Montreal native Marie Davidson became a hit on the club scene with Working Class Woman (2018), a psychological album questioning electronic dance music and club culture. Soon after, she took a break, pointing to her struggles with addiction and insomnia after years of touring.
Davidson tells KCRW that she wrote Working Class Woman when doing therapy and Carl Jung analysis: “I was unwell and I needed help. And the therapist I found happened to be a Jungian analyst. … Jungian psychology is good for creative people. I think it's a very interesting way to learn about yourself. And I found a good therapist that helped me to go through unresolved, self-destructive problems that were actually ruining my life.”
This February, Davidson came out with her sixth studio album, City of Clowns, inspired by Shoshana Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
This new form of capitalism isn’t based on physical exchange, like money for labor, but it thrives on information, explains Davidson. Any digital interaction people have now can be used for data mining, she notes.
Davidson explains Zuboff’s book drew her in: “It made me realize how the use of these technologies, and the mindset within the use of the technologies, and the companies that own that technology is reformatting the way we live, and is potentially changing the outcome of our evolution as a species.”
The track “Validations Weight” contains adaptations of the book’s passages. Davidson’s voice also melds with an AI voice from Amazon called Polly.
According to Zuboff’s writing, Davidson explains, most people have adapted to the idea of sacrificing individuality for progress. By merging her own voice with Polly’s, Davidson is questioning the future of humanity.
“I don't think this idea of progress and optimization is for the better,” she says.
She also isn’t surprised that that AIs like Polly, Siri, and Alexa are female. “It's more seducive [sic] than if it was called, I don't know, ‘Dick,’ and it had a really annoying tone of voice.”
In another track, Davidson embodies a CAPTCHA bot — a test requiring you to identify how many street lights or bicycles are in the picture, to prove you’re human. She says all the lyrics in that song are about modern struggles.
The song “Fun Times” opens with what sounds like a ticking clock, and it’s about Davidson’s difficult choice to not have kids.
She says she always thought she’d be a mom, but a combo of her job and the state of the world changed her mind.
“My art practice … just made it impossible, technically, for me to take the time to have children and properly take care of the eventual child.”
She continues, “I don't think that the human race is necessarily doomed, but I think that the next decades, centuries are going to be hard.”
Still, Davidson says she has many sources of hope: empathy, music, dancing, good conversations.
“I love people — that's one of the reasons why I tour. … What can save us is our humanity and empathy. And what is gonna kill us … is our greed, and this is our problem. Other … animals don't have this type of greed.”
