Le Tigre

About

Part of what’s amazing about 1999’s <i>Le Tigre</i> is the way it captured a set of attitudes and ideas that at the time felt underground, but have since become commonplace: Cancel culture, and the navigation of your “problematic faves”? That’s “What’s Yr Take On Cassavetes?” Mood-boarding your cultural ancestry as a way to express your own creative identity? That’s “Hot Topic” (“Gertrude Stein! Marlon Riggs! Billie Jean King!”). There’s also a screaming, insanely fun dance song with the line “Let me hear you depoliticize my rhyme” (“Deceptacon”), and a garage-rock song about how liberating it is to have access to good public transportation (“My My Metrocard”). The ideas on <i>Le Tigre</i> were punk, but the sound was bright and girly and pop, drawing on everything from electro and surf music (“Deceptacon”) to French <i>yé-yé</i> (“Friendship Station”) and nursery rhymes (“Les and Ray”). Lead singer Kathleen Hanna had famously started out at as the singer of the pioneering riot-grrrl band Bikini Kill—and, in a way, <i>Le Tigre</i>’s visionary stroke was to prove radical politics and fun didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Feel like all genders deserve equal treatment as human beings? Cool, you’re a feminist. Wondering whether this movie or book or song you love is tacitly supporting the patriarchy? Don’t go looking for a dissertation—just call a friend and talk it out. In 1999, the idea that pop as an expression of our political identities would’ve seemed esoteric, but now, we take it as a given. Times change, and thank gosh for that. <i>Le Tigre</i> was the missing link between mall-pop and underground punk. The album made you want to read big books and wear even bigger sunglasses. And it felt inclusive and cool in a way you didn’t have to think about if you didn’t feel like thinking—but it also gave you plenty to think about if you did. <i>Le Tigre</i> stated loud and clear a then-radical proposition: that the stuff we do for fun might just change the real world.

via Apple Music