After her hit single ‘Love On Repeat’ made the entire country sit up and listen, local pop star Mikhaela Faye is back with a new track. ‘I Don’t Want Your Baby’ is the catchy follow-up we were hoping for. The latest from the emerging solo artist confirms her gift for storytelling that taps into the current zeitgeist – here as it relates to the push and pull of motherhood that many young women across the world are grappling with.
“I don’t want your baby/It’s driving me crazy and I think about it all the time/I don’t want your baby/Maybe?” Mikhaela sings in the infectious chorus of a song narrated by a woman who simultaneously wants and doesn’t want “domestic bliss”.
“The song celebrates the autonomy of being a woman and knowing that your choice is your choice and there is beauty in that,” Mikhaela tells us. “If you decide that you want to have a child, then that is a deeply considered thing to do and a huge responsibility. But if you don’t want to, that’s also great.”
It’s no surprise that “I Don’t Want Your Baby” was written during a period of lockdown when all over the world people were thrust into unplanned hyper-domesticity. “It felt like my whole life was taken up by cooking and cleaning and I began wondering how we ever had time to do anything else,” Mikhaela coninues. “This bubble of domesticity gave rise to thoughts of the possibility of carrying a child and starting a family. But at the same time, it became impossible to ignore the bigger issues of whether it is morally right to bring a child into this world of pandemics and climate breakdown and child neglect.”
Like all of Mikhaela Faye’s creative output, the candy-coloured playfulness of “I Don’t Want Your Baby” is threaded through with astute social commentary and a musicality that digs deep into the rigour of her jazz degree and wide-ranging appetite for sounds pulled from 80s pop, post-punk, electronica and more.
In a startlingly accomplished track that she wrote and almost single-handedly played and recorded, baby rattles turn up as percussion instruments and a cuckoo clock provides the unshakable earworm buried in the song’s hook. The result is a cliché-free golden tune which freewheels listeners into Mikhaela Faye’s world – one that is equal parts fun, bliss and escapism and serious-minded commentary buoyed by expert musicianship.
As 2021 starts drawing to an end, Mikhaela Faye is working on a set of songs that will be a full body of work to be released in the coming year. Expect more brilliant dissection of modern life by an intriguing, subversive pop artist able to stand alongside the world’s best.
Listen to ‘I Don’t Want Your Baby’ below and read more music news here.
