Okay so I’m not going to pretend I don’t have a specific playlist for specific situations and one of those situations involves being alone in my apartment with nothing but time and a very vivid imagination. No shame about it. Women have been getting themselves off since forever and pop music has been winking at it just as long. Cyndi Lauper coded the whole thing into “She Bop” in 1984 and your grandma probably sang along without catching on or even knowing what a Blue Boy magazine was. The Divinyls just said fuck it and titled their song “I Touch Myself” in 1990 and it got wall-to-wall airplay because sometimes the world is ready for exactly what you give it. And then there’s “Girl Noise” by Jeannette Katt, this weirdly obscure early 90s alternative track from her album ‘Pink Mischief’ where she literally just sings “I’m alone, no boys, no toys, just making girl noise,” and honestly that song deserved so much more than it got. Solo pleasure has always had its own soundtrack. CASANDRA’s new single ‘Explicit’ just added the sultriest stickiest chapter to it, and she does not flinch for a single damn second.
CASANDRA, you might know her as Cassie Marin, has been building quietly since at least 2017. Albums Lil 5i5, mundo dulce, METAPHORIA, and her 2025 self-titled record show someone who keeps moving and keeps refining. “MISC U ALREADY” and “DOUBLE SIDED GIRL” found real traction and her Spotify audience sits around 28,000 monthly listeners. ‘Explicit’ is her 2026 single and it’s the most confident shit she’s put out.
Advertisement
She opens with “in my room i be thinking bout it / in my room i be thinking bout you.” So damn simple it almost slides past you. The room is everything in this song. Her room is where she’s safe enough to let herself have these dirty fantasies, where she can conjure him completely, the ripped abs, the piercing eyes, the kind of situation downstairs that makes you rearrange your schedule. That shift from “it” to “you” in two lines is doing God’s work. She’s thinking about him and what she wants him to do to her simultaneously, the fantasy already building before the song even gets started. That’s a private thought she decided to make public. Say it louder for everyone still pretending they don’t do this.
Then the second verse and I’m not okay. “white walls watch as i play my games / with my legs like spiders pretend your gaze is upon me / icy and cold so glazed over / melt in place / oh i melt in place over you.” Okay so. Legs like spiders. The physical specificity of that image is fucking with me. She’s spread out, her body taking up space, her fingers working while she holds this person’s imaginary gaze on her. “Icy and cold so glazed over” is her eyes going unfocused, her whole body pulling inward until she’s practically somewhere else. The fantasy is doing some major flexing at this point and damn she lets it. She’s so wrecked that the person she’s thinking about feels real enough that it almost doesn’t matter they’re not actually there. CASANDRA wrote climax into ‘melt in place’ and made it beautiful.
Advertisement
The bridge is where it gets even more interesting. “eyes closed / i know somewhere you feel me / but i won’t let temptation come near me / safe in my head no one can hear me / sweet in my bed / so sweet so sweet.” Hold on. “I won’t let temptation come near me.” She’s not going to actually pursue this person. The real thing is off the table for whatever reason, and her bedroom becomes the place where she gets to have them anyway, completely on her own terms, no vulnerability required, no rejection possible. Safe in her head. That’s the whole fucking architecture of the song. She’s built a private universe where she gets everything she wants from this person and walks away satisfied every damn time. I mean that’s not a consolation prize. That’s a power move. No cap.
And “so sweet so sweet” at the end is the afterglow. She’s lying there warm and done and still wrapped up in the fantasy and she’s not sad about it. She sounds satisfied as hell. The production on this track earns the shit out of that ending, the way it sways and pulses and keeps that low slow R&B heat running underneath her vocal the entire time. It moves the way the song needs to move. Anyway.
CASANDRA has been making music long enough to know exactly what she’s doing on ‘Explicit.’ She named it that and then delivered on it without ever being crude about it, which is the harder trick. Cyndi Lauper used metaphor to sneak it past radio programmers. The Divinyls just said it straight and the world was ready. Jeannette Katt made “girl noise” and the world wasn’t. CASANDRA made something that sits right at the center of all of them – playful and direct and completely unapologetic – a woman in her room with her thoughts and her body and her fantasy taking care of herself the way she wants to. She’s keeping the tradition alive one finger at a time.
