TRACK REVIEW: GIRLI - Ruthless — Music Musings & Such

TRACK REVIEW:

GIRLI

PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Finnerty

Ruthless

9.6/10

The track, Ruthless, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltEnFK9S-Ig

GENRES:

Pop/Electro-Pop/Pop-Punk

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

LABELS:

AllPoints/Believe

__________

EVEN though I have been following…

the music of GIRLI (Milly Toomey) for a while now, I have not reviewed it. Following the release of the 2019 debut album, Odd One Out, and her excellent E.P. from February, Ex Talk, there has been growing awareness and love of her music from all corners. She is definitely someone who music that is very much her own – so much stronger than that from many of her peers! There are some areas I need to cover off before getting to her latest track, Ruthless. There was a lot of press and attention around GIRLI in 2019. Many were trying to get to her essence and explain this wonderfully original and engaging artist. I want to take things back even further to start with. In 2016, DIY ran a feature about GIRLI. There are a few sections that I want to bring in:

“Self-professed “pink coated punky foul mouthed london gurl” GIRLI is already drawing extreme reactions, and that’s exactly what she wants. The 18-year-old can either provoke glee or disgust, depending on who you ask. Fearlessness defines her every step, a belief that if strangers wind up offended by what she does, that’s completely fine.

“I want people to feel uncomfortable!” she beams, a few months on from striking gold with the siren-backed call to arms ‘ASBOys’, an obnoxious track designed for dispute. “The worst thing ever would be for someone to walk away from a show and not have an extreme reaction… Someone walked to the front of the stage with a note at a show in Sheffield and it read, ‘You’re shit.’ Someone chucked something at me. And then I had a group of girls who had come to see me and had glitter on their faces. That’s exactly what I want.”

From the get-go, GIRLI has been determined to showcase what she stands for. She’s set up her own radio station - the bonkers ‘GIRLI.FM’ - and on her debut track, she spat out the line: “You thought I was gonna do a ballad? Fuck off!”

Her ultimate mission is to “normalise things that some people see as taboo,” for example: “In the studio recently, I wanted to sing “suck my clit”, but the guy I was working with told me I should probably take that out. But if I said “suck my dick,” you wouldn’t say that. On stage, women think about what they wear really carefully. And guys don’t have that problem. Look at punk music, someone like Iggy Pop - dudes always take their shirt off and crowd surf. But if I took my shirt off, everyone would be like ‘Woah, she’s extreme, she’s such a slut’. It’s not fair. I suppose if I do that, I wanna shock people. But only in a way where it no longer shocks people.”

With nothing but an iPod backing track and a fake ID her mum bought from www.fakeid.com, the North Londoner started out by playing open mic nights. “It was very different music. Still crazy, but I was a lot more tame. I’d rock up and there’d be twenty blokes with guitars, going ‘What the fuck?’”

She grew up as the smart kid in a comprehensive school (“whenever they see someone with good grades, they want to make you a statistic”), truly discovering herself when she started going out. “I’m writing about what I see - my friends, London, funny shit that actually happened. It’s hard to write about anything else,” she says, and so far she’s showcasing an in-your-face chasm of local chicken shops and the dickheads she comes across. “I had a bit of a crisis, in the middle of GCSEs, where I thought ‘Is this literally it?’ Having a shit time at school, going to uni and having a couple of years of jokes, and then going into a 9-5 job, and then another job, and then you retire. I literally can’t do that. I had to realise that life is about having fun,” she remembers, and it’s hard to find any other newcomer who sounds like they’re having as much fun as GIRLI”.

Taking it forward to 2019, there was this buzz and collective interest in GIRLI. The Line of Best Fit interviewed her. We got to find out about the teen years and how that shaped this incredible person:

“Toomey has lived in London her whole life, and moved out from her parents’ house in North London at 18, just as her musical career was taking off. She didn’t go to university, and hated school, leaving as soon as possible to pursue music at college. Prior to taking up music she was part of the local youth parliament, and “cared so much about everything” – a symptom of her OCD. “I think when I was a teenager I was just trying to escape from school if I’m honest, just trying to do loads of shit outside of school because I just dreaded it," she tells me. "Y’know it wasn’t all bad, I liked my teachers and my classes, but the social element of it just freaked me out. I was the girl at lunch time who was like ‘fuck where am I gonna eat my lunch’, so I definitely didn’t breeze through school. It was difficult and I think that’s why I turned to music, because I just needed something to do to get this frustration feeling out.

"I just remember being so restless, like I cannot fucking wait for this to be over, all this school bullshit, as soon as I was 16 I was like, right I’m gonna go to music college and I’m gonna do music and I don’t care!

“When I was a teenager I was very self-conscious and anxious. When I went into secondary school, I have OCD and it started to show, like the transition from primary to secondary school just like fucked me up, and I think I just freaked out. Primary school was like a little home, like a warm hug, and then secondary school, I went into the school of like 2500 students and it was pretty rough.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Danny Kasirye

As Toomey talks about her teen-hood, it’s not hard to see why she’s titled her debut record Odd One Out. She’s spent most of her life as an outsider – not in a cool, wallflower, ‘people don’t get me’ way, but in the way that took its toll on her mental health, social relationships, and trust in others. “I got bullied in year seven and eight. It was just really nasty people, and the jump between friendship groups. All of that made me quite an anxious person, although I didn’t really see it as anxiety at the time, I just really cared about certain things, and I think it’s part of how the OCD expressed itself in my personality and still does. I get very obsessed with things.

"I really cared about school work, I really cared about doing as much as possible. I wanted to go do that club and then that instrument, and get A grades. I put so much pressure on myself.

“I have a little sister who’s 16, and she’s having this crazy fun: she goes to parties every week, and she’s been doing that since she was 14. When I was 14 and in the youth parliament, I was going home every night and watching TV with my mum and doing homework. I really didn’t have a great social life, and I think I was quite lonely to be honest.

"I had a best friend who I spent a lot of time with and she really introduced me to things like music...but I kind of jumped from friendship groups a lot, so I think I lost a certain level of trust in people at school. I didn't know whether people were real, because I didn’t have that one friend from when I was like seven years old to now, where I think a lot of people I meet have those childhood friends...”

I will bring things to the present day soon enough. Before then, there are a few more subjects I want to explore. Not to mess with interview timeline too much, but I want to jump back to 2016. It is interesting to see how GIRLI is defined and represented. Prior to the release of her debut E.P., Feel OK, she was interviewed by The Independent. They highlighted this energetic and colourful Pop artist who was a breath of fresh air on the scene:

“When getting to know GIRLI’s hyperactive, anything-goes pop, the best starting point is through one of her mixtapes. Shadowing as a twisted homage to pirate radio, her two “GIRLI.FM” shows are messed up, junk-filled introductions. On her latest, she impersonates Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link, envisages an episode of Take Me Out where Donald Trump gets buzzed off, and recounts late-night party conversations with her friends. All while this is happening, she throws in a dozen demos, half-finished ideas and off-the-cuff takes. In truth, these works are less like actual mixtapes, more like hearing her weird imagination spilled out in song form, warts and all.

As she neatly puts it, this is the sound of “me vomiting out my brain”. An exciting prospect for some, a gross one for others. In her short existence, the outspoken north London newcomer – real name Milly Toomey – has pissed off as many people as she’s brought on board. Songs go for the jugular – new single “F*** Right Off Back to LA” being as brash as it gets – and it’s enough to make hesitant bystanders flock for the hills. Speaking ahead of another sold-out London show, however, it’s clear the all-pink-sporting star wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve been trolled quite a few times,” she says, readily admitting that many don’t see eye-to-eye with her music or opinions. “I got trolled by The 1975 fans on Twitter. I’ll probably get trolled again if this is in the article,” she begins, clarifying: “I like their songs. I respect them for where they are. But the album title [I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it]... I thought it was the most stupid thing ever. So I tweeted, I Like It When You Name Your Album A Twatty Title, For You’re So Pretentious Yet So Unaware Of It. I was on the train, thinking, ‘I’m so funny’ and that five people might pick up on it. I logged in two hours later and it was exploding with hate.” Her account was invaded with abuse (“You’re s***! I hate your hair!”), mostly personal slights. “I made fun of a band’s album title, they said something about my family!”.

ith the hype wheel spinning, at this time of year talk begins to turn to 2017. GIRLI is right at the heart of the conversation, alongside a bunch of young, opinionated acts eager to make a point, even if it might ward off potential fans. Just last week, go-to tip Declan McKenna was arguing with Piers Morgan on Twitter. Fellow 2017 hopeful Jorja Smith penned her first song, “Blue Lights”, about police brutality. GIRLI is similarly screwed-on. Politics is part and parcel of her early material. Brash single “Girls Get Angry Too”, released earlier this year, is a vital celebration of female identity.

It’s impossible to be a musician in 2016 without being partly politicised, but GIRLI has a history of this. At 15, she was the deputy Youth MP, campaigning after she felt “the need to change the world.” After being “very academic” in school, her brush with politics arrived exactly when she entered a “massive rebellious grungy phase.” There’s footage of her speaking in Parliament with an untucked shirt, sleeves rolled up. “I remember being like, ‘F*** you all!’ And I remember all these kids from the countryside coming up to me like, ‘Oh, you live in Camden do you? With all the punks!’ But yeah, that happened”.

This sort of compels me to come to the album, Odd One Out. I really like the album. For Milly Toomey – the woman behind GIRLI -, Odd One Out was a way of not only addressing some of her demons. She was also reintroducing herself as an artist. Coming back to the interview from The Line of Best Fit, GIRLI spoke about the album and how it came together:

“Her debut album has been a long time coming and wasn’t really meant to be an album at first. The tracks came about as a result of various writing sessions in LA with Mark Ronson-collaborators MNDR and Peter Wade, and former-Dirty Pretty Things member (and co-writer of Gaga/Cooper-hit "Shallow") Anthony Rossomando. Sticking with the same writers on every song was what she needed to feel more comfortable doing “proper pop writing sessions”.

“We were just making songs together, us three, and then [with] these guys called Fast Friends who are this awesome trio. I’d gone to LA before and I’d done the whole ‘lets do pop writing sessions’, had some good ones and had some terrible ones where it was like I feel like a product right now, this isn’t creative, this isn’t fun, so I went back and I just worked with these two people and it was so fun.

"I worked with a few other people as well but the main songs on the album come from these two groups of people. So I went back in may for another month and wrote most of the songs on the album.

“There’s a few songs on there that I’d written before, like ‘Hot Mess’, and it all kind of came together last year and by summer we had an album. I’m not a band so it’s not like I write the songs and go into the studio for a week and record them all, I’ll write the songs and come up with the concept, go into the studio with people, work on the song together, then we’ll just record it on the day. All the songs on Odd One Out were just recorded the day they were written, then worked on afterwards. I went back to LA for two weeks to finish them all properly.”

Toomey used writing the album to fight some of her personal demons and pull herself out of some dark place, a process which delivered a sense of catharsis: “There’s a song on the album called ‘Up and Down’ which is just about having mood swings, but this is me and if you want me around you can take it or leave it. Basically like euphoric, that song – I get up and I get down but I love myself for it, and actually at the time, I fucking hated myself for it. I felt like I was ruining everyone’s life around me for being so erratic and ruining my partner’s life and ruining my friends’ life and my family’s life, so that song actually comes from so much pain”.

Odd One Out is about reintroducing Girli as an artist. Early material such as ‘So You Think You Can Fuck With Me Do Ya’, ‘Fuck Right Back Off To LA’ and ‘Girl I Met On The Internet’ underplayed how smart and eloquent Toomey actually is: “I think a lot of people made a decision about who I was, especially in the media and radio and industry, but also just music listeners, and I think people just put me in a box as being this kind of irrelevant, kind of childish artist, who made these silly 'fuck you' songs. Even though I feel like that phase of me was centuries ago, I think a lot of people still think ‘Girli, oh!’.

“It’s funny like, my song was being played on the radio and I was intro’d as the girl who wears all pink. I haven’t worn all pink in over a year - but you forget that when you realise things about yourself, it takes everyone else ages to realise those things [too]. So I think the album for me is saying: look, this is who I am, I’m a lot more than you thought I was, and I don’t just make childish, bratty songs. I’m a serious songwriter and I wanna be taken seriously."

“A lot of pain went into the album but it’s meant to be happy, it’s meant to make people feel euphoric...and I think the title, Odd One Out, comes from a place of feeling like an outsider or a freak, or why do I feel like this, what is this emotion, and hopefully people can listen to it and feel proud to feel like that, instead of ashamed”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Phil Smithies for DIY

When Odd One Out arrived, I recall there was this great interest and investment from a lot of critics. GIRLI’s fans were especially responsive and moved. NME were keen to speak with GIRLI following the album’s release. They asked her about Odd One Out and what it was like recording it:

“How’s the reception been to the album?

“It was great. My fans all loved it, and I think I made a lot of new fans, which was cool. And it was crazy – we played a show the day the album came out, and people in the crowd already knew the lyrics. The whole crowd knew lyrics to songs that had come out that day!”

What was the recording process like?

“It was fun, but it was also a really hard time. I was feeling terrible, I was really struggling with a lot of mental health stuff, so I think that as a result, the album is very honest. I can listen to it and even though most of the songs are really upbeat like “wahoo it’s going to be okay”, I can really feel my own pain in it, which is a sad thing to say.”

Is music cathartic for you?

“Yes and no. It’s my diary entry: I play guitar and love writing lyrics, but I kind of started when I was 13 and I love writing short stories. That was the thing that came before writing songs. So writing and getting my ideas out has always been cathartic for me, sometimes the music making process can be quite stressful for me, because I’m such a perfectionist and I want it to be great, and sometimes it’s really hard if you’re having an off day and can’t get the idea out that you want to convey and I beat myself up a lot about things like that.”

Do you find fans really relate to your music as it’s so honest?

“Yeah! It’s a bit crazy. I’ll get DMs and YouTube comments where people really open up and get personal and it’s kind of amazing. It actually reminds me constantly of the responsibility that I have with the kind of people who listen to my music who are very young and are probably going through a lot, so they’re listening to this music and sometimes I’ll get messages saying my song has changed someone’s life, and that’s really overwhelming, but in an amazing way”.

One of the most important aspects of GIRLI is the fact that she is a Queer artist. One of the most inspiring L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists out there, it is very important to GIRLI to identify as a queer artist. She has a lot of fans who are part of the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community. In an interview with Worst Taste in Music, she explained a little more:

“How important is your identity as a feminist and queer artist?

Feminism is the core of everything I do. Feeling empowered as a woman and my journey as a woman and calling out sexist bullshit is a big part of my music. Being queer and proud is also a big inspiration for me in my songs, my videos, my artistic expression. I love being a part of the LGBTQIA+ community and a lot of my fan base is part of that community too, so it plays a huge role in my life.

You have always been very supportive about people feeling comfortable in their own skin. Do you feel responsible towards your fans? Is it also a way of express your thoughts about society and what’s happening in the world right now?

I feel responsible to learn and grow and correct myself when I make mistakes, but I don’t feel pressure to be a good or bad influence on my fans. The majority of them are young teens growing up in a digital world and they are super aware and woke, and often teach me things rather than the other way around. My music is a diary entry from my life and what goes on in my head. I’m so happy that people can relate to that.

I want to stay on this subject for a little bit more. GIGWISE spoke with GIRLI in August. This is one of the most recent interviews I could find. Again, as she has mentioned in older interviews, she was passionate about the importance of her identity and how she related to fans:

“As well as her musical candidness, it is GIRLI's proud queerness that has lead her to a fanbase of like-minded and sweet individuals. “Being queer is such a big part of my life," she enthuses. "I definitely think that queer artists shouldn’t feel any pressure - they can talk about it if they want to [and] they don't have to if they don't want to. I think that straight artists should be uplifting queer people, and be talking about it, like how white people should be uplifting people of colour.

"I think that straight artists need to definitely use their privilege in that sense. I feel so passionate about it, and proud, and it's always been a big part of my artist project. I also think it's kind of a cool way of attracting the right people. I don't really want any homophobes listening to my music.”

Speaking further about the Damsel in Distress project she says “It's kind of like going into a war in a way, like a mental war. With all of these topics and emotions that the songs are about, I was like this princess but like having vengeance on the kingdom. Coming back and being like: I'm not a damsel. I was thinking about that phrase damsel in distress and it really applied to me. Even though these songs are all about doubting myself, they're not necessarily light hearted, happy clappy songs, [but] to me it's really badass and really empowering. Releasing the songs now, I feel so empowered, and so powerful”.

There are a few more things that I need to get to – so that we can get a more rounded and complete picture of GIRLI as an artist. In this interview, a question about gender identity really caught my eye. GIRLI has talked about sexism and gender imbalance in music quite a bit. When it comes to the subject of gender identity and how things are not binary anymore, she was very keen to talk about how perceptions and conversations have changed:

“Do you think you, or by extension your generation, are seeing and talking about gender differently than previous generations?

"I think there has definitely been a massive shift with my generation. Because of the internet, being on Twitter and Instagram, there is a lot of conversation. I have friends who identify as nonbinary, I have trans friends. When I talk to my parents, who are open and love everyone for who they are, they are confused when I tell them, 'That friend doesn't want to be referred to as she, but they.' Or explaining that my friend who used to be a boy is now a girl to my mom, who wants to know what that even means. My parents weren't raised with those terms around. You have to allow the older generation time to learn. It's like my grandma not knowing what a smartphone is, you know? That said, it's great to have social media so the next generation are able to talk about these things. For example, so many people on Twitter put in their bio their gender identification. That is something that would have been unheard of 20 years ago! I think it's so great to have that representation now."

You've said you like to write music that gets a reaction out of people. With "Girl I Met on the Internet," do you think playing with gender norms and sexuality in music like that you still get a reaction or upset people?

"That is an interesting one. Sometimes I'll put songs out, like 'Hot Mess' or 'Girl Gang,' where I make a video that challenges people, to make them feel upset by it but then question what is upsetting. Because I'm actually talking about feminism or gender or whatever. With 'Girl I Met on the Internet,' it was a love song basically. It was me saying that I want to meet a girl to go out with, so it was fascinating to see a song that was not meant to provoke people [or] weird them out. I didn't get any abuse about it online, other than a few comments I ignored. It was less people being homophobic, but more like — I had an interview with a certain magazine, and they called it a song about a platonic relationship with a friend I hung out with for a night. I was like, what do you mean? It's clearly about wanting to have a girlfriend! I was talking to someone who was so used to straight relationships that they immediately thought if I was singing about a girl, it must be just about making friends. I want to challenge people. I want to say about that song, this is about me not being straight and liking girls too. And I want to have them react by understanding that homosexual relationships can be exactly the same as hetero relationships. To understand that I can feel the exact same way about someone!”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rory James for The Line of Best Fit

One of the best songs from GIRLI is Hot Mess. The opening track from her 2017 E.P. of the same name, she talked to the Evening Standard about sexism in the industry. This is a conversation we are still having to this day. I wonder whether there will be any improvement or real leaps forward regarding equality and representation:

“Speaking about the song, she reveals the track was inspired by the sexism she experienced in her nascent career, which lends the track added significance.

“Being a woman making music and dressing the way I do, I find myself having things said to me and comments made that I feel I wouldn’t get if I was a guy. Hot Mess is actually written about the time I went to a meeting with a certain company I won’t mention.

“Afterwards, there were comments made that claimed I ‘wasn’t presented properly’. I’d skated there, I was a bit sweaty and I wasn’t wearing much makeup. If I was a guy and I’d just rolled up - no disrespect to men in the music industry - but a lot of my mates in bands will roll up to meetings and look like shit," Milly says.

“They’re called rock stars, and then girls are called hot messes, or told they’re not good enough."

She concludes by saying: "It’s just double standards. Why can’t everyone be who they want to be without being judged?”.

One cannot help but notice one thing about GIRLI when we see photos. The colour pink defines her. That very distinct hair is as bright and vivacious as her music. I was intrigued to learn why pink was such an important part of her aesthetic. GRAZIA posed the question in an interview from 2017:

“What was the progression of developing your personal style?

I don’t like to use the word ‘tomboy’, but when I was first in a band, I loved wearing men’s clothing. I wore loads of baggy t-shirts and jeans, I had short hair, and I wore baseball caps. And then it just switched when I discovered new types of music. I was really into indie, then I started listening to more female-made music, and my style developed based on what I was listening to. And one day it just assembled.

Where does your obsession with pink come from?

Initially, it came from a love of Japanese culture, like Kawaii and Harajuku, and of 90s millennial style. But I also like subverting it the concept that people see it as a weak colour as that’s bullshit.

I was really into millennium fashion and the Spice Girls, Britney, Shampoo and ‘90s Pop, which had adopted a child-like style. It started when I would tie my hair up in little girls’ bobbles and stuff and then I started being into punk, and pink started to represent something different for me – instead of something childlike it started to represent something strong. I like subverting it and that when people see I wear all pink they underestimate me because they think it’s childish. It’s the same thing as what people think when they hear the word ‘Girli’. They think it means weak and sissy and I’m a pussy, but it doesn’t. To me, it means strong.

Do you think you’ll ever move away from pink?

I don’t know. Who’s to say. People ask me that a lot as in I should be embarrassed about it if I ever stop wearing pink. And I’m just like, ‘fuck off, I’ll wear what I’ll wear, when I want to wear it.’ I’m really into it right now, but in three years maybe I’ll be into blue.

How do you decide what to wear on stage?

I work with a really cool stylist called Jamie Jarvis, she’s a legend. Basically, I have ideas about what I want to wear or the outfits to look like. Say there’s a 12-date tour, we’ll have like six different outfits and I’ll wear some of them twice. We go shopping to places like Punkyfish and vintage stores or we’ll collaborate with a designer. For instance, I had boiler suits tie-dyed for this tour. I also had a matching double-denim millennial pink look with diamanté that said Girli on the back. And, I worked with Jamie Hutwood who sews together polo shirts and petticoats to make dresses. The idea is to look punky and girly”.

Prior to coming onto the review of Ruthless and wrapping things up, I was curious to see how the pandemic has affected GIRLI. It has been pretty bad for all artists. Coming back to that GIGWISE interview from August, GIRLI spoke about being dropped from her label, in addition to what she hoped to achieve with her podcast, GIRLI IRL:

“Obviously not all musicians perform that much. I think for a lot of people it's more about being in the studio or writing, which is obviously huge for me, but I've always been the type of artist who thrives on stage, and thrives touring" she says. "I love interacting with my fans that way and getting the crowd hyped up. When I'm on stage, this devil takes over; a whole new badass. I've really missed it.”

“When the pandemic started, I was still in this really weird limbo place because I'd been dropped by my last label and I hadn't started releasing music" GIRLI (real name Milly Toomey) continues. "It was kind of an in-between period where I hadn't met my current label [Believe]. I was very low, and thinking I can either give up in this pandemic, or I can go full steam ahead and hope people appreciate what I'm doing. So, I started doing loads of online shows and live streams, and I started a Patreon."

With a cult-like following paired with an unwavering work ethic despite the setbacks thrown at her—both the result of having started in the industry in her mid-teens (she’s now the ripe old age of 23)—GIRLI was adamant to give back to her fans in whatever way she could, so she hosted a virtual art exhibition, and started her own podcast.

With the GIRLI IRL podcast, Milly says she "really wanted to do something on the side that people could watch or listen to, to gauge who I am as a person and what kind of stuff I care about and am passionate about; my beliefs on certain things. I wanted to make a podcast which was me talking to women or non-binary folks about sexuality, politics, heartbreak and all kinds of stuff, conversations I'd have with my friends anyway.

"People can listen to my music and they probably get a good idea of who I am from that because I'm very honest in my lyrics and the music anyway, but I like the idea that it's another way for me to show who I am”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Finnerty

This take me to the new track from GIRLI. I really like the video for Ruthless. We see the heroine in a car in a crushing plant/scrapyard. As a contrast to the ruins and slightly scuzzy environment around her, GIRLI looks quite elegant and grand. Almost resembling a pink-haired Marie Antoinette, it is a wonderful visual! Whether the destroyed car with her in is a metaphor for a destructive situation and a feeling of being trapped, I am not tool sure. We see GIRLI writing in a diary/journal as she sings. The start of Ruthless is quite calm in terms of the composition. The words trip and skip out of GIRLI: “Take me home/Take me back/Take me back to playing teddy bears and butterflies in my hair/Home?, what's that?/I got a doll's house with a few cracks/Grew too tall/Now I’m poking out the attic/My feet are in the basement /Coz I never wanna hack it/Life, what's that?/Life, what's that?”. I got that sense of someone who wanted to return to a simpler time. Maybe this sense of growing up and living in the modern world is quite strange and tough. That said, the imagery GIRLI projects about the cracked doll’s house makes me thing that, perhaps, the past is something that she cannot go back to. They are interesting words that made me wonder. In the video, we see GIRLI hold a mirror and make faces. Almost taunting her own reflection, the smashed doll’s house can be seen outside of the car on the ground. The vocal performance through Ruthless is wonderful. In the next passage, it swoops from a lower register to something quite acrobatic and theatrical: “Take me use me screw me over/Play me like I like losing /Trip me trick me drug me say you love me but you like cheating/You're the only one to blame/You made me this way/Guess that's why I’m so damn…”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Finnerty

When the chorus comes in, this heavy beat and electronic sound replaces the more acoustic feeling of before. It is an awakening and angrier transition that sees GIRLI, in the video, dancing atop a car as she is joined by her crew (the women are dressed similarly to her). I am not sure whether GIRLI is speaking to a lover who made her ruthless - or a person from the past who has had this impact: “Ruthless/You made me/You made me/You made me/Ruthless/You made me/You made me/You made me /Ruthless/Only way to do it/When you break me/And I lose it/You made me so damn fucking/Ruthless”. The shift from the calmer verses to the outpouring and rush of the chorus is wonderful. One is caught by the beat and the command from GIRLI’s voice. This idea of going back to childhood and trying to figure out adulthood comes back in: “Take my soul/Take me down/Take me back to the beginning of this when I was still innocent/Me, sorry who?/I'm a kid in a grown-up suit/Looking in the mirror/Tryna figure out who's/Banging on the glass coz they're tryna break through /Is it me? Is it you?/Think it's me/Wish I knew”. Trying to reclaim a more innocent past and figure out who she is, the lyrics are very powerful. Although some mystery and questions remain, one does get this sense of someone in a bad space who would give anything to have her time over and start afresh.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hugh Finnerty

Before the chorus comes back in again, there are some of the most stark lyrics: “Take me use me screw me over/Play me like I like losing /Trip me trick me drug me say you love me but you like cheating/You're the only one to blame/You made me this way/Guess that's why I’m so damn”. With some processed vocals and scuttling beats, one gets this head-spinning and sense-altering sound. The video sees GIRLI and her gang dancing and moving as it is dark. There are strobe lights and this almost tripped-out, trance quality. The final words are delivered softly as the composition returns to something more sedated: “Yeah, it's tragic/All the bad bits/Made me so damn ruthless/No it's not me/I don't wanna be/Ruthless”. A typically captivating, colourful, memorable and original Pop song from GIRLI, I think Ruthless ranks alongside her very best. With lyrics one can pour over and an incredible sense of emotional outpouring, it is such a stunning song. It shows that there is nobody else like GIRLI in the industry. A phenomenal talent with many years ahead of her, Ruthless shows that we are very lucky to have an artist like this…