2001: Music from the Motion Picture Josie & the Pussycats
By Maddy Court
My devotion to the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack started in 5th grade—the worst year of my life—I’m not exaggerating—when I was stricken with deep anxiety about everything from math homework to my updating body. I was especially terrified of house fires and car accidents. When I was at school, I was convinced that my mom would die in one unless I could make the sign of the cross three times without my teachers or classmates noticing. In order to get a grip on my wolverine emotions, I watched Josie and the Pussycats over and over. I listened to the soundtrack until the CD was scratched to oblivion from being left on the floor and stepped on by my dogs.
If you’re not aware, Josie and the Pussycats is a movie based on characters from the Archie universe. It came out in 2001 and initially bombed at the box office, but has since become a cult classic. The story follows three best friends—Josie, Valerie, and Melody—who play in a band called The Pussycats. At the beginning of the movie, The Pussycats are on the verge of giving up. They’re so broke, they can barely afford microwave ramen. Nobody comes to their shows, not even their manager. Everything changes when Wyatt, a smarmy music executive, picks them off the street and offers them an unbelievable record deal. The Pussycats achieve instant stardom, but not all that glitters is gold. Their friendship suffers as they are pulled further and further into the record label’s sinister plot to brainwash the world’s teenagers through pop music.
When I was in my Josie phase, I was hungry to know what other girls were thinking and feeling. I watched Fuse TV and read Seventeen, Teen Vogue, Elle Girl, and YM. In the era of Britney Spears virginity discourse and What Not to Wear, girl-centric media only reified my constant sense of anxiety and dread. I remember reading a feature in Seventeen that was just pictures of “bad food” next to the equivalent calories of “good food” (imagine a cheeseburger next to several hundred strawberries) and just internalizing it, no questions asked. In contrast, Josie is about how being a girl is hard, but also cool. Josie, Melody, and Valerie are the heroes of the movie. Not only do they refuse to be pitted against each other, they triumph over the evil music executives and save pop music for humankind. Nowhere is Josie's reverence for girls more evident than its soundtrack: a 30-minute pop punk masterpiece performed by Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo.
The Josie soundtrack is declarative. It opens with the song “3 Small Words“ and the outburst ”I’m a punk rock prom queen!” Josie is allowed to be complicated and full of contradictions. She’s always yelling something about herself that others don’t understand, then re-asserting herself in the refrain. Boys are stupid, so are posers. The song, “You Don’t See Me,“ describes the pain of feeling invisible to someone you really love. In the movie, it plays during the moment when Josie’s showboating causes Valerie to quit the band. As a kid with massive, inexplicable emotions, this was deep stuff to me. As an adult, it’s just a really good album. The word that comes to mind is “complete.“
In the movie, The Pussycats become friends and allies with a hapless boy band named Dujour. There are two Dujour songs on the soundtrack. I skipped over them as a kid, but now I appreciate them as perfect parodies of Y2K boy band aesthetics and lyrics. I also understand the true meaning of “Backdoor Lover,” but that’s another essay. By being a lot worse than The Pussycats, the Dujour songs provide an important counterpoint on the soundtrack. They round out the movie’s vision of a musical world where girls have important, specific things to say.
Near the end of the movie, The Pussycats discover that the record label is lacing their music with subliminal messages such as ”Josie and the Pussycats are the best band ever!” and, “There is no such place as Area 51.” Wyatt tries to convince them that their music is actually bad and all their success is a lie predicated on shady marketing tactics. The Pussycats destroy the record label’s subliminal messaging machine and take the stage for their first concert anyways, because fuck Wyatt. They play a few bars and it’s like a spell is broken. Valerie, Melody, and Josie are friends again. Josie’s crush crowd surfs on stage and kisses her. The crowd loves The Pussycats and their pure, unadulterated music. Girls rock. The end.
Maddy Court is a writer and zinemaker from Wisconsin. She writes a newsletter about TV shows and queer relationships called T.V. Dinner and is the author of The Ex-Girlfriend of My Ex-Girlfriend Is My Girlfriend, a zine that turned into a book.