If you’ve spent the past month trying to get the Hillary Clinton-approved version of “Fight Song” out of your brain, try this song on for size. Feminist electronic punk band Le Tigre reunited last week to release an incredibly catchy new song, "I'm With Her" — and music video to go along with it — in support of the Democratic nominee.
The video, which was made by Le Tigre and Laura Parnes with artist collective Filmmakers for Hillary, features footage of rallies, protests, angry pussycats, and, yes, pantsuits galore. The video is full of trippy colors and catchy tunes, but a fun beat doesn’t take away from the message behind it.
“We wrote this song for people who are as frustrated as we are,” Le Tigre’s Kathleen Hanna told Refinery29 in a phone call with her and bandmate Johanna Fateman. The song references issues central to the campaign, like abortion and gun control, as well as Hillary Clinton’s long history of public service.
“I think she’s one of the best qualified candidates, it’s been said over and over, but I said it first!” Hanna said. “She’s probably the most experienced candidate for the job, the best candidate for the job, in the whole time I’ve been alive. And she knows what she’s doing.”
Hanna and Fateman said that they’d had pretty similar thoughts on supporting Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “Early on, someone used one of our songs for a pro-Hillary thing and we were both into it,” Hanna said. “It was just like, ‘We have to do something,’” she recalled. “I was like, 'What can I do?' And it was like, ‘Oh. We can write a song. That’s what we do.'” Fateman and third bandmate JD Samson did the preliminary writing of the song.
The song makes no bones about what the artists think of Clinton’s opponent Donald Trump.
“We kind of made our point very clear in the song — we want people to vote for Hillary Clinton because Donald Trump is a dangerous bigot, because we want to preserve reproductive rights in this country, and because we want gun control. And, I mean, there’s other reasons, but those are kind of the points we hit, and I think that many compassionate thinking Americans share,” Fateman said.
But the ultimate message behind the video — quite literally — is very simple. The video ends with stark letters on a black background, reminding viewers of the election’s November 8 date with a message that Fateman reiterated.
“I hope that they will vote with us,” she said.
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