SUKA

CATEGORY
Hard Rock / Heavy Rock / Rebellious Anthem

PRIMARY EMOTION
Defiance

ALSO FITS
Humour, attitude, independence, attraction, danger, confidence, provocation, power

WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT

SUKA is about the woman you think you’ve got figured out right up until you discover she figured you out first.

She’s strong. She’s sharp. She’s attractive. She’s dangerous in her own way, and she knows exactly what she’s doing.

You might think you’re running the show.

She’ll let you think that.

That’s part of the fun.

The title comes from the Russian word suka, commonly translated into English as “bitch.” It can be a pretty harsh insult, but I wasn’t interested in writing a song where the word simply gets thrown at a woman.

I wanted to turn it around.

In this song, SUKA becomes almost a title.

She’s the woman who walks into the room and doesn’t need to announce herself because everybody already noticed. She can smile at you while she’s figuring you out. She can let you believe you’re winning because sometimes watching you believe it is more entertaining than actually beating you.

And if you think being dominant automatically means you’re in control of her, you might be in for one hell of a surprise.

She’ll let you win when she feels like letting you win.

Not when you decide you’ve won.

That’s the woman behind this song.

THE STORY BEHIND THE SONG

This one actually started while I was reading.

I was reading a book about Russia, and part of what caught my attention was the way Russian women were being portrayed and discussed.

There was this fascinating contradiction.

On one side was this image of the strong, dominant Russian man. Toughness. Pride. Authority. The man believing he’s the one running things.

Then you start looking at the women.

That’s where my imagination took off.

I started thinking, you might want to be careful before assuming you know who has the upper hand here.

There was something about that contrast that made me laugh.

A man can pound his chest all he wants. He can believe he’s the boss. He can believe he has everything under control.

Meanwhile, she may have him wrapped around her finger and he doesn’t even realize how tightly yet.

That gave me the character.

I wasn’t trying to write a documentary description of every Russian woman. Of course people are individuals, and no nationality can be reduced to one personality. I was taking an impression from what I was reading, exaggerating it, having fun with it and turning it into a larger-than-life woman who could carry a heavy rock song.

And the thought running through my head became pretty simple:

Don’t fuck with this woman.

You think you’re going to control her?

Good luck.

You think you’re going to outsmart her?

She may already know what you’re trying to do.

You think you won the argument?

Maybe she just got tired of listening to you.

That was the personality I wanted.

Then I had the word.

SUKA.

Short.

Hard.

Russian.

And perfect to scream in a chorus.

Once those pieces came together, the song had somewhere to go.

WHY I WROTE THIS SONG

I wrote SUKA because the contradiction fascinated me.

Power isn’t always where people think it is.

Somebody can appear dominant and still be completely under another person’s spell. Somebody else can appear to be giving ground while actually deciding exactly how far the other person gets to go.

That became the game inside the song.

And I wanted to have fun with it.

This wasn’t the time for me to become polite.

If I’m writing about this woman, I can’t have her walking around saying, “Excuse me, would you please stop trying to control me?”

Fuck that.

Wrong woman.

She’ll tell you herself.

The more I imagined her, the more outrageous she became.

She’ll drink your vodka.

She’ll see through your bullshit.

She’ll let you think you’re winning.

Give her a diamond and she might pawn the fucking thing.

Tell her to behave and see how well that works out for you.

Now I had a woman worthy of the title.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO ME

What I like about SUKA is that underneath all the swearing, attitude and humour, there’s an interesting idea about control.

People confuse control with strength all the time.

They think being louder means being stronger.

They think giving orders means being in charge.

They think somebody agreeing with them means they won.

Not necessarily.

Sometimes the person across from you simply decided the argument wasn’t worth another five minutes.

Sometimes somebody gives you enough rope to make a fool of yourself.

Sometimes what you thought was control was being tolerated.

That idea made SUKA much more interesting to me than simply writing about a wild woman.

She knows when she’s giving something away.

She knows when she’s taking it back.

And if she lets you believe you’re the king for five minutes, enjoy your five minutes.

WHY THIS SONG FITS MOITA

MOITA would become pretty boring if every song walked through the same door.

I’ve written about pain, history, family, injustice, mortality, love, anger and some pretty serious parts of life.

Then along comes SUKA in high heels and kicks the fucking door open.

I like that.

It shows another side of how my mind works.

I can read something because I’m genuinely interested in another country or culture, notice one little contradiction, start laughing about it, and suddenly my brain is building a character.

That’s creativity to me.

You don’t always know where the next song is hiding.

It can be buried in something painful.

It can be inside history.

It can come from your own life.

Or it can be sitting inside a book about Russia waiting for one thought to hit you:

Who really controls who?

From there, imagination does the rest.

That’s why SUKA belongs inside MOITA.

READ THIS FIRST

Before anybody starts sending me angry letters from Moscow, understand what you’re walking into.

This isn’t my declaration that every Russian woman behaves this way.

It’s a rock song.

I took an impression that interested me, exaggerated the hell out of it, mixed in humour, attraction, attitude and power, and created one fictional woman.

SUKA.

She’s not representing an entire country.

She’s representing herself.

And that’s probably exactly how she’d want it.

There’s also a reason the language is rough.

Cleaning this song up would destroy it.

You can’t build this character and then make her behave for the webpage.

She doesn’t behave in the song.

She’s not going to start behaving here.

So enjoy her.

Laugh at her.

Be attracted to her.

Be scared of her if you want.

Just don’t make the mistake the men in the song make.

Don’t assume that because she let you win, you were ever in control.

FULL LYRICS

SUKA

There she is
High heels hitting like a warning shot
Red lips saying come and get what you probably should not
No halo hanging over that pretty little head
She’ll kiss you like heaven
Then leave your good sense dead

She don’t need permission
She don’t wait in line
She’ll drink your best vodka
Then tell you it was mine
She’s got fuck you in her bloodstream
Trouble underneath her skin
Every man thinks he can handle her
Till she lets the bastard in

She ain’t looking for a saviour
She sure as hell ain’t looking for a king
Put a diamond on her finger
She might pawn the fucking thing

You can call her crazy
You can call her cold
But you better say it smiling
If you wanna grow old

SUKA
Sweet motherfucking SUKA
Fire in her blood
And a devil in her smile

SUKA
Nobody fucking owns ya
You can love her for a night
But you’ll remember her for life

She’ll take your heart
She’ll take your pride
She’ll leave you begging
And enjoy the ride

SUKA
Beautiful brutal SUKA
If trouble had a daughter
She’d be standing here tonight

She can smell a bullshit story
Before it leaves your mouth
She’ll let you think you’re winning
While she’s figuring you out
She knows exactly what she’s doing
Don’t mistake that grin for sweet
She can turn a grown man stupid
Just by crossing both her feet

She’ll dance when she damn well wants to
Smoke where the sign says no
And when somebody says behave yourself
She says fuck you
Watch me go

She ain’t your little angel
She never claimed to be
If you came looking for obedience
Wrong fucking woman
Leave

SUKA
Sweet motherfucking SUKA
Fire in her blood
And a devil in her smile

SUKA
Nobody fucking owns ya
You can love her for a night
But you’ll remember her for life

She’ll take your heart
She’ll take your pride
She’ll leave you begging
And enjoy the ride

SUKA
Beautiful brutal SUKA
If trouble had a daughter
She’d be standing here tonight

Don’t tame her
Don’t save her
Don’t tell her what a woman ought to be

Don’t own her
Don’t cage her
She was fucking dangerous before she met me

She ain’t broken
She ain’t waiting
She doesn’t need some asshole setting her free

She knows her name
She knows her game

And everybody scream it with me

SU-KA!
SU-KA!
SU-KA!
SU-KA!

SUKA
Sweet motherfucking SUKA
Raise another glass
To every woman they couldn’t tame

SUKA
Nobody fucking owns ya
They can curse you
They can want you
But they’ll never make you change

Take their hearts
Take their pride
Make the whole damn world
Enjoy the ride

SUKA
Beautiful brutal SUKA
If trouble had a daughter

We’d be screaming out her name

SUKA!

She wasn’t made to behave

She was made
To be remembered

SUKA

 

 

SECTION ONE

LYRIC JOURNEY

PART 1

SUKA

The song doesn’t waste any time introducing her.

“There she is”

That’s all I needed.

I wanted it to feel like we’re already sitting somewhere when somebody notices her walking into the room. Nobody has to ask who I’m talking about. You look up and there she is.

“High heels hitting like a warning shot”

Now you can hear her coming.

I didn’t want the high heels there just because they’re sexy. The important part is the warning shot. Before this woman has said one word, you’ve already been warned.

You can ignore the warning if you want.

That’s your decision.

“Red lips saying come and get what you probably should not”

Now the problem gets more interesting because you’re not being told to stay away.

You’re being invited closer.

That’s where attraction can make people do some pretty stupid things. Sometimes you know perfectly well that something could become trouble and you go toward it anyway.

She’s not chasing anybody.

She’s letting you make your own bad decision.

That fits the woman I had in my head when I wrote this. She doesn’t have to drag you into anything. She can stand there and let you convince yourself.

“No halo hanging over that pretty little head”

I’m telling you right away that I’m not pretending she’s an angel.

She isn’t pretending either.

That’s important.

Sometimes people get involved with somebody, see exactly who that person is, and then spend the next year complaining because they didn’t turn into somebody completely different.

SUKA isn’t hiding the merchandise.

There’s no halo.

If you invented one, that’s your problem.

“She’ll kiss you like heaven
Then leave your good sense dead”

That’s the contradiction I wanted.

No halo, but the kiss feels like heaven.

You know she might be trouble and suddenly you’re not thinking quite as clearly as you were five minutes ago.

I think most people understand that feeling in one form or another. Attraction can make intelligent people temporarily stupid.

You know better.

Your brain knows better.

Then another part of you says shut the fuck up.

That’s where I wanted the introduction to leave us.

We’ve barely met her and already somebody’s common sense is in trouble.

Then we start learning how she lives.

“She don’t need permission
She don’t wait in line”

Those two lines are short because they should be.

I don’t need three paragraphs to tell you she’s independent.

She doesn’t ask permission.

She doesn’t wait around for somebody else to decide whether she’s allowed to move.

That doesn’t mean I’m saying rules don’t matter in real life. I’m building a rock character. Everything about her is pushed a little harder because that’s who she is inside this song.

Then I bring a little Russian flavour into it.

“She’ll drink your best vodka
Then tell you it was mine”

That line makes me laugh.

It’s not meant to teach anybody about Russian culture. It’s me having fun with the character and where the original idea came from.

But it also tells you something about her.

The bottle was yours.

She drank it.

And somehow you’re the one being corrected.

You might even end up apologizing.

That’s the kind of woman I’m building.

“She’s got fuck you in her bloodstream
Trouble underneath her skin”

Now we’re getting closer to her real attitude.

I like the idea of fuck you being in somebody’s bloodstream because it means it isn’t something she puts on when she wants to look tough.

It’s already there.

It’s part of her.

And I don’t mean that she’s walking around hating everybody.

It’s more the attitude she has toward anybody who believes they automatically have authority over her.

Tell her what she’s allowed to be.

Fuck you.

Tell her she needs your permission.

Fuck you.

Tell her she should know her place.

Now you’ve really done it.

“Trouble underneath her skin” keeps that danger alive.

I don’t mean she’s a violent woman. I’m talking about the kind of trouble that comes from underestimating somebody.

You think she’s going to react one way.

She goes the other way.

You think you’ve got her figured out.

You don’t.

Then we get to one of the lines that really connects with what started the whole song for me.

“Every man thinks he can handle her
Till she lets the bastard in”

The word that matters there is lets.

He thinks he got in.

She knows she let him in.

That’s a big difference.

This connects directly to what caught my imagination when I was reading that book about Russia.

There was this picture in my mind of the dominant man who believes he’s controlling everything, while the woman might have him wrapped around her finger and be perfectly happy letting him believe otherwise.

That’s what interested me.

Control isn’t always where it appears to be.

Somebody can let you have your way because they love you.

Somebody can let you win because the argument isn’t worth having.

Somebody can let you believe you’re in charge because they find the whole thing amusing.

Permission can look a lot like victory if you don’t know the difference.

That’s SUKA.

Then I take away the idea that she’s waiting for some man to arrive and complete her.

“She ain’t looking for a saviour
She sure as hell ain’t looking for a king”

She doesn’t need rescuing.

And she definitely doesn’t need somebody arriving with a crown expecting obedience.

I used king for a reason.

A king traditionally represents authority. He rules. People answer to him.

Not this woman.

If you walk into her life thinking you’re automatically the king because you’re the man, you may want to keep the crown somewhere safe.

She’s probably going to knock it off your head.

Then comes one of the lines where I deliberately take something romantic and make SUKA completely disrespect it.

“Put a diamond on her finger
She might pawn the fucking thing”

A diamond ring can mean love, commitment and a promise between two people.

Nothing wrong with that.

But if the guy thinks putting a diamond on her finger means he purchased control, he bought the wrong woman.

She might pawn the fucking thing.

That’s exaggerated.

That’s the joke.

But underneath the joke is something real.

A gift doesn’t buy ownership.

A relationship doesn’t buy ownership.

Marriage doesn’t turn another human being into property.

SUKA isn’t interested in being somebody’s possession.

Then we move into the first pre-chorus.

“You can call her crazy
You can call her cold”

Those are easy words to throw at somebody.

Crazy.

Cold.

Difficult.

Bitch.

Sometimes they may describe somebody accurately.

Other times they’re what people say when somebody refuses to behave the way they wanted.

A woman says no and suddenly she’s cold.

She doesn’t tolerate bullshit and suddenly she’s difficult.

She refuses to be controlled and somebody decides she’s crazy.

Maybe.

Or maybe you just didn’t get your way.

“But you better say it smiling
If you wanna grow old”

I’m having fun again.

This isn’t a literal threat.

I’m building her reputation.

If you’re going to insult this woman, at least have enough sense to make it look like you’re joking.

Then we hit the chorus.

“SUKA
Sweet motherfucking SUKA
Fire in her blood
And a devil in her smile”

This is where the word becomes hers.

Suka can be an ugly word when somebody throws it at a woman as an insult.

I’m doing something different with it in the song.

I’m almost celebrating her with it.

Sweet motherfucking SUKA.

Those words shouldn’t even fit together properly.

Sweet and motherfucking.

That’s exactly why I like them together.

She’s full of contradictions.

She’s attractive and dangerous.

Funny and intimidating.

Sweet when she wants to be and probably a complete pain in the ass when she doesn’t.

“Fire in her blood
And a devil in her smile”

The fire is her personality.

The devil is that look telling you she knows exactly what she’s doing.

Then we reach the line underneath all the fun that probably matters most.

“SUKA
Nobody fucking owns ya”

That’s the heart of her.

Nobody owns her.

That doesn’t mean she can’t love.

It doesn’t mean she can’t commit herself to somebody.

It doesn’t mean relationships shouldn’t involve compromise.

It means another human being doesn’t become your property because they love you.

That’s where this crazy rock character suddenly has something worth saying.

“You can love her for a night
But you’ll remember her for life”

Now I’m making her larger than life again.

Maybe she’s in your life for years.

Maybe she’s there for one night.

Either way, you’re going to remember her.

Some people have that kind of presence.

They don’t have to spend decades around you to leave a mark.

Sometimes one person enters your life briefly and twenty years later you can still remember the laugh, the voice, the look or the stupid thing you did because they were there.

SUKA is definitely leaving something behind.

“She’ll take your heart
She’ll take your pride
She’ll leave you begging
And enjoy the ride”

Now the guy who thought he was going to handle her isn’t looking quite so impressive.

His heart is gone.

His pride is taking a beating.

He’s begging.

She’s having a great fucking time.

Again, this is the exaggerated world of the song. I’m not describing how people should treat each other in a healthy relationship.

I’m turning the traditional game around.

The guy who thought he was the hunter suddenly discovers he might not have understood who was hunting who.

“SUKA
Beautiful brutal SUKA
If trouble had a daughter
She’d be standing here tonight”

Beautiful brutal SUKA probably says more about her than a long description ever could.

Beautiful pulls you toward her.

Brutal tells you to think twice.

And if trouble itself had a daughter, this is the woman I imagined walking into the room.

That’s where the first chorus leaves us.

We’ve met her.

We’ve been warned.

We’ve watched somebody ignore the warning.

And now the song moves into the second verse, where the important thing changes.

We’ve already seen what she looks like.

Now we’re going to find out how quickly she can figure you out.

 

SECTION ONE

LYRIC JOURNEY

PART 2

“She can smell a bullshit story
Before it leaves your mouth”

Now we’re getting into her head.

The first part of the song showed her walking into the room. We saw the heels, the red lips, the attitude and the attraction.

Now I want you to understand that she isn’t stupid.

Don’t confuse being sexy with being easy to fool.

Before you’ve even finished putting your bullshit story together, she’s already reading your face.

Maybe she’s heard the same excuse before.

Maybe she understands people.

Maybe she knows you well enough to recognize when something doesn’t sound right.

Whatever it is, you’re not getting away with much.

“She’ll let you think you’re winning
While she’s figuring you out”

This is one of the most important lines in the whole song because it takes me straight back to the thought that helped create SUKA in the first place.

She’ll let you think you’re winning.

There is that word again.

Let.

Earlier it was:

“Till she lets the bastard in”

Now she’s letting you think you’re winning.

That’s not accidental.

The guy thinks he’s taking control.

She knows she’s giving him enough room to believe it.

There’s something funny about that.

You can picture the man walking around thinking he’s the boss.

He’s got everything handled.

He’s got her figured out.

Meanwhile, she’s sitting there thinking, keep going, asshole. This is getting interesting.

That doesn’t mean every relationship is some secret competition between men and women. That would be ridiculous.

I’m building this particular woman.

This is her game.

And if you’re playing against her, don’t celebrate too early.

“She knows exactly what she’s doing
Don’t mistake that grin for sweet”

That grin has been there since the beginning.

Earlier it was:

“And a devil in her smile”

Now I’m warning you again.

Don’t mistake the grin for sweet.

The important part is that she knows exactly what she’s doing.

She isn’t accidentally creating this effect.

She’s aware of it.

She knows when somebody is watching her.

She knows when somebody is trying to impress her.

She knows when somebody is lying.

She knows when somebody thinks they’ve got the upper hand.

Maybe she lets it continue because she’s curious how far they’ll take it.

Maybe she’s amused.

Maybe she’s waiting for exactly the right moment to turn the whole thing around.

That’s the woman in my imagination.

“She can turn a grown man stupid
Just by crossing both her feet”

I wanted this line to be funny.

Think about the amount of power we’re pretending this woman has.

She doesn’t even have to stand up.

She doesn’t have to say anything.

She crosses her feet.

That’s it.

And some grown man who was perfectly capable of forming sentences ten seconds earlier suddenly can’t remember his own fucking postal code.

Attraction does strange things to people.

We’ve probably all watched somebody completely change when the person they’re attracted to walks into the room.

Their voice changes.

Their posture changes.

Suddenly they’re funnier than they were five minutes ago.

Or at least they think they are.

Sometimes the person they’re trying to impress sees every bit of it.

That’s what makes this line work for me.

She sees him becoming stupid.

And I think she enjoys it.

“She’ll dance when she damn well wants to
Smoke where the sign says no”

Now we’re moving again.

This is her rebellious side.

I’m not telling anybody to ignore smoking laws or rules.

I’m showing you how her mind works.

Tell her not to do something and there’s a pretty good chance the first thought in her head is going to be, why the fuck not?

She’s naturally resistant to being told what to do.

Sometimes that quality can be strength.

Sometimes it can get you into trouble.

With SUKA, it’s probably both.

“And when somebody says behave yourself
She says fuck you
Watch me go”

There couldn’t be a more perfect thing to say to the wrong woman.

Behave yourself.

You can almost hear the person saying it as though they have authority over her.

That’s the part she’s reacting to.

She’s not asking what behaviour they would prefer.

She’s not negotiating.

“Fuck you
Watch me go”

I like the movement in those words.

She doesn’t stand around arguing.

She’s already leaving.

If your condition for being around her is obedience, she’s solved the problem for both of you.

“She ain’t your little angel
She never claimed to be”

This matters because she hasn’t tricked anybody.

Go back to the beginning.

“No halo hanging over that pretty little head”

The warning was there almost immediately.

Now I’m reminding you.

She never claimed to be your angel.

If you decided she was going to become one after you got involved with her, that’s something you invented.

I think people sometimes do that to each other.

We meet somebody.

We see who they are.

Then instead of deciding whether we’re compatible with that person, we start imagining the person we’re going to turn them into.

That can become a terrible way to love somebody.

You’re no longer loving the person in front of you.

You’re waiting for the replacement version.

SUKA isn’t interested in becoming the replacement version.

“If you came looking for obedience
Wrong fucking woman
Leave”

That’s the answer.

There isn’t much more to explain.

Wrong woman.

Leave.

I deliberately wanted that last word standing there because it closes the argument.

If obedience is what you’re looking for, there are two people in the wrong relationship.

You shouldn’t be trying to force her into it.

And she shouldn’t have to spend her life fighting you over it.

Leave.

Then the chorus returns.

“SUKA
Sweet motherfucking SUKA
Fire in her blood
And a devil in her smile”

The words haven’t changed.

The woman has become clearer.

The first time we heard the chorus, we were still meeting her.

Now we’ve watched her work.

We’ve watched her recognize bullshit.

We’ve watched her let somebody think he’s winning.

We’ve watched her deliberately push against rules.

We’ve watched somebody tell her to behave and learned exactly how useful that was.

So the chorus doesn’t need another full explanation.

It carries more weight now because we’ve seen the evidence.

“SUKA
Nobody fucking owns ya”

That line feels even stronger the second time.

The first time it told us something about her.

Now she’s demonstrated it.

“You can love her for a night
But you’ll remember her for life”

By now that’s becoming easier to believe too.

Whether you love her, hate her or spend the next twenty years wondering what the hell happened, you’re probably not forgetting her.

“She’ll take your heart
She’ll take your pride
She’ll leave you begging
And enjoy the ride”

Again, the joke continues.

The man who thought he was controlling everything isn’t exactly finishing the evening in the position he expected.

Then:

“SUKA
Beautiful brutal SUKA
If trouble had a daughter
She’d be standing here tonight”

And that’s enough.

The chorus has done its job again.

We don’t need to stop and explain the same road twice.

Now the song reaches the bridge.

This is where I wanted the attitude to remain, but I also wanted the reason underneath that attitude to become clearer.

“Don’t tame her
Don’t save her
Don’t tell her what a woman ought to be”

Don’t tame her.

That word matters.

We talk about taming something wild.

Breaking it down.

Training it until it behaves the way we want.

Why would somebody want to do that to the person they supposedly love?

If the very qualities that attracted you to somebody are the same qualities you immediately start trying to remove, what exactly did you fall in love with?

Then:

“Don’t save her”

Maybe she doesn’t need saving.

Maybe she didn’t ask you to rescue her.

Helping somebody when they need help is one thing.

Deciding somebody needs you because it makes you feel important is something else.

Then comes the biggest line of the three.

“Don’t tell her what a woman ought to be”

There are a lot of rules people have created for women over the years.

Be attractive, but don’t be too sexual.

Be confident, but don’t intimidate anybody.

Be independent, but don’t make somebody feel unnecessary.

Speak your mind, but don’t be too loud.

Be strong, but still behave the way somebody else decided a woman should behave.

At some point you have to ask who wrote all these fucking rules.

That doesn’t mean men are the enemy.

That isn’t what I’m saying.

Men get handed expectations too.

Be tough.

Don’t cry.

Don’t show weakness.

Provide.

Protect.

Never admit you’re scared.

A lot of people spend their lives being told what they’re supposed to be because of what somebody else expects from their sex, culture, family or generation.

SUKA doesn’t have the patience for that conversation.

Don’t tell her what a woman ought to be.

She’s already decided what this woman is going to be.

“Don’t own her
Don’t cage her
She was fucking dangerous before she met me”

Now the bridge goes directly back to control.

Don’t own her.

A person isn’t property.

That should be obvious, but emotionally people can still behave as though love gives them ownership.

Who are you talking to?

Where are you going?

Why didn’t you answer?

Who were you looking at?

Why are you wearing that?

Sometimes concern is genuine.

Sometimes jealousy is human.

But when concern turns into control, something has changed.

“Don’t cage her”

That takes the same idea further.

A cage can be physical, but it doesn’t have to be.

People can feel caged by control, fear, pressure or by constantly having to ask permission to be themselves.

Then comes a line I really like:

“She was fucking dangerous before she met me”

I’m not taking credit for her.

I didn’t create SUKA.

Inside the song, she already had a life.

She already had a personality.

She already had that fire.

The man didn’t give it to her.

He met it.

That’s a big difference.

And from here the bridge is about to make one more turn.

Because if she didn’t need somebody to create her strength, maybe she doesn’t need somebody arriving to give her freedom either.

 

SECTION ONE

LYRIC JOURNEY

PART 3

“She ain’t broken
She ain’t waiting
She doesn’t need some asshole setting her free”

This is where the bridge finishes the thought it started.

She isn’t broken.

I wanted that said plainly because there’s a difference between somebody being independent and somebody being damaged.

People sometimes look at a person who doesn’t need much from anybody else and immediately start searching for the wound that supposedly made them that way.

Maybe there is one.

Maybe there isn’t.

Maybe that’s simply who they are.

SUKA isn’t standing around waiting for somebody to diagnose her personality.

“She ain’t waiting”

That line is just as important.

Waiting for what?

A man?

Permission?

Rescue?

Somebody to arrive and finally start her life for her?

No.

Her life was already moving before anybody else walked into it.

Then comes:

“She doesn’t need some asshole setting her free”

I like that line because there’s arrogance hidden inside the idea of setting another person free.

If you didn’t own her freedom in the first place, how are you giving it to her?

You can support somebody.

You can stand beside somebody.

You can help somebody when they need help.

Those are good things.

But that’s different from walking into somebody’s life believing you’re the one who grants them independence.

SUKA would probably laugh in your face.

She’s already free.

“She knows her name
She knows her game”

After everything we’ve said about her, I wanted this part simple.

She knows who she is.

She knows what she’s doing.

That’s really the foundation underneath her confidence.

She’s not waiting for everybody in the room to approve of her before she decides how she feels about herself.

And “she knows her game” brings us back to that control game running through the entire song.

She let you in.

She let you think you were winning.

She watched you while you were figuring out what the hell was happening.

She knows the game.

The question is whether you do.

“And everybody scream it with me”

Now I’m finished explaining her.

It’s time to scream her name.

“SU-KA!
SU-KA!
SU-KA!
SU-KA!”

This is one of the moments I can really hear in my head as a crowd part.

It has to be big.

The band pounding behind it.

Everybody shouting the same two syllables.

SU-KA.

SU-KA.

SU-KA.

SU-KA.

And something has happened to the word by this point in the song.

At the beginning, someone who knows Russian profanity may hear the title and immediately think of the insult.

By here, I don’t hear it that way anymore.

It’s her name.

It’s her banner.

We’re not whispering it behind her back.

We’re screaming it with her.

That changes the feeling of the word.

You tried to use it against her?

Fine.

She’ll take it.

Now the whole fucking room is shouting it.

Then we move into the final chorus.

“SUKA
Sweet motherfucking SUKA
Raise another glass
To every woman they couldn’t tame”

This is the biggest change in the chorus.

Earlier it was:

“Fire in her blood
And a devil in her smile”

Now I’m raising a glass.

And I’m not only raising it to this one fictional woman anymore.

“To every woman they couldn’t tame”

That’s where the song opens up.

The word tame comes back from the bridge, but now I’m turning it into a toast.

There have always been people who don’t fit neatly into the role somebody else prepared for them.

Some are loud about it.

Some aren’t.

Some fight openly.

Some simply refuse quietly.

The important part is that they remain themselves.

That doesn’t mean every act of rebellion is automatically admirable.

People can be independent and still be wrong.

People can be strong and still hurt others.

People can refuse control and still have responsibilities.

I’m not giving anybody a free pass to treat people like shit.

What I’m celebrating is the refusal to become somebody else’s property.

That’s different.

“SUKA
Nobody fucking owns ya”

Now this line has travelled through the whole song.

The first time, it was part of the chorus.

The second time, we had watched her prove it.

Now, after the bridge, it feels like the point the entire song has been heading toward.

Nobody owns ya.

Not the guy with the diamond.

Not the guy who thinks he’s the king.

Not the guy telling you to behave.

Not the guy who believes he came along to save you.

Nobody.

“They can curse you
They can want you
But they’ll never make you change”

I like putting curse and want beside each other.

Human beings can be strange that way.

Sometimes the thing that attracts somebody to another person is the exact thing they later try to change.

They love the confidence.

Until the confidence disagrees with them.

They love the independence.

Until the independence means they don’t get their way.

They love somebody’s wild personality.

Then they spend the relationship trying to calm it down.

That’s a strange contradiction.

If you remove everything that made somebody interesting to you in the first place, what are you hoping will be left?

“They’ll never make you change”

I don’t mean nobody should ever change.

That’s not realistic and it isn’t healthy.

I’ve changed throughout my life.

Everybody does.

Sometimes we need to change because we’re wrong.

Sometimes we need to grow up.

Sometimes somebody who loves us sees something in us that we need to work on.

There’s nothing weak about that.

The difference is between growing because something makes you a better person and changing your identity because somebody needs you to become easier to control.

SUKA isn’t doing the second one.

“Take their hearts
Take their pride
Make the whole damn world
Enjoy the ride”

Earlier the chorus said:

“She’ll take your heart
She’ll take your pride”

Now I’m speaking directly to her.

Take their hearts.

Take their pride.

The final chorus isn’t just describing her anymore.

It’s cheering her on.

And then:

“Make the whole damn world
Enjoy the ride”

That’s really what I wanted the song itself to do.

Enjoy the ride.

This isn’t supposed to leave everybody sitting in a dark room wondering about the meaning of existence.

It’s supposed to be fun.

It’s supposed to have attitude.

It’s supposed to make you grin.

It’s supposed to give you a chorus you can scream.

Sometimes that is enough.

“SUKA
Beautiful brutal SUKA
If trouble had a daughter”

We know these words now.

Beautiful brutal SUKA.

The contradiction still fits.

She’s the attraction and the warning at the same time.

“If trouble had a daughter”

Earlier the answer was:

“She’d be standing here tonight”

But I changed the ending this time.

“We’d be screaming out her name”

Now she’s not simply standing there anymore.

The room belongs to her.

And there’s only one thing left to scream.

“SUKA!”

That’s the release.

Everything we’ve been building comes out in one word.

Then the song suddenly gets much simpler.

“She wasn’t made to behave”

After all the attitude, that’s where I wanted the ending to begin.

Behave can mean a lot of things.

Obviously people should behave responsibly.

We can’t just do whatever we want and pretend consequences don’t exist.

That’s not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about behaving according to somebody else’s idea of what you’re allowed to be.

That’s what she refuses.

She wasn’t created to spend her life making herself smaller so somebody else could feel bigger.

Then the final thought:

“She was made
To be remembered”

That’s the destination.

Not controlled.

Not tamed.

Not saved.

Not owned.

Remembered.

I like that ending because it takes us straight back to the first line.

“There she is”

At the beginning, she walked into the room.

By the end, she’s leaving something behind.

Maybe she drove you crazy.

Maybe she broke your heart.

Maybe she made you laugh.

Maybe she made you question whether you were ever as in control as you thought you were.

Whatever happened, you’re going to remember her.

Then I leave one final word.

“SUKA”

That’s where she stays.

The word that could have been nothing more than an insult became the title.

The title became a woman.

The woman became a character.

The character became a joke about control.

And somewhere along the way, the joke found something real.

Nobody owns another human being.

Strength doesn’t always look the way we expect it to look.

Winning isn’t always proof that we were actually in control.

And sometimes the person smiling quietly across from us knows a hell of a lot more about the game than we think they do.

I started this song because something I was reading about Russia caught my imagination.

I ended up with this woman walking around in my head.

High heels.

Red lips.

Vodka.

A dangerous grin.

A mouth that definitely isn’t asking anybody’s permission.

And one simple piece of advice for the man who thinks he’s finally figured her out.

Enjoy your victory.

She might have let you have it.

SUKA

 

SECTION TWO

THE STORY

IT STARTED WITH A BOOK ABOUT RUSSIA

SUKA didn’t begin with a woman I knew.

It didn’t come from some crazy relationship I had years ago, and there isn’t a Russian woman somewhere who is going to recognize herself and say, “That bastard wrote a song about me.”

It started with a book.

I was reading about Russia, and somewhere in that reading I became interested in the relationship between men and women and the picture being painted of Russian women.

Russian men can certainly have a reputation for being tough and dominant. There’s that image of the strong man, the guy who believes he’s running the show.

But the women caught my attention.

The more I read, the more this thought started running around in my head:

You might think you’re controlling her.

You might want to reconsider that.

That was the spark.

Not because I believe every Russian man or woman fits some stereotype. They obviously don’t. Russia is a huge country filled with millions of individuals.

What interested me was the contradiction.

The man can believe he’s dominant.

The woman can let him believe it.

Those are two completely different things.

And that difference gave me a song.

WHO’S REALLY IN CONTROL?

Control is a funny thing.

Sometimes the person making the most noise looks like the one in charge.

That doesn’t mean they are.

I started imagining this Russian woman sitting there listening to some man carry on about what he’s going to do, what she’s going to do, how things are going to be.

Maybe she smiles.

Maybe she nods.

Maybe she lets him finish the whole fucking speech.

And somewhere behind that smile she’s thinking:

Are you finished?

Because you’re not controlling shit.

That made me laugh.

There’s something much more interesting about a character who doesn’t constantly have to prove how powerful she is.

She knows.

If she wants you to think you won, she’ll let you think you won.

If she wants you to feel like the king, she’ll let you wear the crown for a while.

Enjoy it.

Just don’t confuse permission with power.

That became one of the central ideas behind SUKA:

She only lets you win when she feels like it, not when you want it.

That’s a very different woman from somebody who is simply loud and aggressive.

She’s calculating.

She’s confident.

She can play along.

And when she’s had enough of your bullshit, the game changes.

DON’T FUCK WITH A RUSSIAN WOMAN

That sentence kept fitting the character better and better.

Don’t fuck with a Russian woman.

Again, I’m having fun with an exaggerated character here. I’m not pretending I’ve conducted some scientific study of Russian relationships.

This is songwriting.

You take an idea.

You turn it around.

You exaggerate it.

You give it personality.

Then you see where the bastard takes you.

My imagination took this one pretty far.

I could see her.

High heels.

Red lips.

A look that could mean she likes you, she’s about to destroy you, or possibly both.

That uncertainty became part of the attraction.

The man thinks:

I’ve got this.

No, buddy.

You don’t.

That’s why one of the opening images became:

“High heels hitting like a warning shot”

I like that because before she’s even said anything, you’re being warned.

Those heels aren’t just shoes anymore.

They’re announcing her arrival.

You can continue if you want.

Nobody said you weren’t warned.

THEN CAME THE WORD

The Russian word suka gave the whole idea its identity.

It’s commonly translated as “bitch,” although, like a lot of profanity, meaning and force depend on context and how somebody uses it.

I wasn’t interested in using it simply as an insult.

That would have been too easy.

I liked the sound of it.

SUKA.

Two syllables.

Hard.

Immediate.

You can almost hear a crowd screaming it before there’s even music behind it.

SU-KA!

SU-KA!

SU-KA!

SU-KA!

Now I had more than a word.

I had the title.

And once the title became the woman’s identity, I could start turning the insult inside out.

By the end of the song, I’m not using SUKA to knock her down.

I’m raising a fucking glass to her.

That’s what made the word interesting enough to build the entire song around.

BUILDING HER ONE LINE AT A TIME

Once I knew who she was, the lyrics could start showing her instead of explaining her.

I didn’t want to write:

She’s independent.

She’s confident.

She’s rebellious.

That’s boring.

Show me.

So:

“She don’t need permission
She don’t wait in line”

There she is.

Then I wanted some humour.

“She’ll drink your best vodka
Then tell you it was mine”

Now I’m starting to know her.

Then:

“Put a diamond on her finger
She might pawn the fucking thing”

That line tells you a lot about her without giving you a lecture.

Don’t think you’re buying ownership with a ring.

She may look at your grand romantic gesture, decide she’d rather have the cash and carry on with her day.

Is that exaggerated?

Of course it is.

That’s why it’s fun.

This woman kept getting bigger as I wrote her.

THE MAN WHO THINKS HE CAN HANDLE HER

There’s another character in SUKA who never gets a name.

The guy.

Really, he could be a lot of guys.

He’s the poor bastard who thinks he’s different.

Other men couldn’t handle her.

But him?

Oh, he’s got this.

He’s smarter.

He’s stronger.

He’s more experienced.

He knows women.

Sure you do.

That’s why I wrote:

“Every man thinks he can handle her
Till she lets the bastard in”

The important word there is lets.

He didn’t conquer anything.

He didn’t break through the gates.

She opened them.

There’s that control game again.

The same idea comes back even stronger in the second verse:

“She’ll let you think you’re winning
While she’s figuring you out”

That might be one of the lines that best explains the entire character.

You’re celebrating too early.

She’s still collecting information.

DON’T MISTAKE FEMININITY FOR WEAKNESS

I also wanted her to remain feminine.

I didn’t want strength to mean I had to turn her into a man.

Why?

A woman doesn’t have to become masculine before she can be powerful.

That’s why the song keeps the heels, the red lips, the grin, the attraction and the sexuality.

Then I wrote:

“She can turn a grown man stupid
Just by crossing both her feet”

I laughed at that image because there isn’t even any effort involved.

She’s sitting there.

That’s it.

Meanwhile, somebody across the room has forgotten his own fucking name.

Who’s controlling who now?

That became part of the game throughout the song.

Her femininity isn’t fighting against her strength.

It’s part of it.

“BEHAVE YOURSELF”

Then we get to something that almost guarantees you’re going to get the opposite reaction.

Tell this woman to behave herself.

Go ahead.

See what happens.

“And when somebody says behave yourself
She says fuck you
Watch me go”

That’s SUKA in three lines.

There’s no debate.

No speech.

No request for permission.

Fuck you.

Watch me go.

Sometimes the shortest answer tells you everything about a person.

THEN THE SONG CHANGED

The bridge is where I think SUKA becomes more than a funny song about a dangerous woman.

Up until then, we’re having fun with her.

Then I get to:

“Don’t tame her
Don’t save her
Don’t tell her what a woman ought to be”

Now something else is happening.

Why does anybody have to tame her?

Why does anybody assume she needs saving?

Why should somebody else get to decide what a woman ought to be?

Then:

“Don’t own her
Don’t cage her”

That’s where the idea of control that started the song reaches its real point.

A relationship isn’t ownership.

Strength isn’t domination.

Love doesn’t give somebody a deed to another human being.

And independence doesn’t mean somebody is broken.

That’s why I followed it with:

“She ain’t broken
She ain’t waiting
She doesn’t need some asshole setting her free”

How can you set somebody free who never belonged to you in the first place?

That line gave the humour some teeth.

FROM INSULT TO TRIBUTE

Then comes the moment I really like.

The chorus starts with:

“Sweet motherfucking SUKA”

At first, you could hear that word as an insult.

But listen to what happens by the final chorus:

“Raise another glass
To every woman they couldn’t tame”

Now we’ve turned it around completely.

The word that could be used to shame a woman becomes the word everybody is screaming.

She’s not apologizing for it.

I’m not apologizing for it.

The band isn’t whispering it.

We’re shouting it.

SU-KA!

There’s something very rock and roll about taking the thing somebody throws at you and wearing it so proudly that they can’t hurt you with it anymore.

WHY I DIDN’T CLEAN IT UP

Could I have written a polite version of this song?

Sure.

It would probably suck.

This character needs the language.

“Please don’t attempt to control this independent woman” isn’t exactly going to shake the fucking speakers.

The swearing isn’t there because I ran out of vocabulary.

It’s part of her personality.

It’s part of the humour.

It’s part of the aggression.

It’s part of the music I hear around these words.

If you’re going to write SUKA, write SUKA.

Don’t create her and then get scared of her.

WHAT I FOUND INSIDE A FUN SONG

The interesting thing is that I started with something I was reading about Russia and an idea that amused me.

Then the song found something else.

Power.

Control.

Assumptions.

Independence.

The difference between somebody giving you something and you believing you took it.

And the danger of underestimating somebody because you’ve already decided what their role is supposed to be.

I didn’t sit down planning some grand statement about any of that.

I was having fun.

That’s one of the things I love about writing songs.

Sometimes you go looking for a serious subject.

Sometimes a serious idea sneaks into the room while you’re laughing.

SUKA still makes me laugh.

She’s supposed to.

She’s outrageous.

She’s exaggerated.

She’s trouble.

But somewhere underneath all of that is a pretty simple warning.

If somebody has to constantly tell you they’re in control, maybe they’re trying to convince themselves.

And if you ever meet the woman I imagined while writing this song, here’s my advice.

Don’t tell her you’re in charge.

Let her have the laugh.

 

SECTION THREE — THE LYRIC JOURNEY — PART 1

SUKA

THE LYRIC JOURNEY

SUKA

Doesn’t slowly introduce herself.

She arrives.

The opening is almost like watching a door swing open and hearing the heels before you even see the woman wearing them.

“There she is
High heels hitting like a warning shot”

That’s the entrance.

I could have simply said she’s wearing high heels, but that wouldn’t tell you anything about her.

The important part is “warning shot.”

A warning shot tells you something is coming.

Pay attention.

Think carefully about what you do next.

I wanted her footsteps to carry that same feeling. She’s feminine, but nothing about the image is weak. Before she’s spoken one word, the song is already warning you that this woman might be more than you know how to handle.

Then comes:

“Red lips saying come and get what you probably should not”

Now attraction enters the picture.

That’s important because SUKA isn’t supposed to be somebody everybody runs away from.

Quite the opposite.

People are drawn toward her.

That’s where the trouble begins.

You know there might be consequences.

You know this might not be a particularly intelligent decision.

You may even have that little voice in your head telling you to turn around.

Then you look at her again.

Fuck the little voice.

That’s the tension I wanted immediately.

Danger doesn’t always chase you.

Sometimes it smiles and waits for you to walk over.

NO HALO REQUIRED

The next lines remove any possibility that we’re going to pretend she’s innocent.

“No halo hanging over that pretty little head
She’ll kiss you like heaven
Then leave your good sense dead”

I like the contradiction between the halo and the kiss.

There’s no halo.

But the kiss feels like heaven.

That’s SUKA.

She doesn’t have to be good to make you feel good.

And the price might be your common sense.

That last line is deliberately playful.

I’m not saying she’s literally destroying somebody’s mind.

I’m talking about that ridiculous thing attraction can do to people.

Smart people make stupid decisions.

Careful people become reckless.

Somebody who normally thinks three steps ahead suddenly can’t see three fucking inches in front of them.

She’s barely entered the song and already the guy’s judgment is disappearing.

That’s exactly where I want him.

SHE DOESN’T ASK

Then we get the first real statement about who she is.

“She don’t need permission
She don’t wait in line”

Two short lines.

That’s enough.

She’s not waiting for somebody else to approve her life.

She’s not standing there asking whether she’s allowed to be herself.

Then I bring Russia back into the character with a little humour:

“She’ll drink your best vodka
Then tell you it was mine”

That’s not meant as some serious statement about Russian drinking culture.

It’s character.

She’s bold enough to take your best bottle, pour herself a drink and somehow leave you wondering whether maybe it really was hers.

There’s confidence.

There’s arrogance.

There’s humour.

And there’s the beginning of the power game.

You owned the vodka.

At least you thought you did.

Welcome to SUKA.

“FUCK YOU IN HER BLOODSTREAM”

Then the language gets harder.

“She’s got fuck you in her bloodstream
Trouble underneath her skin”

That’s not something she learned this afternoon.

It’s in her.

“Fuck you” isn’t only profanity here. It’s an attitude.

It’s resistance.

It’s the answer she has for anybody who thinks they’re automatically entitled to control her.

And underneath the skin is trouble.

Not necessarily violence.

Not evil.

Trouble in the sense that if you enter her world believing she’s going to quietly become whatever you want, you’ve already made your first mistake.

Then comes one of the lines that establishes the game between men and this woman:

“Every man thinks he can handle her
Till she lets the bastard in”

The word that matters most to me is “lets.”

He thinks he got somewhere.

She knows she allowed him there.

That’s the difference.

It connects directly to what first interested me when I was reading about Russia and started thinking about the appearance of male dominance compared with where control may actually exist inside a relationship.

The man can believe he’s conquered the castle.

Meanwhile, she opened the fucking gate.

SHE ISN’T WAITING FOR A KING

Then I take away another expectation.

“She ain’t looking for a saviour
She sure as hell ain’t looking for a king”

She doesn’t need rescuing.

And if you arrive believing your job is to rule her, you’re already in trouble.

I deliberately used “king” because kings traditionally represent authority.

A king commands.

A king expects obedience.

Not here.

Then I undercut the whole romantic symbol with:

“Put a diamond on her finger
She might pawn the fucking thing”

I love the disrespect in that line.

A diamond ring is supposed to carry all this emotional weight.

Commitment.

Romance.

Status.

Possession can sometimes creep into that symbolism too.

Not with this woman.

If you’re giving her a ring because you love her, that’s one thing.

If you think the ring means you bought yourself authority, she might turn your symbol of control into grocery money.

That’s SUKA.

YOU CAN CALL HER WHATEVER YOU WANT

Now we reach the first pre-chorus.

“You can call her crazy
You can call her cold”

People love labels.

Especially when somebody doesn’t behave the way they expected.

She’s crazy.

She’s cold.

She’s difficult.

She’s a bitch.

Sometimes those words tell you something about the person being described.

Sometimes they tell you a hell of a lot more about the person doing the describing.

Then:

“But you better say it smiling
If you wanna grow old”

That’s exaggeration.

It’s humour.

I’m building this almost mythical reputation around her.

Don’t take that as a literal threat that this woman is going to kill somebody.

It’s the old rock-and-roll warning:

Watch yourself, buddy.

You’re playing with fire.

And now we’ve built enough tension to finally scream her name.

SUKA

“SUKA
Sweet motherfucking SUKA
Fire in her blood
And a devil in her smile”

This is where the title stops needing an explanation.

The chorus doesn’t apologize for the word.

It celebrates it.

“Sweet motherfucking SUKA” deliberately crashes affection and profanity together.

Sweet.

Motherfucking.

SUKA.

That’s her contradiction in three pieces.

Then:

“Fire in her blood
And a devil in her smile”

Again, I’m building character rather than describing an actual person.

Fire is energy.

Temper.

Passion.

Life.

And that devil in the smile is the part that says she knows something you don’t.

Maybe you’re about to find out.

THE HEART OF THE CHORUS

Then comes what I consider one of the most important statements in the song:

“SUKA
Nobody fucking owns ya”

There it is.

Underneath the vodka, heels, sex, swearing and humour, that’s the heart of her.

Nobody owns her.

That doesn’t mean she can’t love somebody.

It doesn’t mean she can’t commit to somebody.

It doesn’t mean she has to spend her entire life alone proving how independent she is.

It means love and ownership are not the same thing.

Then:

“You can love her for a night
But you’ll remember her for life”

Now we’re back to the larger-than-life character.

Maybe she’s temporary.

The memory isn’t.

Some people pass through our lives and disappear almost immediately from our thoughts.

Others are there for a short time and somehow leave a permanent mark.

SUKA is definitely planning on leaving a mark.

ENJOY THE RIDE

The chorus keeps going:

“She’ll take your heart
She’ll take your pride
She’ll leave you begging
And enjoy the ride”

There’s a reversal happening here.

Usually the confident man in this kind of rock story is the one collecting hearts.

Not this time.

He’s losing his.

Maybe his pride goes with it.

And she’s enjoying herself.

Again, this isn’t supposed to be a healthy-relationship instruction manual.

It’s an exaggerated rock character.

The whole song plays with the idea of the guy who thought he had everything under control discovering that he didn’t understand the game.

Then the chorus gives her the description that probably sums her up best:

“SUKA
Beautiful brutal SUKA”

Beautiful and brutal.

Another contradiction.

Attraction and danger occupying the same space.

Then:

“If trouble had a daughter
She’d be standing here tonight”

That’s where she becomes almost legendary.

Trouble itself had a child.

Here she is.

And apparently we invited her to the fucking party.

SHE CAN SMELL BULLSHIT

Verse two changes the game.

We’ve already seen what she looks like and how she behaves.

Now we start seeing how she thinks.

“She can smell a bullshit story
Before it leaves your mouth”

Don’t bother preparing the excuse.

She already knows.

This is where I wanted her intelligence and instinct to become stronger.

She’s not powerful simply because she’s attractive or rebellious.

She’s watching.

She’s listening.

She’s reading you.

Then comes the line that connects directly back to the original idea that helped create the song:

“She’ll let you think you’re winning
While she’s figuring you out”

That’s SUKA.

You think you’re ahead.

She hasn’t even finished studying you yet.

And notice again that she lets you think you’re winning.

That’s the second time that idea appears.

First:

“Till she lets the bastard in”

Now:

“She’ll let you think you’re winning”

Both times, the man may believe something happened because of his ability.

Both times, she made a choice.

That’s the control game sitting underneath the whole song.

And the funny part is that the poor bastard may still not know he’s playing it.

 

SECTION THREE — THE LYRIC JOURNEY — PART 2

DON’T MISTAKE THAT GRIN FOR SWEET

The second verse keeps moving deeper into her personality:

“She knows exactly what she’s doing
Don’t mistake that grin for sweet”

That grin matters.

Earlier I gave her:

“a devil in her smile.”

Now I’m warning you about it again.

She may look sweet.

That doesn’t mean she’s innocent.

And more importantly, she knows exactly what she’s doing.

That changes the character.

She’s not stumbling through life creating chaos accidentally.

She’s aware.

She’s reading the room.

She’s reading you.

She knows the effect she’s having.

That’s why the next two lines are deliberately ridiculous and completely SUKA:

“She can turn a grown man stupid
Just by crossing both her feet”

I wanted humour here.

She doesn’t have to give a speech.

She doesn’t have to chase him.

She doesn’t have to prove anything.

She sits down.

Crosses her feet.

And suddenly this supposedly dominant, intelligent, completely-in-control man can’t remember what the fuck he was talking about.

There’s something funny about attraction doing that to people.

We like to imagine we’re rational creatures.

Then somebody walks into the room and proves otherwise.

GO AHEAD, TELL HER TO BEHAVE

Then I put her against authority again:

“She’ll dance when she damn well wants to
Smoke where the sign says no”

These lines are about the character’s rebelliousness, not instructions for anybody to ignore smoking rules.

She’s the woman who sees a rule and immediately wants to know who made it and why the hell she should follow it.

Then somebody makes the worst possible choice:

“And when somebody says behave yourself
She says fuck you
Watch me go”

That’s one of my favourite little moments in the song because I can see it happening.

“Behave yourself.”

Wrong fucking sentence.

Wrong fucking woman.

Her response doesn’t need an explanation.

“Fuck you
Watch me go.”

That’s her entire personality condensed into five words.

You’re not stopping her.

You’re probably making her more determined.

SHE NEVER CLAIMED TO BE YOUR ANGEL

The second pre-chorus is different from the first one.

That’s important.

The first pre-chorus was about what people call her:

“You can call her crazy
You can call her cold”

The second one is about what people expect her to become:

“She ain’t your little angel
She never claimed to be”

She didn’t lie to you.

She didn’t advertise herself as obedient, innocent or easy to control.

If you invented that version of her in your own head, that’s your problem.

Then comes:

“If you came looking for obedience
Wrong fucking woman
Leave”

There’s no negotiation there.

I like that I ended it with one word.

Leave.

Not “maybe we can work something out.”

Not “give her time.”

Leave.

If what you want is somebody who obeys simply because you believe that’s her role, you’ve walked through the wrong door.

THE CHORUS COMES BACK, BUT WE HEAR IT DIFFERENTLY

When the chorus returns, I don’t think we need to explain every line again.

Nothing in the words has changed.

What has changed is what we know about her.

The first time we heard:

“Nobody fucking owns ya”

it sounded like a declaration.

Now we’ve watched her prove it.

We’ve seen her read bullshit before it leaves somebody’s mouth.

We’ve watched her let a man think he’s winning.

We’ve watched somebody tell her to behave.

We saw how that worked out.

So when the chorus returns, the same words have more evidence behind them.

She’s no longer just the woman introduced by the song.

We know her now.

Or at least we think we do.

With SUKA, that’s probably when you should start worrying.

THEN THE SONG PUTS ITS FOOT DOWN

The bridge is where I stop playing quite as much.

The humour doesn’t disappear, but something underneath the song becomes much clearer.

“Don’t tame her
Don’t save her
Don’t tell her what a woman ought to be”

Those three lines change the conversation.

Don’t tame her.

Why is an independent woman something that needs to be tamed in the first place?

That word is normally associated with controlling something wild.

I used it deliberately.

If your idea of a successful relationship requires breaking somebody’s independence until they become easier for you to manage, that isn’t strength.

Don’t save her.

There’s another assumption.

That a strong man must arrive and rescue her.

Maybe she doesn’t need rescuing.

Maybe she never asked.

Then:

“Don’t tell her what a woman ought to be”

That’s the bigger line.

Because now SUKA isn’t only fighting with one imaginary guy.

She’s pushing back against every little box people create for somebody else.

Women should act this way.

Men should act that way.

A woman should dress this way.

She should speak this way.

She should be softer.

She should be quieter.

She should smile more.

She shouldn’t swear.

She shouldn’t be too sexual.

She shouldn’t be too independent.

She shouldn’t be too loud.

Says who?

That’s the question underneath the line.

DON’T OWN HER

Then the bridge gets even more direct:

“Don’t own her
Don’t cage her
She was fucking dangerous before she met me”

I deliberately put own and cage beside each other.

Ownership and confinement.

Neither one belongs in love.

And then I bring myself into the lyric:

“She was fucking dangerous before she met me.”

I like that line because the man isn’t taking credit for creating her.

He didn’t make her strong.

He didn’t give her personality.

He didn’t teach her independence.

She arrived with all of it.

That’s important.

Sometimes people enter a relationship and eventually start telling themselves they created the person standing beside them.

No.

People can absolutely influence each other.

They can help each other grow.

They can challenge each other.

But another human being had a life before you walked into it.

SUKA definitely did.

SHE DOESN’T NEED AN ASSHOLE WITH A KEY

Then:

“She ain’t broken
She ain’t waiting
She doesn’t need some asshole setting her free”

That is probably the most serious moment in the song.

The first line rejects the idea that independence must mean damage.

She ain’t broken.

The second rejects the fairy tale that she’s sitting around waiting for somebody to arrive.

She ain’t waiting.

Then comes the punch:

“She doesn’t need some asshole setting her free.”

Because think about the arrogance inside that idea.

Who gave you the key?

Who made you the rescuer?

Who decided her freedom was yours to grant?

You can’t give somebody something that wasn’t yours to withhold.

That doesn’t mean people never need help.

Of course they do.

We all do at different points in life.

But helping somebody and believing you own their freedom are completely different things.

SUKA doesn’t want the key.

She already kicked the fucking door open.

SHE KNOWS

Then everything becomes extremely simple:

“She knows her name
She knows her game”

Identity.

Awareness.

She knows who she is.

She knows what she’s doing.

She isn’t confused about herself just because somebody else doesn’t understand her.

And after all the words we’ve used to build her, I wanted the music to take over.

“And everybody scream it with me”

Then:

“SU-KA!
SU-KA!
SU-KA!
SU-KA!”

This is where the title completely changes its function.

A word that can be thrown as an insult is now being screamed like an anthem.

Nobody is hiding it.

Nobody is whispering it.

Nobody is embarrassed by it.

The crowd owns the moment.

And SUKA owns the name.

RAISE THE FUCKING GLASS

Then we reach the final chorus.

It begins where we expect:

“SUKA
Sweet motherfucking SUKA”

But then comes the line that changes the entire chorus:

“Raise another glass
To every woman they couldn’t tame”

Now the song expands beyond the character.

We’re raising a glass.

It’s a toast.

And it isn’t only to SUKA anymore.

It’s to “every woman they couldn’t tame.”

That doesn’t mean every rebellious decision is automatically a good one.

It doesn’t mean independence removes responsibility.

It means there is something worth respecting in a person who refuses to surrender their identity simply to make somebody else comfortable.

That’s where the title that began as something provocative becomes a tribute.

THEY CAN CURSE YOU

Then:

“SUKA
Nobody fucking owns ya
They can curse you
They can want you
But they’ll never make you change”

Curse you.

Want you.

Two very different reactions.

And sometimes the same person can feel both.

They can desire somebody while resenting the fact that they can’t control them.

They can be attracted to confidence and then become uncomfortable when that confidence refuses to obey them.

But the important line remains:

“They’ll never make you change.”

That doesn’t mean people should never change.

We all should when change makes us better.

It’s about refusing to become smaller simply because somebody else would find you easier to handle that way.

TAKE THEIR HEARTS

Then the final chorus turns the earlier section around:

“Take their hearts
Take their pride
Make the whole damn world
Enjoy the ride”

Earlier:

“She’ll take your heart
She’ll take your pride.”

Now it becomes a command.

Go ahead.

Be SUKA.

Be unforgettable.

And have some fucking fun while you’re doing it.

Then we return one final time to:

“SUKA
Beautiful brutal SUKA
If trouble had a daughter”

But the original chorus ended:

“She’d be standing here tonight.”

This time I leave a little space before the answer:

“We’d be screaming out her name”

And then there is only one possible word left.

“SUKA!”

SHE WAS MADE TO BE REMEMBERED

After all the noise, the ending becomes surprisingly simple.

“She wasn’t made to behave”

That’s everything we’ve just watched.

Nobody is going to squeeze this woman into somebody else’s definition of acceptable.

Then:

“She was made
To be remembered”

That’s where I wanted to leave her.

Not behaving.

Not apologizing.

Not explaining herself.

Remembered.

Then one final word:

“SUKA”

The song began by showing us a woman walking into the room.

It ends after she has taken over the fucking room.

Somewhere between those two moments, an insult became a name, the name became a character, and the character became a toast to the woman who refuses to be owned.

You can think you’re controlling her if it makes you feel better.

She might even let you believe it for a while.

Just remember the lesson that started this whole song.

She lets you win when she feels like it.

Not when you decide you’ve won.

 

SECTION FOUR

REFLECTION

SO WHO WON?

After all the vodka, high heels, bullshit, diamonds, swearing and attitude, I think SUKA leaves behind a pretty funny question.

Who was actually in control?

The man who thought he was?

Or the woman who let him think he was?

That’s really where this whole song started for me.

I was reading about Russia, became interested in the picture being painted of men and women, and my imagination grabbed onto that contradiction between appearing dominant and actually having power.

Then I exaggerated the hell out of it.

That’s how SUKA was born.

But there is something real underneath the joke.

People don’t always understand the difference between control and influence.

They don’t always understand the difference between somebody agreeing with them and somebody choosing not to argue.

And they definitely don’t always understand the difference between love and ownership.

Those differences matter.

THE LOUDEST PERSON ISN’T ALWAYS THE STRONGEST

We’ve probably all seen somebody who needs everyone in the room to know they’re in charge.

They talk louder.

They interrupt.

They give orders.

They need the last word.

Maybe they are in control.

Maybe they’re scared they’re not.

Real confidence doesn’t always have to announce itself.

That’s one thing I like about the woman I created in SUKA.

She doesn’t spend the entire song telling everybody she’s powerful.

She demonstrates it.

She knows who she is.

That is a different kind of strength.

LETTING SOMEBODY WIN

There’s one thought from this song that I think reaches well beyond relationships:

Sometimes somebody lets you win.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you beat them.

Maybe they love you enough to let something go.

Maybe the argument wasn’t worth having.

Maybe they’re watching you.

Maybe they’re choosing their battles.

Maybe they’re just tired of listening to your shit.

That’s worth remembering before we become too proud of ourselves.

Winning an argument isn’t always proof that we were right.

Sometimes the other person simply stopped participating.

STRENGTH DOESN’T BELONG TO ONE SEX

The character in this song also plays with an old assumption about strength.

A man can be strong.

A woman can be strong.

Neither person’s strength requires the other person’s weakness.

That’s important.

I don’t think a strong woman needs a weak man standing beside her to prove she’s strong.

I don’t think a strong man needs an obedient woman standing beside him to prove he’s a man.

Two strong people should be able to stand beside each other without either one needing to shrink the other.

Now, SUKA probably isn’t going to explain it that politely.

She’ll probably drink your vodka and tell you to fuck off.

That’s why she got the song and I got the webpage.

DON’T CONFUSE A CHARACTER WITH A COUNTRY

There’s something else worth saying before we leave her.

SUKA grew from something I was reading about Russia, but she isn’t my definition of a Russian woman.

No book, song, movie or stereotype can tell you what millions of individual people are like.

Culture can influence people.

History can influence people.

Family can influence people.

But individuals are still individuals.

I took something that caught my attention and let my imagination run with it.

That’s songwriting.

The character became larger than the original observation.

By the time she reached the chorus, she belonged to the song.

MAYBE THE INSULT ISN’T WORKING ANYMORE

I also like what happened to the word itself.

Suka can be used as an insult.

But by the end of this song, I’m raising a glass to her.

That’s an interesting thing about insults.

Their power partly depends on whether the person receiving them accepts the shame attached to them.

Sometimes somebody throws a word at you expecting it to hurt.

And sometimes the strongest response is basically:

That’s what you’ve got?

SUKA doesn’t spend the song defending herself against the name.

She wears it.

Then everybody screams it with her.

That doesn’t make every insult harmless. Words can absolutely hurt people.

But sometimes refusing to carry the shame somebody tried to hand you can take away some of the weapon.

SHE WASN’T MADE TO BEHAVE

I think the ending says exactly what I wanted the character to leave behind:

“She wasn’t made to behave
She was made
To be remembered”

There is a difference between behaving responsibly and behaving according to somebody else’s expectations.

We should all be responsible for what we do.

Freedom doesn’t remove consequences.

Independence doesn’t excuse treating people badly.

But living responsibly doesn’t require surrendering your personality.

You don’t have to become somebody else’s version of acceptable.

That’s the little piece of truth hiding underneath this loud, dirty, funny rock song.

AND THAT’S SUKA

I don’t want to turn SUKA into some grand philosophical masterpiece it was never intended to be.

That would ruin the fucking thing.

I wrote it because an idea caught my attention.

I imagined a woman.

She made me laugh.

Then she took over.

Sometimes that’s enough reason for a song to exist.

And I think pages like this matter inside MOITA because they show another side of me.

I don’t only think about the painful things in life.

I don’t only look backward.

I don’t only write documentaries disguised as songs.

Sometimes my imagination just wants to run.

SUKA gave it somewhere to go.

If you came here because the title made you curious, thanks for giving me your time.

If you laughed somewhere along the way, even better.

And if you leave remembering one thing, remember this:

Before you start celebrating because you think you’ve got somebody wrapped around your finger, take a quick look at your own hand.

You might discover you’re the one wearing the fucking ring.

MOITA
WHERE EVERY SONG TELLS A STORY
EVERY STORY TEACHES SOMETHING

 

SECTION FIVE

MOITA DOCUMENTARY & LEARNING CENTRE

BEYOND THE CHARACTER

SUKA started with something I was reading about Russia, but the woman I created eventually became much bigger than the observation that started the song.

That’s where the Learning Centre can do something the song isn’t supposed to do.

The song can exaggerate.

The song can joke.

The song can create a larger-than-life Russian woman who has some poor bastard convinced he’s running the show while she’s probably three moves ahead of him.

History has to be more careful.

There isn’t one “Russian woman.”

There never was.

Russia has passed through enormous political and social changes: the Russian Empire, revolution, the Soviet period, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the modern Russian Federation. Women’s lives, rights, responsibilities and expectations have changed along with those periods.

Even within the same period, class, geography, family, education, economics and individual personality could produce completely different lives.

So if SUKA makes somebody curious about Russian women, I’d rather have them leave the song laughing and then start asking better questions.

RUSSIAN WOMEN AND THE SIMPLE STEREOTYPE

One thing I don’t want this page to do is replace one stereotype with another.

The song plays with an image of dominant men and women who may possess far more influence than those men realize.

That’s fun material for a song.

It isn’t a history lesson.

Actual scholarship on Russian women and gender describes something much more complicated. Researchers study women’s roles across family life, employment, education, politics, culture and different periods of Russian and Soviet history. The fact that entire academic fields exist around Russian women’s and gender history should tell us immediately that no little slogan can explain all of it. (HSE Publications⁠)

That’s worth remembering whenever we talk about another culture.

The moment we say, “They’re all like this,” we’ve probably stopped learning.

STRENGTH UNDER CONTRADICTION

One reason the subject becomes interesting is that women’s history in Russia contains real contradictions.

During the Soviet period, women participated extensively in education and employment, yet research also describes persistent traditional expectations within family life and a disproportionate burden of housework and childcare. (HSE Publications⁠)

Think about what that can mean in ordinary life.

A woman can work.

Raise children.

Manage a household.

Navigate expectations about what a wife or mother should be.

And still be expected to carry responsibilities that aren’t necessarily visible from outside the home.

That is a much more interesting picture of strength than simply saying Russian women are “tough.”

Strength can come from necessity.

It can come from responsibility.

It can come from opportunity.

It can come from surviving restrictions.

And sometimes it comes from doing what has to be done without anybody standing there applauding.

WOMEN WERE NOT JUST WATCHING HISTORY

It’s also easy to tell history as though men made it and women lived somewhere in the background.

Russian history doesn’t support that simple picture.

Researchers have documented women participating in education, professional life, social change and other parts of Russian society across very different periods. Studies of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century women’s higher education, for example, examine women pushing into academic spaces and developing professional lives in environments where their social and legal position was very different from men’s. (Voprosy Obrazovaniya⁠)

That interests me because it connects with something underneath SUKA.

Don’t decide what somebody is capable of before they’ve had the opportunity to show you.

And don’t assume somebody was absent from history just because the version of history you learned didn’t spend much time talking about them.

POWER IS MORE COMPLICATED THAN “WHO’S THE BOSS?”

SUKA turns power into a joke.

The guy thinks he’s the boss.

She lets him think he’s the boss.

Everybody listening knows where the joke is going.

Real relationships aren’t that simple.

Power can involve money.

Employment.

Property.

Culture.

Family expectations.

Physical intimidation.

Emotional pressure.

Education.

Law.

Social status.

Who controls important decisions.

Who has somewhere to go if the relationship ends.

Who performs unpaid work.

Who gets heard.

Who gets ignored.

That’s why I’m careful about taking the control game in SUKA too literally.

The song can make us laugh about somebody being wrapped around somebody else’s finger.

Real control can have serious consequences.

Historical research into Russia has documented violence against women as well as legal and social inequalities, reminding us that romantic ideas about male dominance can hide realities that aren’t funny at all. (HSE Publications⁠)

There’s a big difference between joking about who really runs the house and somebody actually being denied freedom or safety.

LOVE ISN’T OWNERSHIP

That brings me back to the lyric:

“Nobody fucking owns ya.”

It’s probably the most useful idea to carry out of the entire song.

A relationship can involve commitment without ownership.

You can care deeply about somebody without controlling them.

You can disagree without demanding obedience.

You can influence each other without either person disappearing.

And being strong doesn’t mean refusing compromise.

Compromise is part of living with other human beings.

The difference is whether compromise is freely given or demanded through control.

SUKA is deliberately terrible at subtlety, so she says it in four words:

Nobody fucking owns ya.

Sometimes four words will do.

WHAT DOES “SUKA” ACTUALLY MEAN?

The Russian spelling is:

сука

The common Latin-letter transliteration is:

suka

It’s vulgar language and can function as a strong insult, commonly rendered in English as “bitch.” Like profanity in many languages, its force depends heavily on context, tone and usage. Censored Russian spellings of the same vulgar word also appear in dictionaries. (Wiktionary⁠)

For my song, though, dictionary translation is only the beginning.

I deliberately changed what the word does inside the story.

It begins with the possibility of an insult.

Then I build a woman around it.

Then the bridge refuses to tame her.

Then everybody screams her name.

Then I raise a glass:

“To every woman they couldn’t tame.”

By that point, the word is doing something different inside the song.

It’s become her flag.

WHEN AN INSULT GETS TURNED AROUND

People sometimes reclaim words that were intended to embarrass or diminish them.

That doesn’t magically make the original insult harmless.

It changes who gets to decide what the word means in that particular moment.

That’s exactly what happens symbolically in SUKA.

If somebody calls this woman a bitch expecting her to collapse in shame, they’ve seriously misunderstood the woman I wrote.

She’s more likely to ask:

Is that the best you’ve got?

That’s why the crowd chant matters.

SU-KA!
SU-KA!
SU-KA!
SU-KA!

The insult isn’t being whispered about her anymore.

Everybody is shouting it with her.

The power has moved.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REBELLION AND RESPONSIBILITY

There’s another distinction worth making.

I celebrate rebellion in this song.

That doesn’t mean every rule deserves to be broken.

It doesn’t mean hurting people becomes acceptable because you’re independent.

And it doesn’t mean being impossible to live with is some great badge of freedom.

Independence still comes with responsibility.

So does strength.

So does freedom.

The woman in SUKA is exaggerated for entertainment.

In real life, the strongest version of independence isn’t doing whatever the hell you want regardless of who gets hurt.

It’s being able to make your own decisions while accepting responsibility for the consequences.

That’s a harder kind of freedom.

WHY CULTURE DESERVES CURIOSITY

The best thing that could happen after somebody hears SUKA isn’t that they walk away believing they now understand Russian women.

It’s almost the opposite.

Maybe they become curious.

What were women’s lives like in Imperial Russia?

What changed after the Russian Revolution?

What opportunities did Soviet women gain?

What inequalities remained?

How did family expectations change?

What did education mean for women?

How did women’s experiences differ between Moscow, rural communities and the many different regions and peoples that existed within the Soviet Union and modern Russia?

Those questions are far more interesting than a stereotype.

Academic work on Russian women’s history deliberately examines different regions, periods and social experiences because the subject cannot responsibly be reduced to one type of woman. (HSE Publications⁠)

A dirty rock song can still open a clean door into learning.

I like that.

FROM A BOOK TO A SONG TO ANOTHER QUESTION

That’s one of the reasons this song belongs inside the MOITA Library.

Look at the journey.

I was reading.

Something caught my attention.

The thought became a character.

The character became SUKA.

SUKA became a song.

Now the song can send somebody back toward books.

That’s exactly what I mean when I say the song is the invitation and the website is the destination.

Creativity doesn’t have to end with the thing we create.

Sometimes the best thing a song can leave behind is curiosity.

You laugh at the woman drinking somebody else’s vodka.

You scream SUKA with the chorus.

Then maybe you wonder:

What do I actually know about Russia beyond the images I’ve been given?

That’s a worthwhile question.

CONTINUE EXPLORING

For readers who want to go beyond the fictional character in my song, the Higher School of Economics has scholarly material covering women and gender across Russian and Soviet history, including The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia and the Soviet Union. It brings together research spanning pre-revolutionary Russia, the Soviet period and the post-Soviet Russian Federation, while also looking beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg to regional experiences. (HSE Publications⁠)

Higher School of Economics — Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia and the Soviet Union⁠

Readers can also explore research on the development of Russian women’s and gender history as an academic field, including work cataloguing scholarship covering the period from 1800 to 2010. (HSE Publications⁠)

Higher School of Economics — Women’s and Gender History of Russia⁠

If this subject catches your attention, keep going on your own. Look into women’s education in Imperial Russia, Soviet women in the workforce, family life during the Soviet period, women’s experiences during revolution and war, and the changing expectations surrounding gender in modern Russia.

Don’t look for one description of “the Russian woman.”

Look for their stories.

You’ll find a hell of a lot more than SUKA.

MOITA