Allison Hussey sheds light on the constant juggling, institutional prejudices and cathartic power involved in being a mother musician with a career on the road.
Meg Remy couldn’t find any songs about breastfeeding, so she decided to write one herself. The art-pop explorer known for her work under the name U.S. Girls gave birth to twins in early 2021, and as she was recovering in her hospital bed one night, a nurse explained how she needed to use a device to pump her breast milk several times a day, stimulating her body to lactate at a rate that would sufficiently nourish her two babies. “I had to go connect myself to a machine and just sit there and be milked,” Remy says. “I found it very lonely and isolating.”
But as she spent long spells pumping, she was transfixed by the device’s steady pace and distinctive sound. “It felt like a divine joke to be hearing this pump and instantly being like, ‘I gotta make a beat out of this.’” She spun the experience into a funk jam called “Pump,” featuring a churning electronic rhythm courtesy of a Medela Freestyle Flex breast pump. “How does the milk make it to your mouth?” she sings on the track, as breathy chants of “pump! pump!” offer encouragement in time with the beat.
Sampling a breast pump is one way to make the best of the tedious precarity of working motherhood. Beyond the constant juggling on a personal level, the maternal wall is a real phenomenon that inhibits women’s career possibilities with big and small prejudices that are baked into most institutional structures; mothers are less likely to be hired and make less money than non-mothers...Keep reading on Pitchfork.
Meg Remy couldn’t find any songs about breastfeeding, so she decided to write one herself. The art-pop explorer known for her work under the name U.S. Girls gave birth to twins in early 2021, and as she was recovering in her hospital bed one night, a nurse explained how she needed to use a device to pump her breast milk several times a day, stimulating her body to lactate at a rate that would sufficiently nourish her two babies. “I had to go connect myself to a machine and just sit there and be milked,” Remy says. “I found it very lonely and isolating.”
But as she spent long spells pumping, she was transfixed by the device’s steady pace and distinctive sound. “It felt like a divine joke to be hearing this pump and instantly being like, ‘I gotta make a beat out of this.’” She spun the experience into a funk jam called “Pump,” featuring a churning electronic rhythm courtesy of a Medela Freestyle Flex breast pump. “How does the milk make it to your mouth?” she sings on the track, as breathy chants of “pump! pump!” offer encouragement in time with the beat.
Sampling a breast pump is one way to make the best of the tedious precarity of working motherhood. Beyond the constant juggling on a personal level, the maternal wall is a real phenomenon that inhibits women’s career possibilities with big and small prejudices that are baked into most institutional structures; mothers are less likely to be hired and make less money than non-mothers...Keep reading on Pitchfork.