Going Through It. It's clear that she wrote the album by herself, something which a lot of artists, if not most, can't say about their debut. The release of this record made me reflect a lot on projection, on the expectations of young women who make indie music. I read an interview recently in which Amaya Lim from Record Store, asks Eliza about the themes on her new record. Eliza responds that “Whatever you think my writing says about me, it’s what it says about you,”…“And that’s really none of my business.”. I’ll link all of the things I reference down below, since it’s already becoming quite a long list.

That being said, these are my thoughts on the album, or my projections. This record also made me reflect on the sad girl label which a lot of women in indie music are categorized under, specifically because of the song Modern Woman, where Eliza sings “They love me when I'm miserable because I’m so marketable”

I explored the genre of sad girl music in my bachelor thesis when I studied gender studies at university. The thesis focused on lesbian music throughout history and concluded that negative feelings such as shame and envy are central to popular lesbian music today. Using the example of the sad girl starter pack playlist on Spotify, which has over a million likes and is described as “Sapphic songs that defined your music taste as “yearning”. Eliza McLamb is not a lesbian but is often grouped under the sad girl label along with artists like Clairo, Gracie Abrams and boygenius. The sound of this genre is usually characterized by soft and gentle guitar melodies. Going Through It is produced by Sarah Tudzin, from the band Illuminati Hotties, who also produced the record by boygenius.

I really dislike the sad girl label. I think it discredits a lot of other emotions that are also within the music. It strips the music as well as the women behind it of a lot of nuance and agency. Sad women are marketable because they are not threatening. A sad woman is unlikely to cause a riot because she doesn’t even have the energy to leave her bed. On Modern Woman, Eliza sings: “Sad girl sings a simple song and all the others sing along”

I have been noticing that a lot of artists are actively distancing themselves from being labeled as sad girls. Tate Mcrae talked about it in an interview recently and I know that Phoebe Bridgers has talked about it as well. Tate Mcrae is an interesting example since her music has gone from being sad girl music to more of a confident, dance-pop, kind of energy. Now Spotify has put her on their BBE, which stands for Bad Bitch Energy playlist instead. If you compare her old songs you broke me first with her new songs greedy and exes, you’ll see what I mean. On the first song, cut my hair, of her new record THINK LATER, she sings:

“Couple years back so sensitive, yeah

Moving like that gets repetitive, yeah

Singing about the same old stupid – things

Sad girl bit got a little boring”

I also think that the lesbian community is moving away from it a bit, or at least there is a counter-movement, with artists such as MUNA, Reneé Rapp and Chappell Roan at the forefront. They are making more upbeat, sex-positive and happy lesbian music, which is a lot of fun.

It’s dangerous to get stuck in the image of being a “sad girl”. To circle back to the Eliza McLamb record, the song Mythologize Me explores the question of who you are and what you are worth when you are no longer mentally ill and what it’s like to identify with your illness. Eliza sings "I thought maybe one day I'd use this in a good way", referring to her trauma. At the same time, she is grappling with the idea that her trauma is the only thing that makes her interesting to others. This could apply to people in her life, specifically men that she is dating or her audience and society at large:

“Make me in your perfect image of a girl

So sweet but always incomplete and grateful for

Your needs to give me meaning

Oh, what a relief from feeling”

This image of a damaged woman is something which we see in the media all the time, in the form of female characters without agency with the purpose of furthering the male protagonist's storyline. It also coincides with the myth of the suffering artist, or is it the tortured artist? The idea that you can’t create anything of value unless you’re suffering. The narrator of the song is fighting who she actually is with who others want her to be.

“Oh, I am only ever gonna be a waste

Of my potential that they said would come with pain

All I can do is fantasize

About how you fantasize about me”

The last line of the song is “When I get myself together I know. You won't want me when I'm better”. It's cool to be a mess when you’re a woman because that makes you interesting, especially if you’re an artist. Suffering is profitable, and if you’re a woman you can even have the luck of being put in the sad girl category.

It’s refreshing to see some joyful songs on the record as well, since there is an overwhelm of sad girl music. One thing that I really love about Going Through It is that it insists on being hopeful. The album is about the process of growing up and finding peace after fearing that you’ll be miserable forever.

I know that a lot of artists have the fear of being cringe when they sing about happiness. That the music will be too corny and not deep enough if they’re not miserable, which also goes back to the suffering artist myth. It’s clear that Eliza feels a lot better now than she did when she was younger and it’s nice that she is writing about it. This hope is present in the songs Crybaby and To Wake Up. Crybaby is a song about learning to see sensitivity as a strength and finding beauty in small things. It’s about insisting on making life nice for yourself:

“Begged for nihilism to come down on me every day

But I am not a cynic, I always need something to love”

To Wake Up is about the beauty of waking up every morning. These songs remind me of one of my favourite poets Mary Oliver. Her poems centered nature and are simple and sweet. Reading them feels like a breath of fresh air in the sense that they have a calming effect. I feel the same way about these songs. This is a passage from To Wake Up that I find super poetic and beautiful:

“I live so many unremarkable days

Oh what a gift that is to say

I sleep late, eat what I want, and complain

And when I come home I see my baby

I try to be a version of myself who knows how to be still

I have walked out from the dusk and when the sun is rising

I’ll let it

I will”

In conclusion, Going Through It is a stunning record. It’s about resisting the image which people project onto you as a young woman. It’s about growing up and finding beauty in ordinary things.

I hope you enjoyed reading this essay. I’m trying different things and I had a lot of fun researching and writing this. Have a lovely weekend <3

Things I mention in the essay:

Going Through It by Eliza McLamb: