London’s influential electro-rockers, Sohodolls returned last year after being out of the limelight for more than a decade. A globally enforced lockdown revived one of their classics “Bang Bang Bang Bang” into an unexpected viral TikTok hit among the Gen Z glitterati. It so happened that Madonna had posted a recording she made of her daughter Estere Ciccone performing her own original choreography to the track and as part of the ensuing TikTok trend “Bang Bang Bang Bang” rocketed up the Billboard Top 50 and is now sitting on over 100m Spotify streams.
The new viral attention inspired Sohodolls to reform and release new singles “Letter To My Ex (Thank You Goodbye)” and “Bad” in 2022, which both picked up considerable press & radio attention, including airplay from Nels Hylton on Radio 1’s ‘Future Alternative’, Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio and features with highly regarded music blog Atwood Magazine. Now Sohodolls have gone back to where it all began to re-write and re-record “Bang Bang Bang Bang” to bring it up to date for 2023.
On how the new Otabek Salamov produced version of “Bang Bang Bang Bang” came about, main Sohodolls songwriter Maya Von Doll said: “I changed the lyrics from “hold the gun” to “kill the gun” to make my standpoint clearer. I’ve always been against guns. After BBBB went viral, I could see some confusion with some people believing it was a song about school shootings and that’s not what it’s about at all and I didn’t want people to carry that narrative nor think I was glorifying guns. I was slightly referencing Kurt Cobain’s suicide but mostly because I was so shocked and saddened by what happened as Nirvana was such a big part of my youth.”
“The song is actually about being a misfit and finding your tribe. I wrote this song when I was a teenager feeling like I didn’t quite fit in with any of the cliques at school, but I started going out in Soho and meeting all these wonderfully different people. Even though I’ve always been anti-guns, I wanted to update the spirit for the times we’re living in now where you have to be clearer about what you stand for. I do think gun ownership is a bad idea.”
