Released: 2022
In “Anxiety,” Megan Thee Stallion pulls back the curtain, letting us glimpse at the struggles she goes through behind her fierce exterior. Far from just a club banger, this song is a diary, an outpouring of personal struggles where Megan articulates her anxiety and emotional turmoil.
Starting off, she hits you with a one-two punch of honest confession: “I’m a bad bitch and I got bad anxiety.” Here, she’s simultaneously reinforcing her sharp and fierce persona (a “bad bitch”) and revealing the mental health battles she fights in her private life. When she mentions that folks peg her as rude because she’s not allowing them to take advantage of her, it’s an insight into the fine line female artists must walk in an industry that constantly attempts to capitalize on them.
She repeats, “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, bad bitches have bad days too,” giving a voice to the internal struggles successful women face but don’t often publicize. These aren’t just bad days; they’re symptoms of anxieties and pressures heightened by the microscope of fame. Megan is saying, “even the hardest, toughest women have off days.”
She also grapples with the loss of her mother in a poignant verse: “If I could write a letter to Heaven, I would tell my mama that I should’ve been listening.” This line speaks volumes about Megan’s grief and isolation and the inherent vulnerability in navigating fame and its pitfalls without her mother’s guidance.
Meg’s tributes to Marilyn Monroe and Britney are crucial too. Both women faced similar struggles with fame, success, and maintaining their mental health. They symbolize the generational struggle of women in the spotlight. In Megan’s music world, they are ‘bad bitches,’ women who pushed boundaries but also paid a high price.
While “Anxiety” carries heavy content, the chorus injects a much-needed level of resilience: “Bounce back ’cause a bad bitch can have bad days.” True to hip-hop tradition, Megan asserts her capacity to overcome, and be the “bad bitch” the world knows her to be – a warrior, a survivor. But Megan wants us to remember – even warriors have their off days. And that’s okay.
