La QViernew · Oct 9ES

La Q · Viernew · what's playing

Say It To My Face

Mel 4Ever · @mel4ever

Consider this an invitation. But careful, it could be your last. Mel 4Ever's new single, pop with punk in its blood, is out now.

Their message to Madrid

Fun fact

At 18, at a Kesha show in Atlanta, Kesha pulled her on stage and Saran-wrapped her to a chair. Years later she was the one on stage, opening for Slayyyter.

From the teaser for «Say It To My Face»

Who they are

She grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in what she has described as a gay desert, and moved to New York in 2015. In 2019 she got sober and started transitioning, and in 2021 she started writing songs. Her first show was on the Lower East Side: 150 people, sold out, and she threw up before going on.

By 2021 she was part of Brooklyn's scene: Bushwig, a listening party at C'mon Everybody, nights with her older sister, Charlene Incarnate, already a fixture of Brooklyn nightlife. That year she put out Tranic Attack, an EP born from her panic attacks, with "Big Tits (Whoopsie)" and "About Fashion".

In 2023 came She Culture.1: seven songs about transition and transphobia. She processes her voice heavily, partly because of vocal dysphoria, and she doesn't call it hyperpop: punk is what guides her. Of her chaotic, unrehearsed shows, she says "It's like church."

More in La Q

ARQUE typeTake the quiz →

ArtistThe Wildcard

She took our quiz and came out a Wildcard, which tracks: a girl from Alabama who got sober, started transitioning, started writing songs in 2021 and sold out her very first show. Nobody, including her, knew what was coming next.

SongThe Anchor

The Anchor doesn't move, and that's the point: this is a song about standing your ground while someone tries to charm you out of it.

The read

There is a straight line from She Culture.1, which screamed at everything that decides what a woman is, to this one, which looks a single person in the eye.

Her teaser said it plainly: hell hath no fury.

Put it on when the group chat has gone quiet in a suspicious way.

Listen with: your Catalyst, the friend who grabs your phone and texts them back for you.

Why we love it

If you ever caught her in Brooklyn, you'll know: you couldn't help but be drawn in, a little fascinated, by the magnetism of someone who had made her transition the subject of her songs and then threw herself across the room singing them, dysphoria and subway and grocery store and all, over synths that sound one second from breaking.

Her music would rather be true than liked, and this one is for whoever keeps playing games with her, sweet when it's late and suddenly vague by daylight, leaving her to wonder what this even is, something, nothing, everything. So say it.

And then there's how it sounds. You can hear the punk in her from the first second, and nobody else makes an electronic scream this charming; it might intimidate you a little at first, but you end up letting the electropop take over. The production is clever, frantic and still sewn together with something emotional that leaves you rooting for her, in the right or in the wrong, and with Crystal Castles in the DNA you can't go wrong.

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