If you follow Austin Mahone on Twitter and Instagram, you've probably noticed that the singer has been preparing something huge for the past couple of weeks. Austin has been posting cryptic tweets and photos with the hashtag #SendItWayUp819, leading fans to believe that he was going to be dropping a new song in the very near future. On Insta, Austin had been posting sneak peeks of his songs, getting us even more excited for those new beats. Fans were basically counting the days until August 19 — can you blame them?
Today, as promised, Austin dropped not just one but two brand new songs. Fans can now listen to "Send It" and "Way Up" on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon – basically, if you have a WiFi connection, you can listen to his music.
Both songs are heavy in the poppy R&B that Austin has been playing around with lately — heavy on both the production and smoothness. "Way Up," for its part, is your standard feeling-yourself jam, and is a song you'll instantly want to vibe out to.
But while "Way Up" is catchy, it's the lyrics of "Send It" that raise a red flag. In it, he urges a girl to send ... wait, is it a sext? Just to clarify for anyone who's on the receiving end of similar messages, if a dude is saying things like, "Baby, you can trust me," and "I know you want to share / baby, might as well," as the lyrics do here, then chances are you're not feeling good about it and the dude needs to respect your wishes and stop pressuring you. If there's hesitation, you should listen to your gut message. And any dude who pressures you to send a nude photo is in the wrong.
And let us just say: Consent is important in every facet of a relationship, and someone begging you probably means you said no once or twice and that should be respected. If he has to convince you to trust him — that’s not trust. That’s manipulation.
When Justin Bieber dropped “What Do U Mean,” it was pretty widely lauded as a track that tried, in its own way, to respect the idea of consent. Though both Austin and Justin are likely tired of being compared and contrasted, this is just about the furthest cry from Justin’s earnest queries. Songs about sexting aren’t exactly new — *NSYNC had “Digital Get Down” years ago — but this tune (likely being streamed by teenage girls all across the world) is sending the wrong kind of message.
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What do you think?