Gen And The Degenerates vocalist Genevieve Glynn-Reeves guides us track by track through their debut album ‘Anti-Fun Propaganda’, out now via Marshall Records.
Kids Wanna Dance
“I knew I wanted this song to be the opener because I thought it was funny to start an album with the line ‘the truth is, the world is ending’. It’s about the dissonance of being in the early stages of your life while the world is in the early stages of its demise. Working hard to build your own future when you’re not sure there’ll be a planet to live on. But as the song says, I’m not a nihilist. The idea isn’t to throw caution to the wind and do whatever we want. It’s about trying to find those moments of joy for ourselves when things seem hopeless. There’s a lot of criticism of younger generations and their supposed recklessness. I think that’s a little hypocritical coming from the generations that damaged the environment to a near irreversible point and tanked the economy.”
Girls!
“There was a trending TikTok sound that was like, ‘Don’t you hate it when girls… no, actually I love it when girls, etc.’. It kind of stuck in my head. I was thinking about how strange it is that straight men are socialised to hate straight women. Meanwhile, their obsession with male approval and loyalty is a kind of homo-erotic. As a queer person attracted to both, who doesn’t have that strict binary programming at the front of my mind, it’s funny to observe. When I see these men who pick partners they have nothing in common with and then complain, it’s like, mate, just date someone else. So, I actually went on TikTok myself, explained my concept for the song and asked women to comment on some complaints male partners had given them in the past. I flipped them on their heads and turned them into a list of things I loved.”
Anti-Fun Propaganda
“This started as a demo Sean (guitar) brought in; he was listening to scratchy off-kilter punk-type stuff, Parquet Courts, Brainiac, and just stuff with weird raucous energy. The lyrics originated from a silly game I would play in my head, labelling everything as different kinds of propaganda. E.g. the myth that cutting a worm makes two new worms is Anti-worm propaganda spread by birds to make them easier to eat. While playing this game I realised how much of what we consume every day is messages to make us feel bad about ourselves so we spend money on aspirational products. Don’t eat that, eat this. Don’t wear that, wear this. Don’t live like that, live like this. It sucks the joy out of everything. The pursuit of self-improvement is admirable, but combined with these consumerist ideas, it’s just misdirection. There has to be a point where you go, ‘This is enough; let’s just have some fun for a bit’.”
That’s Enough Internet for Today
“This started as a bass line Jay first played during a sound check in Berlin. It caught Sean’s ear and when we got back, they jammed it in the rehearsal room. While they did that, I was curled up on the sofa, giggling maniacally to myself as I wrote the lyrics. I spend a lot of time on the internet as a result of being in this band. There are great things about it, but it can also be really exhausting. This song is me venting all the things I dislike about experiencing people (including myself) online. It takes all the nuance and complexity out of a person. You kind of have to become a brand and feel pressured to have opinions on things that you aren’t informed enough on, to remain relevant.”
All Figured Out
“God, I feel so lost so much of the time. That’s what this song is about, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’ve chosen this career because the act of writing and performing is when I feel most myself, but a lot of what comes with it does the opposite. This path is so unstable. We’ve been working at this for years without making money from it. I want to be in a band and live that lifestyle, but I also want to be settled and have a family at some point, and at the moment it seems like an impossible dream. I think a lot of young people feel the same way. We can’t build lives for ourselves in the same way previous generations have.”
Plan B (Interlude)
“This kind of leads on from ‘All Figured Out’. It’s a snapshot of my alternate daydream life. It’s set in a Cornish village called St Agnes where my grandma lives. That village is etched into my psyche. The thing is, it’s funny because it’s also entirely unachievable. A comfortable life in Cornwall is very difficult. There is a lot of poverty. The house prices are astronomical because they’re all bought up by the rich as 2nd homes.
When we recorded it Ross (producer) set up a mic in the hallway for me and my guitar, just sat on a cushion on the floor. Then Sean added layers to create a little echoey lo-fi world for it to sit in, Mellotron and 12 string run through his weird pedals.”
Famous
“This is the oldest song on the record by a couple of years. We’d been wanting to change it up for a while to make it fit the newer material, and when we got in the studio, Ross basically said yeah, this is classic rock bollocks, it needs to be less Stones and more Velvets. I don’t know if it quite sounds like that, but it sounds good!
It’s kind of a fucked up, unrequited love song on the surface, but underneath I think it’s about self-acceptance, or the lack of it, needing accolades and validation to feel like you’re enough for someone. When I wrote it I was less certain about who I was, the lyrics were almost sincere. Now, and especially with the darker sonics, it’s a lot more satirical.”
BIG HIT SINGLE
“The highbrow answer is this song is about the experience of trying to create art under the expectations of late capitalism. The lowbrow, and more honest answer, is it’s me winding up our label. They made the reasonable request for us to write more songs like the one song of ours that did really well. Unfortunately, I have issues with authority. Always have. I decided to write exactly the kind of song they asked for but with the most puckish lyrics I could think of. Luckily, they have a good sense of humour over at Marshall.”
Post-Cool
“I just don’t care about being cool anymore. I wanted to make fun of it. There’s often pressure to be a certain way in the music industry and I don’t think I fit the criteria. I’m not moody or aloof or subtle. I’m friendly and direct and silly. So yeah, I killed cool.”
Jude’s Song
“I wrote this song to my aunty Jude. She passed away a few years ago from cancer and it’s a loss I still feel very deeply. She was an incredibly important and formative person to me. I wanted to talk to her in this song so it’s kind of a conversation that starts in her last days and carries on until now. The music reflects that journey as well. All the way from the kind of earth shattering void you feel at the beginning to later in the grieving process when you start to be able to enjoy memories and celebrate the person.
One night I was with some of my family in Portugal where my parents live. We stayed up late drinking and talking about her. My Uncle (her husband) just threw his head back and shouted her name into the sky. It wasn’t sad though. It was joyful and there were all these stars above us because my parents live in the middle of nowhere. We’re not a religious family, it was more just this feeling of like wow, we were so lucky to get to know her. Like what are the odds? Of all the billions of people alive at all these different points across human history we got to be alive at the same time. For me that’s way more beautiful and affirming than any kind of idea of an afterlife. So that’s what I wanted the end of the song to be. A chance to be so grateful and hold that person’s memory close.
It’s her voice at the end as well and I think it’s the perfect way to end the album. She says this really beautiful thing about listening to people carefully but also letting them figure things out for themselves. That’s kind of what the whole album is about. I’m kind of asking people to listen while I figure things out. I don’t have any answers really but I hope it makes people feel less alone in it all.”
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