Later in the song, he elaborates on his feelings for his gender non-specific love interest and the impending anxiety he feels about sex. I wiped my tears on my face, and neck, and the back of my ears and said, ‘now it’s sweat, now it’s sweat, it’s sweat now,” he rants on top of a driving, distorted drum loop. Not out of desire, or shame, but some subconscious impulse to feel pain. “The other night I cried while thinking of having sex with you. From the frantic and heavy-handed introduction Will makes it painfully clear that it’s not only sex. The tension and confusion are so concentrated that the song works as somewhat of a Car Seat Headrest thesis statement. If there’s a single song than embodies Will’s confusion“It’s Only Sex” is the one. Instead, what I want to look at is some of the clear asexual themes in his music that make his take on the sexual coming of age story unique.
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What about my problems?” from “It’s Only Sex,” ( Living While Starving, 2013) then Will is still figuring it out himself. If we are to judge by the line “I don’t care about hundreds of hypothetical people and their hypothetical sex-deals. I’m not going to speculate as to how Will identifies-to the best of my knowledge, he has not publicly specified.
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Amid the anxiety, there are moments of clarity, many of which come while Will considers the idea of asexuality. On these albums, Will anxiously questions his sexuality, gender, and the significance of gender identity in general. The first Car Seat albums were released on Bandcamp and featured intensely personal lyrics often dealing with clumsy sexual encounters, mental health, and self-examination. But what about the people who don’t relate to the story at all? Asexuality doesn’t quite have a place in the compelling coming of age narrative, but Car Seat Headrest manages to make it work.Ĭar Seat Headrest began as the solo project of Will Toledo, the band’s lead singer, and has since evolved into a full-band ordeal. Loads of LGBTQ+ artists have helped form the way this story is told in music to make it more inclusive. A blend of confusion and lack of confidence, followed by some bravery, a pinch of magic, and hooray! It’s a compelling story and an almost universally relatable one. The sexual coming of age story has been retold in song thousands of times, and will doubtless be told a thousand times more.