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elephant's graveyard: nicole dollanganger
- DANIELLE GORE
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
⊹ ˚₊ ♪ ˚₊‧꧁ 𓆩༺ 𝄞 ༻𓆪 ꧂‧₊˚♪ ₊˚⊹
Welcome
Hello and welcome back!! I'm excited to create more pieces for winter, and I'll do my best to maintain a semi-regular schedule during my break. I'll try to upload the two other blogs that I had initially planned on my Substack. If you haven't already, be sure to follow my Instagram (@elephantsgraveyard2005) for blog-related updates! I have also revamped my Tumblr recently and would love to mutually follow all of you who read, and encourage my fellow bloggers to create their own page as well as a Substack account, so you can have further creative outlets & publish your blogs on recently.
While editing my Tumblr page, I went through and re-listened to Nicole Dollanganger's music— a prominent Tumblr figure and musician who has influenced many beloved artists today, such as Ethel Cain. Nicole Dollanganger is famously known for her 2015 album Natural Born Losers, with her song Poacher's Bride being sampled by XXXTentacion in his song "Wingriddenangel." Her music genre would generally be described as slowcore, indie-folk, dream & ambient pop, and morute gothica. Nicole's pastoral and fragile vocals convey general themes of sexual perversion, longing, yearning, alienation, adolescence, love, self-hatred, isolation, violence, lethargy, depression, ominousness, and disturbing, taboo feelings and topics.
In the most general sense, Nicole is looked at as an influential but infamous figure who posted harmful content, such as posting anorexic and eating disorder-related content on her Tumblr page, alongside artistic gore, Columbine-shooter content, serial killer and violent incident-related content, and content surrounding abuse and the romanticization of it. Most people who've personally interacted with her have expressed that she was nothing short of kind and soft-spoken. She was a very troubled teenage girl who resorted to using the internet, dark themes, and spaces to cope with her hardships. This is not to excuse her behavior—especially considering how her content was insensitive to the people and families who have lost their lives to gun violence—but to provide an opportunity to understand why she was drawn to such harmful content.
As someone who has struggled with anorexia, being subjected to abuse, sexual violence, and social alienation, some of her songs are very comforting to me, and it feels as if I have been understood. Similarly to how Amy Winehouse talked about understanding and empathizing with Lana Del Rey's lyric "he hit me, and it felt like a kiss." Her work doesn't speak to me in a way that makes me romanticize the experiences; rather, I feel as if someone is singing an ode to my experience as a survivor, and someone who underwent very similar isolating and violating experiences.
When you experience such vehement abuse at a young age, especially with endless access to the internet, young teenagers find taboo and harmful ways to cope and feel understood. Since then, Nicole has spoken out denouncing her past behaviours, and expressed that she was a very lost, abused teenager who was trying to find comfort and community. Nicole's work is a testimony to the harm of abused teenagers going unsupported, advocated for, and given unsupervised internet access.
Children are more susceptible to being subjected to harmful communities and being encouraged to participate in self-harming behaviors that will affect them for the rest of their lives. Especially with access to the vastness of the internet, they are more likely to see hyper-niche harmful content, and participate by posting content that they will not be able to take back; permanently building a statue of their abuse, permanently building a statue of their abuse, unable for them to delete, and for the whole world to see.
I suppose her work is another instance of me separating the art from the artist. My favorite album is very basic, but I adore Natural Born Losers (2015) and Observatory Mansions (2014). My favorite song of all time by Nicole is "Alligator Blood." I do think she is subject to significant scrutiny due to being an abused woman in the public eye who didn't perform herself as the "perfect victim." Male musicians and artists often exhibit similar, if not worse, behaviors, yet they are still praised as trailblazers and often awarded merit. I still love to listen to her music, and her voice is so hypnotizing, bringing me back to being a teenager on the internet, trying to find friends and trying to find myself amidst my hardships.
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