Animal Collective - My Girls

With a little girl and by my spouse
I only want a proper house

Album: Merriweather Post Pavilion [8th album]
Recorded: Mississippi, USA
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia
Album Release: January 6th 2009
Single Release: March 23rd 2009 [Lead single]
Producer: Geologist, Panda Bear
Vocals: Animal Collective
Label: Domino Records

Music video


Early version from the Midi Festival 2007

Charts

Spotify: Over 55 million
YouTube Music: Over 19 million

Details

• The girls referred to in 'My Girls' are the wife and daughter of singer Noah 'Panda Bear' Lennox. The song is written as a letter to his father in which he promises to provide for his family, symbolically passing the mantle on to himself. It's a ritual of sombre importance despite its sonic levity. In what sounds like a vow the singer pledges "to provide for mine who ask I will, with heart, on my fathers grave." Lennox is becoming a man by seriously taking on the responsibility of fatherhood.
  
  The anti-materialist message of the song found purchase in the post-economic world of 2009. 2008 saw the largest recession in a century which resulted in many people losing not only their jobs but their homes, and sometimes their families as well. When ordinary people could see others experiencing such loss it made them take stock of what was truly important in their lives: those they loved.
  
  This positive example of masculinity, depicting both the role of father and husband as a responsibility, is often missing in rock music where the fairer sex are treated as if they're disposable and in hip hop acts who make frequent use of the words "bitches" and "hoes". It was encouraging to see a song about men respecting women do well both critically and commercially. It came at just the right time.
  
  
• 'Merriweather Post Pavilion' saw an enforced change in style for Animal Collective which was facilitated by their guitarist taking a break from the band. As a result of this, many of their new songs didn't include a guitar and they compensated for this my giving more prominence to the bass.
  
  The band were initially unsure of the song and recorded it more than once. They road-tested 'My Girls' on tour and found audiences warming to it as time went by.
  
  
• Influenced by the early House classic 'Your Love' (1987) by Frankie Knuckles.
  
• Childish Gambino has an homage of the song also titled 'My Girls'.
  
  
• "I'm not big on possessions but, for some reason, being the owner of a space, a safe house for my wife and my daughter, has become the most important thing for me, for better or worse." - Panda Bear
  
  
• "It was really just my desire on a basic level to own my own place and kind of provide a safe house for my family and the people I care about. I thought that was at once a kind of weird materialistic thing but at the same time a noble thing." - Panda Bear (Clash Magazine 2010)
  

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