She smiles. It’s small. It’s real.
The album’s darkest moment. Built on a minimal, throbbing bassline, “Simon Says” reimagines the children’s game as sexual and emotional manipulation. The protagonist takes the role of the game master: “Simon says put your hands on my waist / Simon says put your hands on my waist.” But the repeated command implies coercion. Some read it as a BDSM anthem; others as a dissection of grooming. Allie X herself has described it as about “the power dynamics of wanting to be controlled but also wanting to be in control.” The track’s refusal of a traditional chorus—replacing it with a spoken-word chant—makes it deeply unsettling. allie x collxtion ii
Allie X (Alexandra Hughes) occupies a unique liminal space in 2010s pop: too dark and self-aware for mainstream Top 40, too hook-driven for experimental electronica. With CollXtion II , the second installment of her ongoing musical-archival project, she constructs a cohesive artistic statement about the performance of mental illness, the artifice of happiness, and the violence of romantic obsession. This paper argues that CollXtion II is not merely a synth-pop album but a concept record about living with dissociative emotional states—a “collXtion” of characters (the patient, the mistress, the stalker, the cyborg) that together form a fractured portrait of a single protagonist navigating post-ironic Los Angeles. She smiles