Jetset, weekend getaway shopping trip, stop off to play the sold out show – it's a narrative of two fabulous cosmopolitan lives set to electro pop synths on Estelle's "American Boy," which has been floating through my head endlessly in the past few days. Whereas Ladytron or Annie go breathy robo-girl to such pads, Estelle's neo-soul melisma, rasp on more dense syllables, and exploration of a static story through phrasing shows her a nuanced vocal talent that goes beyond the songs Euro-cool. She takes this "American boy" phrase and develops it – unlike Winehouse, whose repetition tends to incorporate the same vocal performance each time. Zzz. That Kanye is maybe said boy is amusing – as if he would be a weekend fling. His verses either blow the story by framing it more as a cross-Atlantic promotional tour than a romance, or is a strange boastful metacommentary about his starmaking relationship with the singer. Unless the third way is the best read, that there is no romance at all, but she just wants to kick it with her American Boy, meaning anyone who will help her break through. Then she has several American boys - Cee-lo, John Legend, Will.i.am. She'd love to see LA, go to Broadway - she might as well shout out St. Louis! That's the oldest trick in the pop music book! She's clearly been studying earlier American boys like Chuck Berry, or maybe some Martha and the Vandellas.


I am thinking about the America that is at the center of Estelle's American Boy versus, perhaps, a song like Tom Petty's American Girl ("raised on promises"). How does someone become a or "the" American subject of one of these songs, and what does it mean that a black British woman sings of/to/with Kanye West as her American Boy?

Maybe I'm thinking about this question a lot since Palin and her angry mob have mobilized all this "Obama isn't our kind of American" language over the past few weeks. I am so relieved to be living in a moment when it is visible that a majority of Americans seem to want to acknowledge someone's identity and then go on to ask "but what are your ideas, qualifications, positions, and history," and "how will you help us move forward" and when the kind of pathetic fear-mongering of Palin-ists is condemned even by her own party. Is it possible that a majority of Americans, not just this fine British singer Estelle, want to have brilliant black man to be their American boy, full stop? It seems that it is. Perhaps this is just the beginning of there being Americans?