Brooklyn girl — or Brooklyn fraud?
Bushwick newcomer Catey Shaw has ignited a digital firestorm with her music video “Brooklyn Girls,” which features a bunch of very hip young ladies doing very hip things in the most hip part of the most hip borough.
Music site Noisey called Shaw’s video “an ugly stereotype of the worst elements of Brooklyn, like a three-minute-and-30-second ‘SNL’ spoof.”
New York magazine predicted the song “will be a huge hit among suburban teenage girls and people who have never been to Brooklyn.”
And those are positively polite compared to what some YouTube commenters are saying. But Virginia native Shaw, 23, is uncertain how her fun pop song about waiting for the L train and wearing combat boots in the summer has earned her the label of Brooklyn fraud. After all, she didn’t intend “Brooklyn Girls” to express the entirety of Kings County.
“It’s more misunderstanding than backlash,” she explained to the Daily News during a recent visit to her Bushwick apartment which she shares with her girlfriend, two roommates and a Lovebird named Ketchup. “Brooklyn can be used as an adjective instead of a noun.”
Shaw says “Brooklyn Girls” was inspired by the 1964 hit “The Girl From Ipanema.” That girl was “tall and tan and young and lovely,” but Shaw’s girls are a little tougher. “In her walk, there’s a fire. And she’s got her own style. You’ll get lost in her mystery. And tonight she owns the city.”
It didn’t help with the critics when Shaw claimed her music video represents “the real Brooklyn.” But as she pointed out to us, “The song is self-portraiture. It’s my view of Brooklyn.”
Granted, her view is somewhat limited — as we discovered when we asked Shaw a few questions about the borough she claims to represent. The results of our pop quiz were less than stellar. Out of the eight questions she answered before giving up, Shaw only got two correct:
Where can you ride the Cyclone? (Coney Island.)
What product used to be made at the Domino plant along the Williamsburg waterfront? (Sugar.)
She was unable to tell us who Marty Markowitz is, what BAM stands for, or what borough is connected to Brooklyn via the Verrazano Bridge (she guessed Queens). (If you’re playing along: Markowitz was longtime Brooklyn Borough president, BAM stands for Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Verrazano connects to Staten Island.)
But to Shaw, our pop quiz score only proves that she is not trying to claim the entirety of the Brooklyn sprawl as her own.
Like she says in her controversial hit, it’s all about the 11206 — the zip code for Bushwick. And she does know quite a bit about the history of Maria Hernandez, the namesake of a large park near her apartment.
“See, why didn’t you ask me about that in your pop quiz?!” she exclaimed.
Shaw thinks a lot of the criticism being lobbed at her will fall flat upon the release of her second EP next month, created around a New York experience that began with her arrival from Virginia, studying painting at the School of Visual Arts and dropping out when she ran out of money.
Armed only with a ukulele and a song in her heart, Shaw descended into the subways and managed to make a living busking for change.
“It will become very clear in context what I meant by ‘Brooklyn Girls,’ and what it means to me. I’m proud of it, and I love that song still,” she says.
As far as representing her slice of Brooklyn, Shaw actually seems to have done a pretty good job, even inspiring a parody video called “Brooklyn Boys.”
“While we’re kind of parodying ‘Brooklyn Girls,’ the truth of the matter is most of the people I know do drink PBR, and have horned-rimmed glasses and facial hair,” says Teddy Vuong, one of the creators of the parody. “Heck, I didn’t eat kale till I moved to Brooklyn, and now I can’t get enough of that stuff!”
But even her fans say Shaw needs to differentiate between Brooklyn the attitude and Brooklyn the borough.
“I don’t feel she has to defend herself for that song,” says a music publicist from Bushwick who goes by the name Chip. “People release s— songs every day. At least hers is catchy.”
Brooklyn Pop Quiz.
Think you can best Catey Shaw’s Brooklyn knowledge? Try our pop quiz:
Where can you ride the Cyclone?
What borough connects to Brooklyn via the Verrazano Bridge?
What product used to be made at the Domino plant along the Williamsburg Waterfront?
What does BAM stand for?
Who is Marty Markowitz?
What neighborhood did the movie “Do the Right Thing” take place in?
What neighborhood did the movie “Saturday Night Fever” take place in?
Name the three ingredients in an Egg Cream.
What was Ebbets Field?
What is gentrification?
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.