“Talking to Myself,” the fourth single from Growing Up, explores self-doubt and the—unfortunately—universal experience of replaying awkward moments repeatedly in one’s head, long after the opportunity to change or fix those situations has long passed by.
The video, on the other hand, takes a slightly more literal take on the lyrics, with each of the band members taking a doll doppelganger of themselves on their favorite activities, from swan boat rides to record shopping. But when the Linda Lindas’ band practice has a strict “no dolls allowed” policy, things take a darker turn.
The video was inspired by the notorious “Living Doll” episode of the famed anthology series The Twilight Zone. In the 1963 episode, a haunted talking doll threatens to kill the stepfather of her owner. The music video doesn’t take things in quite a murderous a direction, though, with the dolls merely attempting to take over the rehearsal space for their own band, The Lil’ Lindas.
"Originally, the concept for the video was we would hold up puppets and we would play around with those. Later, we sort of got inspiration from the Twilight Zone’s Talky Tina, and we wanted to do something a little darker," guitarist Lucia de la Garza told Rolling Stone. “That’s why it’s in black and white.”
The Linda Lindas are four teen girls: Lucia de la Garza, 15, on guitar; her sister Mila de la Garza, 11, on drums; Eloise Wong, 14, on bass and Bela Salazar, 17, on guitar. All four members share vocal duties—and occasionally swap instruments. The band was founded in 2018, taking their name from the cult japanese film Linda Linda Linda, itself about a all teen-girl band.
Early success in the Los Angeles punk scene led Amy Poehler to ask them to record songs for her Netflix film Moxie, and they were brought in for another Netflix project, The Claudia Kishi Club, a short documentary about the character from The Baby-Sitters Club.
However, the band really broke out when a recording of their song “Racist, Sexist Boy” from a live appearance at the Los Angeles Public Library went viral in May 2021.
The song was written after a schoolmate told Mila de la Garza that his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people due to the pandemic. When she told him she was Chinese, he avoided her.
Though the full concert got over 766,000 views on its own, the stand-alone clip of “Racist, Sexist Boy” got over 1.3 million views, and the band was signed to the seminal punk rock record label Epitaph shortly after the concert.
Since then, the band has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Late Show with James Corden andNPR’s World Cafe. They also count a number of music legends among their famous fans, including Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Riot Grrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.
Growing Up is due out April 8 from Epitaph Records. Newsweek reached out to Epitaph for more information.
