Herstory 44: The Sweet Magnitude Of Kelis' ‘Milkshake’
The Songbook of Sweets
In Aaron Gilberth’s article, Sugar Sugar, A Highly Subjective American Songbook of Sweets, he curated a (semi) diverse list of songs throughout the decades that have used sweets & desserts as a vehicle to deliver narratives on human relationships, prominently in the realm of love and sex. Metaphoric imagery is no stranger to popular music. A songwriter might not be able or want to convey a particular thought or feeling with enough conviction to be understood, so instead will lean on a metaphoric image to do all the legwork. This image allows the listener to interpret the lyric from their own emotional memory and, in turn, strengthens their will to empathize with the artist.
Aaron also suggests “songs about sweets are a subset of a larger food-themed body of work, and that “the sheer volume and diversity of sweet songs warrant a distinct designation”. Perhaps this is due to the importance sugar-laced products have in our childhood. I came across a few physiology research studies that all state, as children grow, they desire sweets to fill their biological need for energy sources. Furthermore, for many people, sweet products lead to moments of joy. Whether they were a reward for eating food you didn’t like or maybe a memorable summer where your pockets were lined with enough coins to afford you all you wanted. It’s no wonder artists have likened the romantic and erotic desire for intimacy to sweet things. At their peak, they have the power to momentarily erase the bad taste the world can leave and be a pathway to access joy.
Victory Tastes Sweet
The youngest song and most popular song on Aaron’s list is Kelis’ “Milkshake” and rightfully so; what legitimacy would anyone’s list be without it. “Milkshake” was written and produced by The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams & Chad Hugo) after spending some time in Brazil, soaking in the electricity of their club scene.
‘Man, I want to do something that evokes that kind of feeling.’ So instead of doing booty-shaking music, I tried to use some more Middle Eastern sounds and completely just twist it as much as I could. It would be something that even in Brazil they would go, ‘OK, we like the rhythm of this. We like the feeling of this, but this is from somewhere else.’”
— Pharrell Williams
“Milkshake” was originally intended for Britney Spears’s album In The Zone but was rejected and instead offered to Kelis for her album, Tasty. “Milkshake” was released on August 25th, 2003 and its chart success is nothing to overlook:
peaked at no.4 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop song charts
peaked at no.15 on the Irish Singles charts
spent four consecutive weeks at no.2 on the UK Singles charts
stayed within the top 5 in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and the top 10 in the Netherlands
spent five weeks at no.2 on the Australia Recording Industry Association (ARIA) charts
To me, a milkshake itself represents the essence of a woman. It’s that thing that men are drawn to about women and what separates one sex from the other.”
— Kelis
The music video, in short, takes place in a diner called Tasty’s Yard, where Kelis enters not only as a customer but a women with an irresistibly seductive magnetic pull that attracts all the men in the establishment, as well as from afar; as the song’s notable hook famously states “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard”. The music video’s general consensus doesn’t leave wiggle room for the average eye to interpret the song’s metaphoric definition of being anything but sexually ambiguous, however after rewatching the video a few times now as an adult, I understand her sentiment. We’re living in a time where commentary on the scope of women’s sexual presence in the music industry is being explored further than what women do to please the male gaze. Keeping that in mind, my take on Kelis’ braggadocious nature here is a nod to the confidence with which she carries herself, knowing she built it with nothing but her own hands.
The Echo Of Sweetness
Kelis was raised in a household where the value and of food and cuisine was high. Her mother was a chef and ran her own catering business out of their Harlem home. In the late 2000s, she put her music career on hold to study at the world-famous culinary school, Le Cordon Bleu, where she gained the confidence to embark on writing her first cookbook, My Life On A Plate.
One would only assume this enhanced her enduring love for desserts, (specifically milkshakes), but you’d be surprised to know Kelis never had a milkshake of her own until 2017 when she partnered with Baileys to coincide with National Chocolate Milkshake Day. Earlier this year, pre-Covid-19, Kelis traveled to the UK to launch a pop-up Milkshake bar in conjunction with Deliveroo to celebrate 20 year anniversary of her debut album Kaleidoscope. The menu consisted of shakes named after some of her music catalogue’s staple songs including “Millionaire”, “Trick Me” & “I Want Your Love”.
‘Milkshake’ has always undoubtedly been a pop music cult classic through the ages. The power it wields can still wash out that bad taste to feel like an endless loop of joy and freedom. It can be looked at 17 years later as only beginning to stretch beyond the boundaries of what it was born under.
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For our Herstory Lessons blog series — we're retelling the stories of women in music that have been misheard, mislabeled, or erased completely from our history books.
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