Bunny Is A Rider

Album: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Bunny Is A Rider" is an independence fantasy about an elusive woman. She is so impossible to get a hold of that even a "satellite can't find her."
  • Caroline Polachek released the summer jam on July 14, 2021, explaining it's a post-lockdown spin on emotional distance. "I think after being so available in the pandemic, everyone felt so attached to their phones, and that was good – we took good care of each other," Polacheck said during an episode of Charli XCX's "Best Song Ever" podcast. "I thought the idea of being free and sexy in the summer was actually just like no strings attached, no responsibilities, even if that's just a temporary state."
  • Polachek started working on the bass-driven track during a two-day spree of writing with British EDM music producer Danny L. Harle. She ad-libbed the words "bunny is a rider" with the initial melody sketch. Though she was unsure what it all meant, Polachek loved the words and carried on rolling with it. "Slowly these pictures came together as this alter ego of Bunny," she told Apple Music, "or like the state of being Bunny where you're just completely non-findable and no one's getting their texts back."
  • Harle centered his production on a sustained bass tone. The producer learned bass guitar aged 12, and here he puts his bass-shredding skills to good use. "Live bass has always been my favorite instrument, besides the human voice," Polachek told Crack magazine. "I love writing for bass, I love a bass hook and I love what it does to your body. So, I was keen to write something that was really bass-led.

    We wrote this song that was just really based around this groove. Almost immediately, I heard this kind of stream of consciousness, dream-like chorus for it."
  • There is also whistling, a triangle, birdsong and Harle's baby daughter's first vocal cameo in the mix.
  • Pitchfork named "Bunny Is A Rider" their Best Song of 2021. They wrote: "The thrill of the song is wrapped up in how it skirts any pressure to lay out its intentions, how it moves at its own whims. Bunny keeps you guessing."

Comments: 1

  • Liquidnonsense from UsaThe title "Bunny Is A Rider" is likely a reference to Of Montreal's 2007 song "Bunny Ain't No Kind Of Rider". However, both songs seem to be saying almost the same thing—the singer can't be easily pinned down and won't tie themselves to just anybody. They almost seem to have opposite definitions of the same phrase.
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