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Length
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Frank discusses the relationship he had with a female groupie he had met on a tour. He continuously compares the audience at his tours to Buddhist monks and their spiritual idol (Dalai Lama).
Malay, producer of the song, answered this on a Reddit AMA:
"Intro to monks was done all with arturia stuff and a moog voyager"
“Monks” is, among other things, about Frank’s relationship with a series of women attending his concerts. He positions each concert as a religious experience. Worship is baked into the text of “Monks.” Frank is on a literal pedestal: the stage. The women of the track are inclined to see him as holier than, simply because he is an artist. And as Frank alludes (“African girl speaks in English accent / Likes to fuck boys in bands”), the women of the track are no strangers to this exchange of energy. Power imbalances aside, “Monks” rests on the power of lust. Frank is forthright about the sex: “Likes to watch Westerns / And ride me without the hands.” But it is within the subtext of “Monks” that we find our meaning. That is, we discover “Monks” is a warning on the perils of worship through the lens of lust.
For one, the mention of “Westerns” sets us up to understand the dynamic of groupie and artist and as an indictment of American ideals. Our society is responsible for propping Frank up on his pedestal simply because we see him on the stage. Capitalism has manufactured the cult of celebrity to sell us the narrative the talented are inherently better than us. True, Frank is using sex instead of sales, but in a nation where sex and money are linked in more ways than one, we’re not exactly stretching our reading.
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