Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

[SONGS OF THE DECADE] #9 Le Tigre – Deceptacon

Posted on | December 22, 2009 | No Comments

SONGS OF THE DECADE #9

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

Le Tigre – Deceptacon (1999/2000)


Don’t let the DFA remix of this song fool you; that song’s only on several best of the decade lists a as a placeholder for the original. Allow me to cut through the arbitrary decade markers and invoke the London Calling rule just this once for a song released in October 1999, but with a larger impact felt in the following years.

With one song, Kathleen Hanna was able to prove that musical maturity did not mean losing lyrical bite, that polemics still has a place in pop when applied in the proper context, all while pointing out the flaws in the perception of girl pop that reoccur in rock ‘n’ roll again and again and again. What makes the song so prescient is that the same rage that was originally applied to “Suck My Left One” and “I Like Fucking” was now applied to the music community itself. Before the tribalism of what was once known as alternative rock began to shine through, Hanna was daring her detractors to depoliticize her rhyme over a keyboard that out-camped the campiest B-52′s track. Ultimately, people found it easier to ignore Hanna’s voice than to deal with the issues Hanna was addressing. A decade later, that voice has proven to be just as individualistic, impassioned, as vital as it was when it first emerged. “Deceptacon” is the primary article of one of the most important bands of the decade; I cannot leave it off the list due to a technicality.

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