Turned Ugly

"Turned Ugly" is the fifth song on Romo's second self-titled, fifth studio album Romo (II), surprise released September 8, 2020. It is the second longest song on the album, just shy of 10 minutes. The song is a four-part suite consisting of three movements with two verses each, followed by an "epilogue" that serves as the outro. Alesha, China and Emily Henning perform the song's second movement, third movement and epilogue, respectively, but are not credited for their appearances. "Turned Ugly" is a sequel to the quartet's previous collaboration, "The Pretty Ones", which appeared on Alesha's 2009 album Bigger Than God. "Turned Ugly" is the only vocal collaboration on Romo (II).

"Turned Ugly" was scheduled to be released as the third single from Romo (II), but its release was pulled after the commercial failure of the album's second single, "Madame Bullshit".

Background
Portions of Romo's verse in the first movement and the song's hook, which ends each of the three movements, "It's because of me they think they're not beautiful / But it's because of you I'm ugly", were lifted from a song Romo wrote in 2012 called "The Artist & The Actress". Romo considered the song for all of her botched 2010s comeback projects, first offering it to the then-upcoming group Status for Romo's unreleased anthology The Canal Street Chronicles, then recording it herself for another unreleased album called Emotional Pornography and then revisiting it to fit it within a narrative she was constructing for the unreleased POPSTAR 3: Belle's Vengeance in 2017. When Romo was working on Romo (II), she thought the song was one of her best works but didn't think it fit cohesively within the scope of an ambitious, progressive rock-inspired collection. So instead of including "The Artist & The Actress" on the album, she decided to build a new song around it.

When Romo noticed lyrical similarities between the song's first movement and "The Pretty Ones", Romo called Alesha, China and Emily Henning, who performed with her on the song, asking for their blessings to make a sequel and to join her in the recording. The original song starts out with dark and introspective story-song-type verses, which then transition to a high energy, fast paced electropop track with Romo, China and Emily asserting their dominance as a new generation of pop superstars. But "Turned Ugly" is entirely dark and introspective, with Romo and Alesha's verses waxing on aging in the public eye and whether they can sustain a legacy beyond what they've achieved, and China's verse discussing whether life after superstardom, touching on her abrupt departure from the public eye at the end of 2010, would mean something to her in the end. The epilogue summarizes the themes of the song and connects to the source material by ending with the words, "Whatever happened to the pretty ones?"

Though uncredited, "Turned Ugly" is the first release to feature lead vocals from China since December 2010, when China released her 2010 album Resurrection and Romo released the China and Elice Claire collaboration "My Generation" on Romo's previous self-titled album.

Lyrics
Each movement opens with a variation on the phrase "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" popularized by the fairy tale Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs. Romo's movement, and the song itself, opens with "Mirror, mirror, does my body scream, 'Fuck me'?"

The lyrics in Part 1 discuss aging, how social media influences beauty standards and social norms, and how people struggle to find their paths in life as they watch their peers achieve life milestones while they're still stuck in ruts. Watching people Romo knew on social media achieving such milestones, like marriages and children, was what motivated the line of the second verse, "Hoped to find my friends and live up my young years / Found nothing but vanity projects and thousand dollar stones." The lines Romo wrote about feeling unwelcomed by the younger generation of musicians in her next comeback attempt (starting with "While the younger ones ostracize me from their playgrounds") reminded her of Alesha's opening verses of "The Pretty Ones", which prompted the collaboration with the other artists involved on the song. Romo described her movement as "a midlife crisis set to music."

Part 2, performed by Alesha, begins with lyrics that describe a dystopia and then expands upon Romo's movement with lyrics about whether it's possible to find beauty in aging. While Alesha did not write the verse, Romo made it true to her style by drawing upon her vast discography for influence. The lyrics were inspired by Alesha's previous songs about the apocalypse and dystopias, including "Tsunami of the Soul" and "Apocalypse City", by describing a scene where Alesha colonizes the ruins of a kingdom, only to have her claims threatened by the patriarchy. There are also allusions to Alesha's previous work; "Have you forgotten I'm the queen?" refers to the title of Alesha's 2007 album, Alesha Is The Queen, as well as "The Pretty Ones" itself when Alesha sings, "One day I will find myself pushing someone else's dream / A far cry from the days when I thought myself a queen". The line "I put the 'ex' in Texas and the 'oh' in Ohio" refers to one of Alesha Is The Queen's singles, "The OH in Ohio". The line "losing ground to the kids" was inspired by similar lyrics in the LCD Soundsystem song "Losing My Edge".

The third movement, which features China's vocals, discuss China's mixed feelings about whether she will be remembered for her contributions to late 2000s pop music following her abrupt departure from the music industry in December 2010 ("Backed off a decade ago when I was in my prime / I disavowed the spotlight after having a good run"). Part 3 twice references "Belle Ball", Romo and China's chart-topping 2009 collaboration, in the lines "They said it was better to burn out than to fade away" (itself a reference to "My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)" by Neil Young) and "Do you still see me as your fountain of youth / Or have I devolved into a sea of dying age?" The third movement's second verse describes the imperfections associated with domestic life and the idea of a "happy family" being a myth. Romo wrote in references to two punk rock bands; the line "The controlling men who take the stage to sing their gaslight anthems" uses the name of the band the Gaslight Anthem as a metaphor to describe emotionally abusive and manipulative relationships, and the following line, "The laying of fingers like a train wreck, a lust served with blood," was inspired by the song "Sun Dials" by Alkaline Trio, which included the line "we laid in bed like a train wreck." Romo ended China's movement with the word "fuck," which China rarely if ever uttered during her time in the public eye, as an assertion of her confidence.

The last lines of the song, sung by Emily Henning, offer a summary of the song's points and offer Henning's feelings on the challenges of remaining a pop icon in midlife. Romo saw the epilogue as the shortest, but most critical part of the song. Henning herself praised the overall work upon its release and publicly appealed for it to be a single.

Critical
Upon the release of Romo (II), "Turned Ugly" received universal critical acclaim and was highlighted as one of the album's best songs.