When the 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 and couples were not condemned to forced dependency to meet this expense. To rent outwhich in no way intends to reflect these nuances, could well be a song from 2024. Nobody imagined then that access to a roof would become, decades later, a trauma and a frustration for a very large part of the population.
It was not until the beginning of the 21st century that traces of this problem seeped into popular music. And this is already detectable, for example, in A room of your own (2017), the title with which Madrid-born Las Odio vampirized Virginia Wolf to tell the drama of sharing accommodation at 40. But the question, with its absolute urgency, has been boiling over in recent months in the heat of popular mobilizations and there are several musical proposals that capture it, whether in a humorous way or shot through with fury. Because it is now certain that this small apartment on Elfo Street, accessible to parents from Alcalá Norte, is currently prohibitive for anyone of their generation and/or class.
This is also the theme chosen by Carla Parmenter to certify her return. Half of Las Bistecs, now SVSTO, has just been released THOUSAND €a song inherited from that electro-disgusting which he popularized thanks to his fundamental training, full of phrases like “Before everything, it was the countryside / Now it’s the 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! These are other groups who do not limit themselves to nihilistic disaffection, hedonistic dancing or pure love and who collect the complaints of the street in their lyrics. These four groups have just published songs – even albums -, 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 ills of capitalism,” he reacts. Gonzalo Barbero, Corté’s alma mater!to the term “immoansiedad”, invented by a very young group, Las Nenas. These are presented on their Instagram account as Viviana, Claudia and Naiara, friends and residents of Majadahonda. They say they worship the girl groups 50s and 60s as well as 90s dream pop and they only released one sword, Youth problems (Disques Du Lac, 2024), in which they return to 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 expresses their real estate anxieties in exhaustive sentences like “Zulos at the price of mansions / demanding salaries of millions” or “I don’t count as a student / to rent your disgusting apartment”.
Situations as discouraging as they are widespread, which cause a new evil to which Las Nenas has given a name: “There is immoanxiety when you don’t have an apartment and you have to look for one and there’s anxiety when you already have one but you know they can kick you out at any time. The only solution would be to buy, but who can buy an apartment in Madrid? It is inevitable to feel that something is wrong when you cannot live alone with a decent salary, when you are kicked out to turn it into a tourist apartment, when there is talk of inquiokupas as if most people who live in rent are… And a thousand other stories.
These problems also point to the lyrical level NOW (Montgrí, 2024), the excellent fifth album by 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: The future is plannedwith real estate speculation as a 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 the Pet Shop Boys were waiting for in To rent outhere he appropriates it Biznaga, appealing, this time, to an already widespread reality: “They don’t love each other anymore, they can’t stand each other anymore / They don’t even touch each other’s feet / But every month they need each other . / To pay the rent,” they emphasize in their words.
Those who also include it in their repertoire are Kokoshca. His new album, Youth (Sonido Muchacho, 2024) is, in addition to a collection of enthusiastic pop, an exceptional continent of monster shelters: Touristification that creeps into Parkour until the exodus towards the periphery which they detail in my neighborhoodrespectively cause and consequence of the same phenomenon. The one that affects all major cities equally. “The deterioration of access to housing is linked to considering it as an exclusively commercial good,” say the residents of Pamplona, “and this is how buildings are sold to large owners who will arrive at their office on Monday of city and they will look at a graph to improve while in the neighborhood they close businesses or evict Paquita or Manolo.
In the case of Corte!, the housing problem is addressed tangentially False ceilinga decadent urban postcard with 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 ineffective,” Barbero said, “and shows how limited our democracies and the parties that support them are. There is an atrocious fear of prying one’s nose into private property, especially when this property prevents others from having a decent life, which is even reflected in our Constitution in article 47 and which is not respected.
This 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 resulting psychological consequences. “We have a tremendous capacity for environmental adaptation and resilience, but no one can thrive if they cannot empower themselves,” says Navarro. You can’t be happy just by surviving. The consequences are the deterioration of physical and mental health and the increasing medicalization of society to mitigate its effects,” he adds. For the sake of consistency, Biznaga’s new album East, in addition to a sample of afflictions, repellent in the form of a first aid manual with harangues for direct action and self-organization.
For Las Nenas and Corte!, the issue of work is a priority. They are part of this new generation of young JASPs who are, not because they are as well prepared as their predecessors, but because of their eternal precarious condition. They cling, without any better alternative, to subsistence jobs and transfer this frustration onto their creations. Girls do it Death at workin which, with apparent doo wop naivety, they fire precise punk darts: “You have to be very prepared / but don’t expect to charge anything”, “We want someone proactive / exploitation is addictive” or “Do you have a doctorate? / The one I hung here.
“We talk about the difficulty of working in your professional field, in stability or in decent conditions. Have a university degree and a master’s degree but earn a little more than the interprofessional minimum wage. That the most common salary in Spain has increased by 8% in 20 years while apartments in Madrid have increased by 200%. And being an intern until the age of 40 or falsely independent and knowing that you’re not going to have a retirement pension or anywhere to drop dead… It’s a bit of the other side of the story. immoanxiety. Because apartments are impossible, but above all because the salaries are shit,” deplore the Madrilenians.
“I’ve never given up on my dream job because it hasn’t happened yet, even though I don’t think my dream is to work,” Barbero says. “I recently read in a study that more and more young people were giving up their jobs to be able to pursue their passions and that 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 this wheel of “I’m doing something I hate, but I can’t stop doing it”. And there’s everyone who’s depressed and accepts a salary and a vague plan in exchange for everything.”
Being able to revel in escapist navel-gazing, these four groups chose to pour systemic misery and anguish into their songs, if only for the purposes of testimony. “If I choose to talk about it, it’s because it’s real and it happens,” Barbero says. “When I go out for a drink with my friends, I talk about these subjects, these are things that concern us. It would seem very strange to me to see so many fucked up people around me and to write about being the most complete and balanced man in the world,” he says.
“I guess the theme of the protest sounds like something hippie, dog flutes or the radical rock of Euskadi and most bands today don’t seem to consider talking about the problems that affect them themselves”, affirm Las Nenas, who express their anger through humor but without being too proud of the transformative capacity of their message: “People like our songs They don’t care what we say or tell us what the big truths are, but we only convince the convinced There are a lot of people who think. that things are as they should be, that it makes sense to ask for a million for a zulo in Lavapiés or to pay below the minimum wage, and that you will not be able to convince these people with art or culture. ”
The Biznaga, for their part, are very clear on this subject. “Really important art has always, in one way or another, challenged established cultural notions or hegemonic ideological frameworks. The other thing might be entertainment or decoration, which isn’t bad, but it’s 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 before asserting: “It is always easier to avoid a problem to face. At least until it blows up in your face.
