London’s influential electro-rockers, Sohodolls, are back! After being out of the limelight for more than a decade, a globally enforced lockdown revived one of their classics ‘Bang Bang Bang Bang’ into an unexpected viral TikTok hit among the Gen Z glitterati, which has inspired the band to reform and release some stunning new music.
Following last month’s unveiling of the new track ‘Letter To My Ex (Thank You, Goodbye)’, new single ‘Bad’ sees Maya Von Doll giving advice to her younger self on rebelling against gender-specific advice:
“I regret not trusting my instinct to stand up for myself. So, this song is about understanding and accepting that fight instinct. About standing up for yourself and rejecting advice that I think is mostly given to young women in my line of work. You shouldn’t always act on it, but you shouldn’t deny its existence. We are all animals – females included!” she further explains.
‘I can be good and sometimes clever, but when I’m bad I’m so much better, is the seductive refrain of this stomping rock banger, which embeds catchy hooks under a thick gloss of gothic riffs. Pounding drums, whirring synths and fuzzy guitars melt into an infectious sludge earworm for all of us out there who are inherently bad!
“It took me years to realise I was being walked all over by bigger fish in the music industry. For example, as a burgeoning songwriter writing for other artists, I was given unfair deals that my then management justified as a way of getting on the ladder. Looking back, it was total rubbish and it basically amounted to intellectual property theft! I knew at the time that I could have fought for fairness, but I was told over and over again that to do so would give me a reputation of being difficult and I might not get to work with certain labels again.”, she reveals.
No stranger to cult following and success, Sohodolls debut album in the naughties ‘Ribbed Music for the Numb Generation’ has always gone down well with a young crowd, having been the sound of one of ‘Gossip Girl’s most famous striptease scenes from Leighton Meester to writing pop bangers with the likes of Charli XCX and then this unexpected viral revival in 2021, Maya von Doll recalls,
“One morning, I received a flurry of frantic texts from friends, saying Madonna has just shared and tagged your song; I was in the middle of a house move, no internet, so I had no idea, but it was crazy.”
It so happens that Madonna had posted a recording she made of her daughter Estere Ciccone performing her own original choreography to the Sohodolls classic ‘Bang Bang Bang Bang’ and as part of the ensuing TikTok trend, the track rocketed up the Billboard Top 50 and is now sitting on 100m Spotify streams. From a song, Maya wrote as a teenage misfit about the urge to find your tribe it shows how the Covid Gen Z’s try to find theirs.
Listen to ‘Bad’ – BELOW:
‘Bad’ will be released on October 28th via Filthy Pretty/A&G Records – Pre-save here.
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