Le Tigre

Essential Albums

  • Le Tigre
    Le Tigre
    Le Tigre

    Part of what’s amazing about 1999’s Le Tigre is the way it captured a set of attitudes and ideas that at the time felt underground, but have since become commonplace: Cancel culture, and the navigation of your “problematic faves”? That’s “What’s Yr Take On Cassavetes?” Mood-boarding your cultural ancestry as a way to express your own creative identity? That’s “Hot Topic” (“Gertrude Stein! Marlon Riggs! Billie Jean King!”). There’s also a screaming, insanely fun dance song with the line “Let me hear you depoliticise my rhyme” (“Deceptacon”), and a garage-rock song about how liberating it is to have access to good public transportation (“My My Metrocard”). The ideas on Le Tigre were punk, but the sound was bright and girly and pop, drawing on everything from electro and surf music (“Deceptacon”) to French yé-yé (“Friendship Station”) and nursery rhymes (“Les and Ray”). Lead singer Kathleen Hanna had famously started out at as the singer of the pioneering riot-grrrl band Bikini Kill—and, in a way, Le Tigre’s visionary stroke was to prove radical politics and fun didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Feel like all genders deserve equal treatment as human beings? Cool, you’re a feminist. Wondering whether this movie or book or song you love is tacitly supporting the patriarchy? Don’t go looking for a dissertation—just call a friend and talk it out. In 1999, the idea that pop as an expression of our political identities would’ve seemed esoteric, but now, we take it as a given. Times change, and thank gosh for that. Le Tigre was the missing link between mall-pop and underground punk. The album made you want to read big books and wear even bigger sunglasses. And it felt inclusive and cool in a way you didn’t have to think about if you didn’t feel like thinking—but it also gave you plenty to think about if you did. Le Tigre stated loud and clear a then-radical proposition: that the stuff we do for fun might just change the real world.

Albums

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About Le Tigre

For Le Tigre, political activism takes the form of danceable electro with a DIY vibe. Kathleen Hanna formed the trio in the late ’90s after her riot grrrl band Bikini Kill broke up, joining up with Johanna Fateman and Sadie Benning in New York City. Le Tigre’s 1999 self-titled album featured “Deceptacon”, an upbeat synth-punk tune that lamented the proliferation of music reliant on shallow lyrics, and the punk pogo “My My Metrocard”, a critique of then-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and his legislative choices. Benning left the group in 2000 and was replaced by JD Samson, and Le Tigre continued apace on 2001’s New Wave-influenced Feminist Sweepstakes, which featured the queer anthem “Dyke March 2001”. Le Tigre signed with a major-label imprint to release 2004’s This Island before taking a lengthy break. Occasional bursts of activity—including producing Christina Aguilera’s 2010 song “My Girls” and releasing a 2016 pro-Hillary Clinton anthem, “I’m With Her”—culminated in a well-received 2023 tour.

ORIGIN
New York, NY, United States
FORMED
1998
GENRE
Electronic

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