Music is critical in any society, with immense cultural significance and impact. What we listen to forms our aural landscape and creates powerful memories, evoking nostalgia and atmosphere after just a bar of a familiar song is played. The music we choose embodies us: signifying our world outlook, telling about the tempo of our imagination, connecting deeply with our life experiences. A profoundly evocative art, music is personal and internal -- headphones create an intimacy, allowing a world of sound separate from the rest of the room to bloom in your mind. It can also be something shared, create community. The thrill of a live show is an intimate musical experience shared with a crowd, the energy and love for the sound vibrating through every person in the room simultaneously. Music, in this way, is a human pursuit of identity and connection, a way of finding meaning in a world full of noise. The art of creating and listening to music allows us to distill and curate what sounds and meanings resonate with us.

There are hierarchies within music, however; it is not a pure phenomenon without corrupt qualities and manipulation. As something produced for people's enjoyment, capitalism has infiltrated deeply into our sound imaginations, as music is generated for profit and moves away from the process of meaning-making. Pop music in particular is thought of by many to be sound commercialized, commodified, and generalized to appeal to a mass audience. While this may make some music-lovers dismissive of pop music as a genre, there is no denying its wide appeal and catchy nature. It is designed to be enjoyable and broadly appealing, penetrating the mental space of even the most cynical about pop music.

This popular appeal and expansive distribution makes this genre of music important to pay attention to, since this music will be consumed by the majority of society, voluntarily or not. Playing through car radios, department store speakers, home entertainment systems, and the earbuds of commuters and teenagers ignoring their parents, the particular sounds and messages of pop music infiltrate everywhere. Within every soundscape are threads of pop choruses, the catchy tunes and irresistible sing-along lyrics taking up mental space whether they were invited or not.

Pop powerhouse Demi Lovato released a new single, titled "Body Say," in mid-July. The hook gets Lovato's sultry slow invitation stuck on repeat: "You can touch me with slow hands / Speed it up, baby make me sweat / Dreamland / Take me there cause I want your sex / If my body had a say, I wouldn't turn away." The song is sexy -- for something designed to be played on the radio, that is. Yet the song introduces some interesting ideas surrounding female sexuality and women's ability to own their desires. Lovato sings over and over again that "if her body had a say" she would do just what she wants to -- but that if introduced into the song raises some questions. Why doesn't her body have a say? What is stopping her from directly saying out loud what she wants -- why does her body have to speak for her?

Clearly, Lovato is trying to own her sexuality and express that her body does have things to say, and those things have to do with her desires and her body's capacity for pleasure. The message is powerful because she is expressing this through a pop radio hit that will be widely listened to; in a society in which female sexuality is repressed or thought of as non-existent, this is a pretty revolutionary thing to be singing about on the airwaves. Throughout the tune, she continually sings about "If I had it my way," making some pretty explicit claims about what she would do (take the lead, take you deep, show you all the red lace under this dress). In the scene her sensual vocals are trying to create, their "eyes are crossing paths across the room," yet "Dreamland" always has to be mentioned before she croons, "take me there cause I want your sex." While "Dreamland" could easily be code for orgasm, there is the idea that there is a different place where the two lovers have to go in order for Lovato to get what she wants, for what she wants can't occur in the real world.

In fact, part of the reason why more than just their eyes can meet across the room is that her "mind is getting in the way" and can't feel what her body say. Her mind getting in the way could be all of the messaging she has received from society that women are not allowed to be sexual beings, in control of their own desires, with the "if" in the song coming from this repression. Yet Lovato pushes through this, saying, "I'mma tell you anyway," "I'mma show you anyway." In terms of meaning-making through music, could this song be striving to subvert the dominant narratives surrounding female sexuality?

Everyone will listen to this song differently and draw various things from it; arguably, no matter what Lovato's voice or her body says, this song is still a product of a music machine that knows sex sells and that the titillating suggestion that Lovato is in control of her own sexuality (if her body had a say, that is) will cause it to be played over and over again. Perhaps the very mass market appeal of this song means that her body doesn't have a say in where it is free to express itself, being forced to penetrate every ear in the US, and shows that Lovato as an artist is being manipulated into selling her sexuality for a chart topper. No matter what you personally draw from the song, it has raised the question of why the hook starts with "ifmy body had a say" and perhaps as it's played through shopping malls and blasted through blown out car speakers, we as a society can start talking about that if -- and give female bodies a say, and female minds too.