MILWAUKEE, WI— Encapsulate your placenta. Blend your Placenta. Plant your placenta. Hand-make a very graphic tee using an imprint of your placenta. Make some earrings to match. These are just a few of the increasingly weird but totally real things modern women do with their afterbirth – and the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that has many moms asking themselves – is there anything my slimy, already-once-rejected, temporary fetal organ can’t do?
Ask Hayley Davis, 23-year-old mother of one and fan of that woman who “vaginally knit” herself a scarf while the whole world puked, and the answer you’ll get is “no.” Last fall, she decided to go beyond all pre-established abnorms and take her placenta out of the craft room and into the recording studio.
“I wanted to do something unique, but all the obvious unique things had already been done. Still, I asked the nurse for a to-go container as I was packing up to leave the hospital and just stared at that goopy mass all the way home,” she explained.
During that drive, her epiphany became clear: “All those curly lines, whatever they are, looked like music notes. I don’t know which ones. And the rich, muddy color reminded me of a red carpet at some fancy awards show – that had been left out in the rain – after every last person stomped across it. Basically? I just knew.”
For the next six months Davis would employ a nanny for her new daughter Brindle and dedicate 100% of her time to co-writing, and eventually producing, the first ever placenta-headlined album.
The writing process, she claimed, was very intuitive and organic, though the actual recording proved tricky due to the inanimate nature of her star performer. “Placentas are the quietest of all the vascular structures, but have the most to say,” Davis noted. Of the eleven tracks, nine of them blend the appropriation of a variety of cultures with a lyrical focus on nutrients and the importance of circulation, while she aptly described the other two as “songs to make a placenta to.”
With only four weeks until the debut release, Davis is happy to report she can now focus on her baby – and her pending, bound-to-happen divorce. While the world awaits its first taste of placental rap stylings and sex anthems, The Philadelphia Satirer inches closer to answering the aforementioned proverbial question: “What can’t you do with a placenta?”
Spoiler alert: It’s probably this.
The album ORGAN YOU GLAD I DIDN’T SAY BANANA? by AFTERBYRTH will be available on iTunes this March.
