Girls Like No Other: Our Inspiration

Hey Majesties! Your favourite chemical is here with this month’s blog!

I don’t have to beat around the bush since the countdown has started, and by the time this blog is out, you will probably have seen the track list and the cover art.

But anyway, if it wasn’t clear, our EP Girls Like No Other comes out July 7th on all streaming services! I could go on and on about the behind-the-scenes, about how we organized ourselves, how we worked to record, etc., etc. Instead, I want to talk about the inspiration for the EP!

With a title like Girls Like No Other and a cover album of two black and white swans facing one another, it’s easy to wonder what our inspiration was. Let’s start with a little story.

Karma was our first single ever. Back when Flare was five people, it was the first song we ever sang. I produced it, wrote the lyrics with Anje, and the group sang it. The rest is history you can read on our January blog!

In one of our regular meetings, Anje and I spoke about our first singles as a duo. What was our direction, what were our plans, and stuff like that. Anje had found a different beat for the lyrics of Karma, and I mentioned that she could make a demo, and we could make it our first single. Even though we already had a version of it, it could be our way to start over officially. Some sort of revival, if you want. We wrote the original Karma together; now we’re singing it together.

A few weeks later, I found an instrumental from a producer I really like and it was titled Black Swan. It was then that the theme came to life: Karma vs Black Swan. Since Anje was working on Karma, I was tasked with working on the lyrics of Black Swan.

I had a huge challenge: what was Black Swan supposed to be about? Of course, it was supposed to be an opposition: karma versus something else. But what is the opposite of Karma? I did some research and found vengeance to be the best option. However, Black Swan and vengeance were hard to link together in a coherent way.

Enlisting Anje’s help, I started writing down ideas and notes (which are very funny). As we spoke I went back to the lyrics of Karma, and remembered how Anje and I thought the lyrics originally reminded us of Girl from Nowhere’s Nanno (a show I recommend!). I thought it’d be fun to write a song inspired by Yuri. A majorly accepted theory within the fans of the show is that Nanno represents Karma and Yuri represents vengeance. Watching clips of the show secured that idea for us, and it directed the writing of the lyrics.

Now, I must admit, I don’t like Yuri. At all. However, you have to admit that the character is very good and plays excellent opposition to Nanno. Seeing as Yuri is one of the most disliked characters of the series, I decided to play with that, to tell the story of someone ambitious who thinks they are better than their counterpart. It also works with the metaphor of the black swan: an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. I will not spoil the show, but I believe that Yuri fits that description. In other words, Nanno never predicted that Yuri would gain powers similar to hers and play such a huge role in her missions.

I know I delved more into the writing of Black Swan than Karma, but I felt like it was a good way to explain our inspiration for the EP. There are many more stories about this EP to tell, as well as lessons learned and new goals to attain. But for now, I leave you with this short blog.

Girls Like No Other comes out July 7th! Pre-save and stay tuned!