When Pet Shop Boys said in 1987 “I love you, you pay my rent” (I love you, you pay my rent) housing was not listed as a luxury good nor were couples doomed to forced dependency to face that expense. Rentwhich in no way intended to reflect these nuances, could well be a song from 2024. Nobody imagined then that access to a roof would become, decades later, trauma and frustration for a very large sector of the population.
It is not until well into the 21st century that traces of this problem filter into popular music. And it is already detectable, for example, in A room of your own (2017), the title with which the Madrid-based Las Odio vampirized Virginia Wolf to narrate the drama of sharing a flat at 40. But the issue, with its absolute urgency, has been bubbling in recent months in the heat of popular mobilizations and there are several the musical proposals that capture it, whether in a humorous way or crossed by fury. Because now it is certain that that little apartment on Elfo Street, accessible to the parents of Alcalá Norte, is currently prohibitive for anyone of their generation and/or class.
This is, in fact, the theme chosen by Carla Parmenter to certify her return. Half of Las Bistecs, now SVSTO, just published €ONE THOUSANDa song inherited from that electro-disgusting which he popularized with his seminal training, full of phrases like “Before all this was countryside / Now it is property of the banks” or “If you consider yourself altruistic / Start looking for an apartment in idealista.” But it’s not the only one. Las Nenas, Biznaga, Kokoshca and Corte! They are other bands that are not limited to nihilistic disaffection, hedonistic dancing or pure love and collect complaints from the street in their lyrics. These four groups have just published songs – albums even –, absolutely presentist, committed to a reality in need of spokespersons and agitators.
“I’m not surprised that someone has already started to pathologize the housing problem, because that’s what we do with all the evils of capitalism,” he reacts. Gonzalo Barbero, alma mater of Corte!to the term “immoansiedad”, coined by a very young band, Las Nenas. These are presented on their Instagram account as Viviana, Claudia and Naiara, friends and residents of Majadahonda. They say they venerate the girl groups from the 50s and 60s as well as the dream pop of the 90s and they have published only one epé, Youth problems (Disques Du Lac, 2024), in which they review the discomforts and addictions typical of a generation that seems to live on the edge of the apocalypse.
In Immoanxietyone of their latest singles, the trio verbalizes their real estate anxieties in exhaustive phrases like “Zulos at the price of mansions / demanding payrolls of millions” or “I don’t count as a student / to rent your disgusting apartment.”
Situations as discouraging as they are widespread, causing a new ailment to which Las Nenas have given a name: “There is immoanxiety when you don’t have an apartment and you have to look for one and there is anxiety when you already have one but you know that they can kick you out at any moment. The only solution would be to buy, but who can buy an apartment in Madrid? It is inevitable to feel that something is not going well when you cannot live alone with a decent salary, when they kick you out to convert it into a tourist apartment, when there is talk of inquiokupas as if most of the people who live in rent were… And a thousand more stories.”
These issues also dot lyrically Now (Montgrí, 2024), the excellent fifth album by the Madrid punk rock combo Biznaga. And it is a reflection, in turn, of the commitment to the organizations involved in the housing cause. She inks all the cuts, but stands out as the protagonist in two of them: Future on planwith real estate speculation as the central axis, and mirrors of chaos which is, in the words of its bassist and lyricist Jorge Navarro, “a political song from a personal point of view.” What Pet Shop Boys anticipated in Renthere he makes it his own Biznaga, appealing, this time, to an already widespread reality: “They don’t love each other anymore, they can’t stand each other / They don’t even touch each other with a foot / But every month they need each other / To pay the rent,” they point out in their lyrics.
Those who also include it in their repertoire are Kokoshca. His new album, The youth (Sonido Muchacho, 2024) is, in addition to a collection of enthusiastic pop, an exceptional continent of housing monsters: From the touristification that slides into Parkour until the exodus to the periphery that they detail in my neighborhoodcause and consequence, respectively, of the same phenomenon. The one that affects, equally, all large cities. “The deterioration of access to housing has to do with understanding it as an exclusively market good,” say the people of Pamplona, “and thus buildings are sold to large owners who will arrive on Monday at their office in the city and they will look at a graph to improve while in the neighborhood they close the businesses or evict Paquita or Manolo.”
In the case of Corte!, the housing problem is touched upon tangentially in False ceilinga decadent urban postcard of post-punk and kraut rhythms that reproduces the optimistic mantra of every real estate agency: “Four square meters, very poorly lit / Almost everything is interior, but well located.” “I think the situation is one of ineffectiveness,” Barbero says, “and shows how limited our democracies and the parties that support them are. There is an atrocious fear of sticking one’s nose into private property, especially when that property prevents others from having a decent life, something that is even reflected in our Constitution in article 47 and which is not respected.”
It is not the only problem whose urgency affects the work of these formations. Biznaga, for example, also refers to issues such as labor exploitation, capitalist voracity, the demobilizing anesthesia of social networks and the psychological consequences derived from the above. “We have a tremendous capacity to adapt to the environment and resilience, but no one can achieve fulfillment if they cannot emancipate themselves,” says Navarro. You can’t be happy just by surviving. The consequences of this are the deterioration of both physical and mental health and the growing medicalization of society to alleviate its effects,” he adds. For consistency, Biznaga’s new album is, in addition to a sample of afflictions, revulsive in the form of a first aid manual with harangues for direct action and self-organization.
For Las Nenas and Corte!, the labor issue is a priority. They are part of that new generation of young JASP who are, not because they are as well prepared as their predecessors, but because of their eternal precarious condition. They cling, with no better alternative, to subsistence jobs and transfer that frustration to their creations. The Babes do it in Work deathin which, from an apparent doo wop naivety, they fire accurate punk darts: “You must be very prepared / but don’t expect to charge anything”, “We want someone proactive / exploiting is addictive” or “Do you have a doctorate? / The one I have hanging here.”
“In it we talk about how difficult it is to work in your professional area, or with stability or decent conditions. Having a university degree and master’s degrees but earning little more than the minimum interprofessional salary. That the most common salary in Spain has risen 8% in 20 years when apartments in Madrid have risen 200%. And being an intern until 40 or falsely self-employed and knowing that we are not going to have a retirement pension or anywhere to drop dead… It is a bit the other side of the immoanxiety. Because the apartments are impossible, but largely because the salaries are shit,” the Madrid residents lament.
“I have never given up on my dream job because it hasn’t arrived yet, although I think my dream is not to work,” says Barbero. ”I recently read in a study that more and more young people were abandoning their jobs to be able to pursue their passions and it seemed like bullshit to me because I know very few people who can really quit without it being a problem. I find most of it in that wheel of ‘I do something I hate, but I can’t stop doing it’. And there’s everyone, just getting depressed and accepting a salary and a vague plan in exchange for everything.”
Being able to delight in escapist navel-gazing, these four bands have chosen to pour systemic misery and anguish into their songs, even if only for testimonial purposes. “If I choose to talk about it, it is because it is real and it happens,” says Barbero. ”When I go out for a drink with my friends I talk about these issues, these are the things that concern us. It would seem very strange to me to see so many screwed people around me and to write about being the most complete and balanced guy in the world,” he says.
“I suppose that the protest theme sounds like something from hippies, from dogflutes or the radical rock of Euskadi and the majority of groups today do not seem to consider talking about the issues that affect them themselves,” say Las Nenas, who convey their anger through humor but without trusting too much in the transformative capacity of their message: “People like our songs. They laugh at what we say or tell us what great truths, but we do nothing but convince the convinced. There are many people out there who think that things are as they should be, that it is logical to ask for a million for a zulo in Lavapiés or to pay below the minimum wage, and you are not going to convince those people with art or culture.”
Biznaga, for their part, are very clear about it. “Really important art has always in some way questioned established cultural notions or hegemonic ideological frameworks. The other thing could be entertainment or decoration, which is not bad, but it is not art. “We, from our field, which is the musical field, want to contribute to keeping alive the debate on issues that we consider fundamental such as work, housing or mental health,” defends Navarro and then states: “It is always easier to avoid a problem to face. At least until it blows up in your face.”
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