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The Linda Lindas are taking over the world and we have absolutely no complaints.
The band–which is made up of three teenage girls and one pre-teen–took us all by storm earlier this month when a virtual performance at a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library went viral. Their song “Racist, Sexist Boy” immediately became our summer anthem–the kind of anthem we wish we didn’t need but that we’re glad to have.
The Linda Lindas weren’t exactly unknown before that performance. They recently had two songs (both covers) on the soundtrack to Netflix’s riot grrrl-inspired movie Moxie. But “Racist, Sexist Boy” made them instant celebrities.
The clip that went viral begins with Mila, the band’s 10-year-old drummer introducing the song. “A little while before we went into lockdown, a boy in my class came up to me and said that his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people,” she says. “After I told him that I was Chinese, he backed away from me. Eloise and I wrote this song based on that experience.”
“This is about him and all the other racist, sexist boys in this world,” 13-year-old singer and bass player Eloise declares.
And then they rock.
When the incident with the racist, sexist boy happened, Mila tells BuzzFeed that she “didn’t realize people were blaming China — and Chinese people — for COVID-19. It was her first personal encounter with racism. ‘I didn’t really know how to respond,’ she said.”
“What do you say to that?” her sister, Lucia, 14, chimed in. “What do you do? I mean besides writing an awesome song about it.”
Mila and Eloise started brainstorming lyrics in the car that day, and later on when they were stuck at home they spent about five hours on Zoom putting it together. “Writing it just made me feel better,” Mila said.
The song clearly struck a chord with people. In the weeks since the library performance, the Linda Lindas have gained hundreds of thousands of social media followers, signed a record deal with Epitaph records, and have (luckily for us) upped their merch supply.
“We didn’t plan on getting over 200k followers in a week (!) We didn’t know we would get 1000s of emails from all over the world with words of support and orders for our merch (!!),” the band wrote on Instagram. “Needless to say, our system of ’email us with your order and venmo info’ isn’t going to work anymore.”
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The members of the Linda Lindas are Mila, Eloise, Lucia, and Bela–two sisters, their cousin, and a close friend, according to BuzzFeed. The half-Asian, half-Latinx group first played together in 2018 as part of Gxrlschool–a “music and ideas festival” in Los Angeles for women-identified artists.
“Racist, Sexist Boy” is a direct response to the increase in anti-Asian racism that we’ve seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s incredibly upsetting that such a young girl was exposed to this kind of racist ignorance.
The Linda Lindas are also a reminder that girls and young women raging against systematic oppression is a timeless art form, and it’s absolutely not surprising that so many people have felt such a deep, immediate connection with this band and the way they express their anger and claim their power.
You can watch the entire library performance here:
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(image: screencap)
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