Songfacts®:

• Fresh off signing with Dirty Hit, Bleachers burst back onto the scene with "Modern Girl." Released on September 20, 2023, this saxophone-laden pop anthem threw open the doors on a new chapter for the band.
• "'Modern Girl' felt like a big, Knock down the front door, we're back! It's giving me something that I felt like has been missing for a long time, which is, there's so much weight in my music and there's so much intensity, and there's so much f---ing weight in the world, and I just wanted music to be f---ing fun and irreverent again," Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff told Vulture.
• This is the lead single from Bleachers. Sure, the album might offer a wider range of moods, but for Antonoff, "Modern Girl" was the perfect introduction. It's a vibrant electro-pop concoction laced with blasts from Evan Smith's saxophone – a potent reminder of the '80s dancefloor.
  
  "Putting out albums is a tug-of-war between past and future, and 'Modern Girl' just felt like this perfect shock and comfort moment, both honoring where Bleachers has been and where it's going," Antonoff mused to Billboard. "I've always believed in this 'house' mentality of just understanding what an album is, and 'Modern Girl' just feels like the biggest front door."
• The song's inspiration? A stark contrast between the world Antonoff saw online – all doom and gloom – and the energy pulsing around him in real life. "I walk around New York City and I just see people f--king and fighting, basically," he told The Guardian.
• "Modern Girl" throws playful shout-outs to Bleachers' band members. Saxophonist Evan Smith and bassist-keyboardist Ex Reyes get name-checked before a closing flourish of "Hutch!"
  
  This isn't the first time Bleachers have saluted their drummer Sean Hutchinson in such a way – "How Dare You Want More" (2021) ends similarly. On the How Dare You Want Tour, Antonoff would lead the crowd in a thunderous chant of "Hutch!" – a testament to the drummer's fan-favorite status.
• The "Modern Girl" video, directed by Alex Lockett, captures the spirit of the song. It's a full-blown jam session in a vintage recording studio complete with checkerboard floors. "The idea of the sound of the song and the look of the video was to capture what it's like to be at a show, which is very easy to say, but very hard to do," Antonoff told Radio X's Dan O'Connell.
  
  "And so when we made that video, we made that room really hot and we were sweating and that's also a thing that happens when a band has toured the way we've toured and have the kind of live audience we have where we can channel something because of that."
• "Modern Girl" found its way onto the soundtrack of the fourth series of Netflix' Sex Education. Apparently, while finishing the album, Antonoff's manager was sniffing out the perfect placements. "This was just one where they said 'This song would be good for this scene' and I checked out what the scene was gonna be and thought it was cool," said Antonoff.