Exploring Genres and Capitalism in New Album Discussion

You’re listening to Burnt Toast!

I’m Virginia Sole-Smith. Today I’m chatting with Annie Nardolilli and Louisa Hall, of the band Griefcat.

Annie and Louisa are a duo that you can’t easily categorize or file into a neat little genre. They wear matching outfits, they create beautifully blended harmonies and write brilliant lyrics. Their new album Late Stage Capitalism, dropped April 19 and explores how unbridled capitalism has invaded every facet of modern life, from workplace politics to interpersonal relationships, and even our most private moments. 

We’re also going to talk perhaps an unprecedented amount about poop today. You’ve been warned.

And if you usually read the transcripts—this is an episode to put in your ears, because we’re playing clips of Annie and Louisa’s awesome and hilarious music throughout!

PS. If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. (We like 5 stars!)

Episode 141 Transcript

Louisa

My name is Louisa. I’ve been part of Griefcat for five years now—becaue Griefcat has only been around for five years—but I’ve been a singer songwriter for about ten years, based in Washington, DC. And I’m just just a ball of laughs. 

Annie

I’m Annie. I have also been in Griefcat for five years. I was also a singer/songwriter solo, and now we work together. It’s great. 

Louisa

It’s the best! You’re also a ball? a bundle? Of laughs.

Annie

I’m a bundle of joy. 

Louisa

You are a human baby.

Virginia

You are both a delight. So we are going to chat about your new album, Late Stage Capitalism.

Louisa

Late Stage Capitalism is our second studio album, and our first theme album. The theme is—surprise!—late stage capitalism. It’s about how capitalism has invaded every single facet of our lives, and our reaction to it. The songs are all really funny, but I think they’re also very relatable. One of my favorite things about the album is that every single song has a different genre. We’ve got a punk song. We’ve got an old time-y 1920s style song. We have a 90s love song. A lot of different variety. So if you hate one of those, you might like something else. 

Virginia

Do you have favorite genres to write in? Were there some songs that you were like, “this is a real slog that I have to do a punk song,” or was it all kind of fun to experiment with? 

Annie

The punk song was definitely our favorite.

Louisa

It was a delight. 

Annie

That’s definitely my favorite song on the album. We also have an 80’s style “We Are The World” kind of song. That’s the first song on the album, called “Benevolent Billionaire.” That one is also one of my favorites, because it was more of a collaborative thing. 

There’s really nothing on the album that was a slog to try and figure out. Definitely some songs were harder than others to get the genre niche right. But I mean, it’s fun. It’s like playing dress up. Just playing around.

Louisa

I would say that what we do with songwriting—we’re not writing in a specific genre. We write with a guitar or ukulele, so it has a folk type of base. But then from there when we go into the studio we start to hone the song a little bit, that’s when we start to be like, this is the genre. The genre is almost a surprise to us. We don’t start off intending on a genre. 

Virginia

Let’s talk about “Benevolent Billionaire.” I am obsessed with it and I love that it is a takeoff of “We Are The World.”

Annie

I remember talking with my brother one day and he used the phrase, “there’s no such thing as a benevolent billionaire.” And then we were having a rehearsal one day, I was struggling with some chords and that sentence somehow fit the particular chords that we were going for. So then we developed this little song around it. Louisa had the idea for the visual aesthetic of the song being this 1980’s “We Are The World” style power ballad. We got a bunch of our friends to sing a chorus on it. They’re acting as all those celebrities.

Louisa

Like Bono. 

Annie

Yeah, like Bono. That came together really organically.

Louisa

For those who haven’t heard the song, Bono is not actually featured. That was just what I wanted in my heart.

Virginia

But you feel his essence, I think, when you listen to the song. It’s such a clever commentary because those celebrity group singalongs are always so cringe-y. I’m thinking of that one that came out at the start of the pandemic.

Louisa

Imagine? It was just so off the mark.

Virginia

They were all like in their beach houses. 

Louisa

Everyone else: We’re in our little one bedrooms. 

Virginia

We’re all quarantined. We’re all getting through it. Some of us have an infinity pool. Some of us don’t.  

Louisa

But together, we’ll get through it.

Virginia

But not that much together, because they live in a compound.

Louisa

Exactly. Stay off my land. 

Virginia

It’s really the perfect aesthetic for the benevolent billionaire song. It’s so good. 

Louisa

Thank you. 

Virginia

So obviously, I love everything you write. But I have to admit I first found you two because people kept DM’ing me your song about how fat people pooping the same as everyone else. 

Annie

Forgot about that!

Virginia

I know fatness isn’t the primary focus of the new album, but I we have to spend some time on that song because it’s really, really close to my heart. 

Louisa

I love that.  I would say that fatness permeates everything that we do because we’re fat. We’re always going to be fat creators creating art with our fat cells.

Annie

Writing what you know. 

Louisa

Exactly, exactly. The way that that song came about is that one of the songs on the new album is called Revolution (Poop at Work). It’s just a 90 second poop joke done in a 1920’s style. And the Internet loves this song. It blew up. 

At this point, I think we have like over 25 million views of our content online. A lot of that is this specific song. With that virality, the trolls came out of the woodwork. 

We got so many people just commenting like, “these girls must drop warships!!” and “I bet their poop is huge!!!” Everybody kept commenting about how large our poop must be. And like, I think they’re just average? So that song was a response to people that just don’t seem to know science. A little response to the haters out there. 

Virginia

Bigger people don’t necessarily take bigger shits. 

Annie

I do a lot of pet sitting. I walk small dogs, I walk big dogs. They all poop just about the same. 

Louisa

That’s surprising to me. 

Annie

If you gotta go, you gotta go. What you eat is what you eat. We decided to fight back against our haters and just to enlighten people that actually if you really are curious about our bowel movements, they’re the same as yours. So whatever you imagine yours to be, that’s what ours are like, too.

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Louisa

I will say, I haven’t actually examined any other adults feces, so I might be the one making an assumption here. 

Virginia

The science was not rigorous.

Louisa

We need to test this. 

Virginia

But I think that was an important PSA and valuable education that you are sharing with everyone.

Louisa

I’m so glad that it resonated. 

Virginia

I did want to talk about trolls a little bit. Because one thing I know is that, as fat women on the internet, we have trolls. We have our little fans in the gallery. How are you doing with that side of things? Especially with 25 million views? That’s a lot of eyeballs.

Annie

So originally when we started getting hate comments, we were deleting them. We were feeling really bad about them and really focusing on them a little too much. 

Then I had this shift in perspective by watching a Dolly Parton interview where she was talking about, I don’t really care what people have to say about me because I know what I look like. Like, I’m already in on the joke. I’m very well aware. So if you’re going to make fun of me, either be more creative or don’t.

So then I had this mental shift of like, we know what our bodies look like and we’re not ashamed of them. We don’t see it as an insult, therefore why delete the comments? Why feel shameful about the comments? If anything, just use them as fodder to point out how weird people feel about seeing fat women on the internet and how that’s a you problem, not a me problem. 

And of course, hate comments are still engagement, people! We’d get hate comments and then we’d have our fans respond to the hate comments, and it would just sort of snowball into more engagement for the algorithm. Hey, we’ll take that, baby. It’s show business!

Louisa

I would really try to jump on and try to absorb the bomb because I didn’t want Annie to feel that. So I was almost like eating all of these hate comments and it was really affecting me. And when Annie had that shift in perspective, we started responding in the affirmative. 

So somebody would be like, “wow, their crap weighs 37 pounds!!” and we’d just write “38!!!!” So we would just start agreeing with people and be like, “yeah, you’re right.” Once we started doing that, it just became fun. It became like a game almost, how we responded to these things. 

That being said, we’ve been lucky that we haven’t gotten like a lot of violent messages. Anything that’s violent or scary, I’m not going to engage with any of that. But if someone’s just being a jerk, you might as well. So when somebody did comment, at one point, “these girls must dump warships.” We responded “reporting for duty” with a little salute. And the person was like, okay, that’s pretty good. 

Virginia

Aw, you won them over!

Louisa

Sometimes people do do turn a little bit, which is kind of fun to see.

Virginia

I mean, I fervently believe that troll commentary is too high a price. People will often be like, “well, that’s the price you pay for being a public figure.” And I’m like, no, that price is unacceptable. Nobody should be asked to deal with that. But I really believe if you can make treasure from the troll trash, like, by all means. Because it just keeps you from getting dragged down into the muck with them. So it seems like a very healthy approach. And also, again, brings us bangers like “Fat People Poop The Same As You.” 

Annie

One thing that we did learn is that not everybody is enlightened about speaking about bodies as we are. Meaning when somebody would comment, like, “all these fat women, blah, blah, blah,” we’d have people respond being like, “well, you’re one to talk,” and we’re like, no.

Louisa

Yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of “look at your wife,” and that’s not helping. 

Annie

We’re not here for that. 

Virginia

It’s in the same vein as “you’re not fat, you’re beautiful” sort of comments.

Louisa

Not mutually exclusive.

Virginia

Okay, let’s talk about fashion. Listeners need to know that Louisa and Annie are here wearing matching rainbow sequined kaftans? Dresses? 

Louisa

These are kaftans. We’re in our kaftan era. 

Virginia

I’m a little mad I didn’t know about this ahead of time, although there are no sequins in my house. We could have worked it out is all I’m saying. But they look amazing. And they both deliberately put these on before we started recording, they were like, “We have to get into costume.” So in all of your videos you have amazing outfits. Sequins are a frequent theme. I need to know where you’re getting these. I need to know how this idea came. Is there a vision board? Tell me everything.

Louisa

We didn’t used to match—well, we would slightly match when we first became a band. We had outfit themes, like one was dinosaurs because I had a dinosaur dress and Annie had a dinosaur shirt. Or autumn leaves—I had a dress with leaves on it and Annie had a dress with leaves on it. A couple years ago for our first album release (which ended up getting canceled because of COVID) I bought two dresses on sale. They were these black and silver star sequined dresses from Eloquii and I got them for us to wear and we wore them to an outdoor show that we ended up doing later in 2020. And it was just so much fun to match that we can’t go back. This is our lifestyle now. We must always twin.

So from then on we just keep an eye out for just the most fun or outlandish things that want to wear. I mean, we are adults just playing dress up all the time. It’s the best. So Eloquii is a big spot where we get things. Fringe and Company. Lauren of Palm Springs also has a lot of kaftans that we love. Wild Gardenia Boutique gave us these incredible jean jackets in the Benevolent Billionaire video. 

Louisa

With the rhinestones. I’m always scouting and looking for different pieces that would be Griefcat-wear. 

Virginia

Especially because plus size amazing sequins is a niche market. It’s not like you can just go into every mall and find this.

Louisa

Oh, yeah. All the Internet. 

Virginia

I’m just admiring the amount of work that goes into that. We talk a lot about plus size fashion accessibility on Burnt Toast, and to be fair most people are asking questions like “how do I get jeans that fit” not “where do I get a rainbow sequined kaftan,” but I’m very excited we have sources for that now, when the question comes up. 

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Louisa

I will say that one of the reasons that I’m really enjoying our kaftan era is because we also love a jumpsuit and we’ve had all sorts of fun dresses, but our weights tend to cycle. We’ve both gone up and down quite a bit since starting Griefcat. I joke that we go up and down quite a bit, but it’s like the stock market, it just evens out at about 10% trend increase every year. So what’s nice about kaftans is that these are the same size and we’ll just throw a belt on them if you want a little bit more of like a fashion moment, but they always fit, which is really nice. 

Annie

Especially because we’re still a DIY band, so we can’t be spending money every time something doesn’t fit anymore on brand new sequined outfit. Having something that moves with us wherever our bodies decide to go is really, really nice just to stay fabulous all the time. 

Virginia

We also talk a lot about fashion rules you can challenge and I often feel like fat folks are told not to wear the big and the bright colors. I remember years where I was like, I love a maxi dress, but I can’t wear maxi dresses because I’ll look too big in them. And then I was like, actually fuck that. I will just wear a big dress. But so often the way it’s presented in mainstream fashion is like, tiny little girl in a big dress. So you’re really subverting that norm, which I love.

Louisa

That’s been definitely a journey. I mean, these are some horizontal stripes, you know? We’ve learned to break fashion rules as we’ve gotten older. I like to dress now like I’m a five-year-old picking out what I want to wear and I want the shiniest, boldest thing that I can do because I haven’t been able to do that in my life. Growing up as a fat person was like I can get like khakis and a peplum top. 

Annie

I was shopping with my mom when I was in fifth grade in her section. 

Virginia

The trauma of the JC Penney. 

Louisa

Ugh, JC Penney’s, always. 

Virginia

But I love that you’re like, “Now we take up space with our music and with our stage presence.”

Louisa

That’s right. But our poop takes the same amount of space as everybody else’s. 

Virginia

Right. Bigger dresses, regular size poop. Average poop. 

Louisa

Yes, exactly. It’s our next t shirt? 

Virginia

So what’s your process? Are you taking a break from writing while you promote the album? Are you always writing? What comes next?

Louisa

I’d say we’re always writing. 

Annie

I think we’re always writing.

Louisa

We’ve got a couple of music videos that we’re planning, so there are two more that we’re hoping to make at least for this album with some different themes. One of them is for a song “Sponsor Us” which is entirely made up of corporate slogans. We’ve got some other ideas, one involving a pirate ship. So I need to find somebody with a boat.

Louisa

DM us if you have a boat. It’s going to be great. I’m actually going to start working on our next album, too. We’ve got we already have enough material for a second album, or third album, I guess. Just always writing, creating and just playing shows. 

Virginia

And are you continuing with the capitalism theme? Or are you going in totally new directions?

Annie

This album is going to be a little bit sexier. We’re thinking about calling it Griefcat After Dark. I think all of our songs are always going to have a wink towards fighting the powers that be or being subversive, but this one is definitely less about capitalism overtly and more about bras. 

Louisa

I do think that there is also something a little bit subversive about being larger people that are still like, hi, we’re sexual beings. You don’t have a lot of that. I mean, we’ve got a little bit of these days, but it’s still not particularly pervasive because I think as a larger person, that kind of defies the stereotype of fuckability.

Annie

We have a song coming up on the next album that is the first time we’ve ever written from the perspective of a girl or female love interest, as opposed to we tend to write about male love interest. But Socks is about a woman. We’re still diversifying our subject matter. Growing, learning, growing, learning.

Virginia

I love the through line of questioning norms, questioning expectations, questioning systems that are not serving us. That seems really consistent through your work and really interesting. Obviously, the songs are funny, and you’re here for the joke, but there’s also this other layer.

Louisa

Thank you for picking up on that. I appreciate that. 

Virginia

What kind of response are you getting to the new album?

Annie

It depends who you’re asking. Are you asking our parents?

Virginia

Well, now I need to know.

Louisa

My parents are wonderful. They are the best. But my mom is a little bit more conservative, as far as the things she’s willing to talk about. So she’ll hear some of the lyrics and say, “you sound so beautiful, but these lyrics!” She’s like, “my sweet Louisa.” I showed a video the other day to my mom and at one of lyrics, she recoiled. Then she apologized for recoiling, but it was very cute.

Annie

For the most part, the response we get is very positive. It seems like we’re striking a nerve with people who are hearing things that they think about all the time, but maybe not presented in this particular way, which is lovely. 

Virginia

I do think we’re in this moment of really reckoning with capitalism and with what workplace culture asks of us. Like burnout culture, hustle culture—all of that. And you’re really tapping into a lot of that collective angst. We need the songs for the revolution.

Butter

Louisa

My Butter is the most recent season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, UK versus The World.

Virginia

Oooh, I haven’t seen.

Louisa

It is so, so good. I love it. It’s international drag. It’s beautiful. It’s inspiring. It’s hilarious. Just absolutely brilliant. And very inspiring for me in so many ways.

Annie

My Butter is the music of Chappell Roan. I’m really into her recently. If you don’t know, her aesthetic is very over the top. Drag queens are one of her inspirations. You talked about a five-year-old playing dress up, as a princess, big hair, all this stuff. Anyways, she makes incredibly wonderful pop music and ballads and she’s just so much fun. I really adore her. She’s inspiring.

Virginia

I’m excited to look her up. That sounds wonderful. 

I was like, well, since I’m talking to a girl group, I’ve got to talk about Girls5eva. I feel like y’all would be spiritual partners with them. For anyone not watching the show, it is about a group of women in their 40s who were a girl band sort of like the Spice Girls in the ‘90s, and now are reconvening to bring it back. The music is so good, the characters are so good. It’s delightful and hilarious and it’s totally my comfort watch right now.

Louisa

I love it. That show is great. I’m only in season one right now but I’m loving it so far.

Virginia

Well, this was such a treat. I’m so glad I got to hang out with you guys. Tell everyone where can we follow you and what can we do to support your work?

Louisa

We are on Instagram at Griefcatpartytime. Our band name is Griefcat, but that was taken by a cool goth girl in Malaysia on Instagram. So, Griefcatpartytime on Instagram. Then we’re Griefcat everywhere else, like Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, music, Apple Music, et cetera.

Annie

We have this new album out, so you will be able to find a whole bunch of new music from us that we’re super excited to put out into the world. So come be our friend, we want you.

Louisa

We’re also very responsive, so if you want to just send us a note. I love to chat with people in our DMs. Always feel free to comment, feel free to send us a note. We’ll get back to you. 

Virginia

Feel free not to comment on the size of their poop though.

Louisa

Or be like wow, their poop must be tiny. They’re like gerbils.

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The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith (follow me on Instagram) and Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.

The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.

Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.

Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.

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