Girli breaks down every track on new album ‘it’s just my opinion’ (EXCLUSIVE)

As she releases her third album it’s just my opinion today (8 May), girli sits down with Attitude to talk about the inspiration behind each track, how they came to life and what they mean to her. Across 12 songs that span divorce, cathartic rage, and the long aftermath of heartbreak, girli’s new album marks a deeper, more vulnerable chapter in her songwriting.

Girli’s it’s just my opinion is available to stream and download now. Physical editions are also available.

‘Blue Sky’

I wrote this song by myself sat on a sofa in my producer’s studio in East London. He was working on an instrumental and I put my head down for 20 minutes and then said “finished!”. It’s very stream of consciousness. It’s about the discomfort of your twenties, the confusion of not knowing who you are or where you’re going and the reality that life is about accepting those things. It’s about a desperation to escape technology, screens, social media, mirrors, the city, and be free from all the chains of modern life. It’s an epic tale of a quest for yourself.

‘Slap on the Wrist’

‘Slap on the Wrist’ is about the fear that women and gender minorities live with every day in a society where male violence is the norm and the police and the justice system do fuck all to listen to and protect survivors. It’s for anyone who’s walked home with their keys in their fist because they know the world won’t protect them. I was so full of rage at a tired, outdated system that seems to be getting worse rather than better for women and it was a response to that. There’s literally a sexual predator in office in the US right now; survivors must watch their rapists have their lives unaffected by their crimes, while they have to deal with the trauma for the rest of their lives, on top of often being blamed for their own assault. I wrote this song with the amazing artist Maude Latour, and the producer Aidan Hogg (G Flip) in LA on the last day of writing for the album. Buried in the track is a recording of me and Maude screaming into the mic at the start of the session – that was the first thing we recorded!

‘Pedestal’

This song is about realising that you’re idolising someone you have a crush on to the point where it’s making you feel shit. It’s a pep talk to myself, saying “don’t put this person on a pedestal”. When every time you speak to someone you feel dumb, like a child, they don’t make you feel appreciated or their equal, but you keep going back because you have such a big crush on the perfect idea of them built up in your head. It’s for anyone who is more attracted to people when they’re unavailable; if that’s the case, redirect that love to yourself. They don’t deserve you.

‘Don’t Make Me Cry’

This track is about divorce in my family. It’s about questioning if love can last forever because all you’ve seen demonstrated is marriages falling apart and heartbreak, generation after generation. It’s only the second time I’ve spoken about these topics in my music, after 2024’s ‘Bulldozer’. It’s asking your lover if they can help you break the pattern of heartbreak, and show that love can last, but also being terrified that you’ll become part of the pattern.

‘Bones’

‘Bones’ is about intuition. It’s about silent signals, invisible connection between two people. When you know there’s a spark between you and someone, but you can’t tell if you’re just kidding yourself.

‘Lifestyle’

This song is about a comphet (compulsory heterosexual) ex, who was ashamed of her sexuality and after we broke up tried to erase our relationship from her story. It’s about the pain of being with someone who’s not comfortable in their queer identity even though they love you, the impact on a queer relationship if one person is still in turmoil over the shame, they have ingrained in them for being gay. I chose to use the word lifestyle because so often being gay is called a “lifestyle choice” by non-LGBTQ+ people, as if it’s the same and choosing to go to the gym or be vegetarian. It’s not a “lifestyle”; it’s an identity, it’s love. It’s not a choice; it’s who you are. The lyrics in this song talk about how this ex went to dating men after we broke up, and I’m asking her that even if that is what’s going to make her happy, to not call her dating me as a “phase”; it was real. My favourite lyric is “tell your friends that I made you gay, hate to break it you were born that way”.

‘Romantic Sadness’

This is based on something my younger sister said to me. She was going through a breakup, and she said, “it’s hard when you can’t even romanticise the sadness anymore, and it’s just sad.” I knew I had to write a song about that, about the way we try to romanticise our lives to cope with difficult things and seek comfort in feeling like our life is the plot of an arty indie movie. The lyrics are very visual: lipstick on a wine glass, smoking on a windowsill, Jane Austen novels and Robyn breakup songs. It’s about trying to run away from your sadness but it following you wherever you go.

‘Squirm’

This song is about an uncomfortable crush; a crush on someone else when you’re already in a relationship. It’s about guilt and desire and hating the person for being so hot. The mix of how fun and horrible a crush can be. It’s fun and punky and shouty.

‘Light in the Dark’

This song is about being scared of intimacy and emotional attachment. It’s a sweet, sad plea to someone to touch your body but not your heart, because “the more you know the more it hurts”. The deeper you feel for someone, the higher you must fall if it doesn’t work out. Along with ‘Traces’, these are the two most electronic sounding songs on the record. This is the sad situationship song.

‘Traces’

This song is about the long-term aftermath of a breakup, and the imprint that a person leaves on your life for years to come. It’s a sad song about accepting the hole that someone left in your life when they left, and the little bits of them that remain as residue; smelling someone wearing their perfume scent, still cooking recipes you made together, hearing their accent on someone else, inside jokes you can’t laugh at with anyone else. Breakups are not so different to grieving a death – you’re grieving someone’s place in your life, and the memories you had with them.

‘Better Undressed’

This is a fun indie rock banger about making bad decisions and hooking up with your ex. It’s for the girlies who can’t take space and struggle with closure. I made it with the Australian artist G Flip, and they played drums on the track, the first time I’ve ever had live drums on a song of mine.

‘The Answer’

This is my entry for the song that comes at the end of a queer coming of age movie. I wrote this about the first crush I had on a girl in school, when I was 14, and how it answered so many questions I had about myself; to every question mark, the crush I had on her was the answer. It’s about teenage love and discovering you’re gay and the feeling of a first crush that makes your tummy turn. It’s also about the fact that I didn’t have a lot of gay love stories represented in movies or magazines (it being the 2010s), so the feelings were so confusing because they didn’t feel normal in popular culture.