Trigger warning: mentions of sexual assault
“I can’t stop having visions of following him,” musician Sabrina Teitelbaum, stage name Blondshell, fearlessly confesses in her feminist, revenge-fueled track “Salad.” It’s a brave thing to admit on such a public scale — that you’re unable to stop fantasizing about hurting someone. But it’s the exact kind of raw honesty a listener can learn to expect from Jewish musician Blondshell.
Teitelbaum debuted Blondshell in June 2022 with the single “Olympus,” a weighted rock song dedicated to the turbulent relationship between addiction and love — themes indicative of the singer’s discography to come. It’s a far cry from the indie pop sound she first emerged with under the moniker BAUM. However, as her 2019 Hey Alma interview reveals, she’s always been unafraid of sincerity. Of her Jewish identity, she told Arielle Kaplan that she “really cares about the traditions,” even if she isn’t sure if she believes in God.
There’s a certain gritty magnetism Teitelbaum infuses into each Blondshell song; her lyrics are painful and devastating, but they’re coated in such a thick exterior of self-loathing levity that it makes you wonder just how blurred the distinction between crying and laughing can get. It’s what we do as Jews — we pluck the comedy out of tragedy, and we subsist on it to manage the pain. Teitelbaum explained this sentiment in her 2023 Rolling Stone interview with a reference to a popular tweet: “Did you have a happy childhood or are you funny?” And although Teitelbaum’s Jewishness is rarely the explicit focal point of her songwriting — except in one-off lyrics like “You’ll make a killer of a Jewish girl” — because of her commitment to total authenticity, an undercurrent of Jewish humor exists within all of it.
Take for example, “Sepsis,” a song about continually hooking up with a shitty guy. “I’m going back to him,” she jokes. “I know my therapist’s pissed.” It’s the kind of lyricism that makes you wonder if Blondshell has ever read your diary, or worse, your mind. You’d text that lyric to your friend the morning after you ran into your not-partner (not-not-partner) at a bar. You’d say that kind of thing to your sister on a 3 a.m. phone call after she’s begged you for weeks to stay away from your ex. Teitelbaum’s writing is fiercely vulnerable, and it’s so masterfully crafted.
She knows exactly the kind of charming dirtbag she is, and she’s not scared of joking about her wounds as she heals them. That’s Teitelbaum’s greatest strength as a songwriter: her devotion to personal truth, to leaving the rough and ugly edges unrefined even after the piece has been through the editing process.
Nowhere is her craft as clearly demonstrated as in her debut album’s last two songs. In the penultimate track, “Tarmac,” Teitelbaum admits to a cyclical, almost obsessive pattern of becoming attached to everything: people, physical sensations, mere feelings. “Tarmac” is an ode to desperation, to loneliness, to the futile effort of sacrificing everything in pursuit of even the briefest moments of human connection. “I can’t stay away from my new friends,” she sings an emotional wobble in her voice. “I feel like I’m losing myself.”
Then, she puts her fears plainly: “I’m alone, I’m alone.” It’s a feeling relatable to any young woman. But for Jewish women, it stings in a very specific way. We’re othered in society at-large and fetishized by non-Jews in the dating scene. When we’re young and expressing our desires, we’re fighting off the hypersexualized la belle juive — “the beautiful Jew” — and once we’ve aged or have decided to speak our minds, we’re at risk of becoming it’s the “Jewish mother. (As if that would be so terrible.) There seems to be nowhere we can exist without the threat of being confined to a neatly packaged stereotype ready for consumption: Any misstep in the eyes of the non-Jewish majority gets a new label thrown our way, forming a new archetype for us to morph into.
The experience of being objectified in a way that preys on, reduces us to or mocks our cultural identities has left many of us yearning for a community that sees the intersections of our personhood. And for those of us in places without a large or diverse Jewish population, that desire, all-consuming as it is, is often left unfulfilled.
If “Tarmac” is an ode to desperate sacrifice for community, “Dangerous” is an ode to the brutal fallout of said sacrifice. “They’re my friends,” the song opens. “And I’m scared of them.” It’s a description of the sobering moment when you look around and realize that you can’t truly know anyone else’s intentions, regardless of how much time you spend together. It’s one that speaks directly to me.
Right as I was coming into adulthood, I woke up in a friend’s bed with little idea of how I got there. As I pieced together the night before, my emotions oscillated violently: I felt a cannibalizing sense of shame one moment and total vacancy the next. I thought taking control of the situation would stifle the sting of losing my autonomy, so I did the only thing my brain’s survival mechanism would let me: I went back, and I clung to the relationship in hopes it would rewrite the reality of the situation.
My failure to process the trauma went terribly. Everything I knew to be true about my life had changed before I could even comprehend that I’d even been suffering. Eventually, my emotional back-and-forth ceased, and all I was left with was the miserable realization that I was targeted not just for my body, but for reasons as intimate and sacred as my religion. Sentiments laced with antisemitic fetishization about what I’d endured drifted through my social circles. They worsened the initial violation and flattened my relationship to my Jewish womanhood: I was referred to as not a person to be known, but as an experience to be had. I felt collected, like a specimen displayed on a pinning block.
I’d experienced something terrible; however, that’s not what wrecked my life. My behavior after the fact and my refusal to cope is what did it. I created a swamp of chaos through the act of clawing my way back to feeling human. It destroyed every ounce of stability I’d previously created, and the only time I’d seen that experience reflected back at me was upon hearing “Dangerous” for the first time.
“I’m trying new things out,” Teitelbaum says. “Is it obvious?” It’s a lyric not quite fully acknowledging a misstep — but loaded with the implication that something has gone awry. When we’re in positions of complete disarray, the type of emotional state that only prolonged loneliness can produce, we find ourselves clinging to the wrong kind of affection that can only end in feelings of even worse isolation.
This comes to a head in the bridge of the song where Teitelbaum breaks down a pattern of self-destructive behavior. She outlines making out with someone after a party and — despite initiating the kiss — hating the experience. She turns to alcohol and expresses mistrust in her own choices, recognizing that they might be part of an addictive cycle: “I don’t know moderation.”
Once again, that is such a bold admission, and it’s an intensely needed one. Teitelbaum doesn’t just navigate the gray areas of sex and love in her work — she creates a space for those of us with similar stories to share them with that same disregard for the appearance of perfection. I’m no longer ashamed by an event I couldn’t control, and I’ve begun to forgive myself for the messy way I coped with it. I have Blondshell to thank for kickstarting that process.
Whether it’s through brutal honesty, humor or the very Jewish intersection of the two, Teitelbaum represents authentic Jewish womanhood. But more than that, she authentically connects with Jewish women, imperfect and healing as we are.
