Badibaba

Album: All Fours (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • Over guitars, synthesizer and a brisk beat, vocalist Lottie Pendlebury deadpans about hunankind's parasitic relationship to our planet. The repeated nonsense syllables "Badi badi ba ba" in the chorus disguise lyrics about how we are looking the other way when it comes to environmental catastrophe.
  • The song finds Goat Girl highlighting the hypocrisy of the West, which still benefits from the environmentally damaging industrial revolution, in criticizing third-world countries for their own industrial development. A writer at Uncut magazine told Lottie Pendlebury that politics seem like a big influence on the band's songs. She replied:

    "It's something that's always been important to us. We pride ourselves on being leftists, and that's not just shown through the music, but through the way we live our lives, the things we do outside of the band. That's obviously going to show itself through the lyrics, and also in the way we are with each other - it's very much a collective. It's very democratized in how we work together. You have to practice what you preach."
  • The song originated out of a jam where the band members all switched instruments: guitarist Ellie Rose Davies played bass, drummer Rosy Jones guitar, and vocalist/guitarist Lottie Pendlebury drums. When somebody came up with the "badi-badi-ba-ba" refrain, they all started chanting the nonsense lyric and thought it would be funny to keep it.
  • Ellie Rose Davies told Apple Music the song is not only about campaigning to save the planet but also about living it in our daily lives. "There are these factors of what it is to be human that are quite selfish, and it's about how that is unavoidable to a degree," she said, "but that has a knock-on effect for the rest of the planet and the planet's resources."
  • Goat Girl recorded the song for their second album, All Fours, and released it as their third single. The female four-piece recorded both sets with producer Dan Carey, who has also worked with Bat For Lashes, Franz Ferdinand and Fontaines D.C.

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