It’s a trope the band Muna has reverence for however was attempting to “rage against” on their new album, says lead singer Katie Gavin. Over the band’s 10 years of collaboration, members Gavin, Naomi McPherson and Josette Maskin have explored the lows of angst, heartbreak, disappointment, liberation and of course, longing. But on the band’s self-titled third album, they go all in on euphoria, self-assuredness and, most of all, emotional development.
And the members, who all establish as queer, are greater than conscious of what their music means within the longer custom of “sapphic anthems.” Some of their songs are explicitly written in dialog with it.
Perhaps no tune higher illustrates this than the album’s lead single “Silk Chiffon,” a tongue-in-cheek anthem “for kids to have their first gay kiss to,” as guitarist and producer McPherson has mentioned.
The tune went viral on TikTok final summer season for its deadpan hook: “Life’s so fun, life’s so fun,” typically juxtaposed with a crucially unfun anecdote. It options the band’s frequent collaborator — and infamous unhappy woman — Phoebe Bridgers, who signed the band to her Saddest Factory Records label in 2021.
In dialog with their third report, we requested Muna to curate a playlist of their favourite songs with sapphic energy. Their selections vary from queer icons reminiscent of Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls to artists that aren’t essentially queer themselves however are “queer-claimed” for one purpose or one other, as Gavin places it. But not like “Muna,” it’s not a going-out playlist, in keeping with McPherson. Put it on in your subsequent lengthy drive, sluggish weekend or homosexual potluck, they recommend.
“It’s staying-in music for the lesbians — they’ll get it,” McPherson says.
Listen here and skim together with some of their commentary, edited for size and readability, beneath.
1
‘You Oughta Know’ by Alanis Morissette
McPherson: There’s quite a bit of highly effective, right angst in her music. She’s railing in opposition to quite a bit of the requirements on the time. And her presence within the trade was like, you already know, railing in opposition to the type of political vibe of the instances, these dry White guys.
Gavin: There’s a counting on this album with the disgrace of being indoctrinated into a faith or society that you simply don’t match into. That’s particularly obvious within the lyric, “It’s not fair, to deny me of the cross I bear that you gave to me.” We positively fed into the Alanis custom when we started as a band.
2
‘White Flag’ by Dido
McPherson: There is a determined, unrequited longing that’s portrayed by that tune. That’s a via line of queer- or lesbian-claimed music from this period.
Maskin: I don’t know a dyke who doesn’t love Dido. I had this math instructor who used to play both Dido or Enya throughout exams. You may simply decide up the energy.
Gavin: I’ve positively taken inspiration from the way in which Dido sings and the emotion she holds in her voice. She may sing the telephone e-book, and it will make me cry. Plus, there’s the yodeling of all of it.
4
‘Linger’ by The Cranberries
Gavin: There’s one thing that feels so good about it. The Cranberries nearly make disappointment sound euphoric.
McPherson: This tune is desperately unhappy, but it surely’s additionally a tune you’d placed on the automobile if you wish to have enjoyable with your mates on a drive. But then you definitely hearken to the lyrics and suppose, “This is absolutely devastating.” We’d be fortunate if folks may draw that parallel to our music as nicely.
5
‘tangerine’ by Kehlani
Gavin: We listened to Kehlani a ton once we have been simply beginning as a band. We simply love her.
6
‘There She Goes’ by Sixpence None the Richer
Maskin: I really like a canopy when the lyrics aren’t modified to satisfy a heteronormative gender customary. This is one of the primary songs I keep in mind listening to at a younger age and considering, “This is interesting to me.”
8
‘Close to Fine’ by the Indigo Girls
Gavin: I really feel prefer it’s so obvious why they’re lesbian-claimed, and this tune is only a magnum opus of lyric-writing. It’s a tune I want I wrote. Sometimes Muna followers make jokes that we wrote our songs about their lives, and this tune provides me that have. Like, wow, I can have these realizations that may really feel so private to me after which another person has already written a tune about it many years in the past.
11
‘It’s Good To Be In Love’ by Frou Frou
Gavin: We’ve been so impressed by Imogen Heap [half of the duo Frou Frou]. This tune is one other lovely illustration of unrequited love, which, sadly, lesbians are hooked on.
12
‘Nineteen’ by Tegan and Sara
McPherson: We must shout out Tegan and Sara. This tune, I really feel, is like the top of younger queer angst in music, particularly of that period. And it’s such a devastating efficiency. It’s sort of an opaque tune — it’s a bit onerous to grasp whenever you first hearken to it, however you’re feeling that energy in it.
13
‘Give Me One Reason’ by Tracy Chapman
McPherson: Chapman might be the one most underrated political songwriter of all time, and I feel that is because of straight-up misogynoir and racism. She is a prophetic voice. There’s at all times one thing about her music that feels so poignant. And she’s additionally a queer individual, in order that lives within the lyrics in such lovely and attention-grabbing methods. She’s only a phenomenal voice in American music historical past, and she or he doesn’t get sufficient credit score for the way essential she is. She needs to be up there with the Woody Guthries and the Kendricks, and different songwriters who discuss politics in a very cool and attention-grabbing manner, to me.
Gavin: She additionally represents one thing I actually love about queer folks, which is an openheartedness and vulnerability. She can depict the ache of oppression alongside this fierce perception in love and connection and transcendence. She represents, to me, queer folks’s potential to floor their revolutionary concepts of their want for and perception in transformative love.