Look, we may never know if the “J.D. Vance fucks couches” allegations are true, but what is verifiable and infinitely more heinous is basically every talking point the Vice Presidential candidate has spewed (not to mention how those words have been delivered) to openly disinterested audiences since Trump begrudgingly revealed Vance to be his running mate. While Andrew Choi’s latest single as St. Lenox directly addresses one of Vance’s most controversial (see: evil) stances regarding a Musk-like obsession with procreation, the visual that “Courtesan” arrives alongside isn’t so subtle about bringing up the couch thing.
“The video is based off two real-life facts,” Choi shares. “The first is that the couch in our living room was previously owned by a friend who was roommates with J.D. Vance in law school. The second is that J.D. Vance was actually a philosophy major at The Ohio State University at the time that I was teaching philosophy classes there. I don't know if my friend had the couch when they were roommates, and I have no way of confirming if Mr. Vance was one of my students, but I wanted to use that as a jumping off point to talk about Mr. Vance, because like myself, he also went off to law school afterwards.”
The glimmering, synth-and-percussion instrumental on “Courtesan” leaves plenty of space for Choi’s erratic-yet-controlled vocals and nearly scatted lyrics as he takes aim at the ways in which Vance “misunderstands something important about the connection between public service and moral motivation.” The aforementioned visual, meanwhile, recalls the static camerawork of a lyric video with the song’s actual lyrics substituted with an expanded version of the story he begins above paired with a shot of Choi with his husband and baby. “You’ll just see my husband and I trying to get our daughter (who is off screen) to smile—which I put in because [Vance’s] comment also incorrectly suggested that gay people don't have or want children,” adds Choi. “Pete Buttigieg, who Mr. Vance named in his tirade, has children as well!”
Check that out and find more backstory on the song courtesy of Choi below. Ten Modern American Work Songs is out October 25 via Don Giovanni—you can pre-order that here.
“‘Courtesan’ is about the period of my life when I quit academia and turned to law school for gainful employment. At the time, we were paid a very low salary to teach philosophy classes at The Ohio State University, and the low pay was justified by the possibility of a stable tenure-track teaching position in the future. But in the late 2000s, many tenure-track positions were converted to low-paying non-tenured adjunct positions, which put many of us in a bind. Essentially, the day after I defended my dissertation and received my PhD, I asked the chair of my dissertation committee for a recommendation letter for law school, and applied shortly after.
In law school, I was suddenly surrounded by so much wealth and privilege, and there was a real possibility that I, too, might be able to share in that. That hope was, however, tempered by the fact that I was burdened with over a quarter of a million dollars in law school debt (in addition to some college debt), which made the future fairly uncertain. I guess I thought of my position as being similar to a courtesan in the sense that there was a great opportunity for raising my socio-economic position, but doing so necessarily involved a fair bit of compromise, in the form of that debt among other things.
