Drunk Girls by LCD Soundsystem: Another Song about Girls

The new, emi­nently holler­able track “Drunk Girls,” LCD Soundsystem feels kinda retro to me — not vin­tage, but def­i­nitely a throw­back to 90s Brit pop. The yells around the chorus con­sist of just “drunk girls” and “drunk boys”, and to be honest, to me it not unpleas­antly recalls some­thing like a mashup of “Park­life” and “Girls & Boys,” both by the awe­some awe­some Blur. Observe:

I think, though, that LCD Soundsystem are hit­ting on an inter­esting and time­less song­writing phe­nom­enon: “Drunk Girls” adds to the already for­mi­dable ret­inue of songs about girls who do stuff. There­fore, in order to appro­pri­ately com­mem­o­rate this, I shall pro­vide for you a list: Ten Songs About Girls As A Group Entity (with some hon­or­able men­tions). (These are all youtube links.)

• Blur, “Girls & Boys”. Obvi­ously, I had to put this song on the list. Here is where you can listen to it. Don’t worry, it’s cool again. Also, this song is its own hon­or­able mention.
• The Queers, “Punk Rock Girls”. Cel­e­brating the (Chuck) tai­lored image of the icon­i­cally rough-round-the-edges girl that you want to take out but you can’t ‘cause she would prob­ably drink you under the table. The Queers bring it home here. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Punk Rock Girl,” Dead Milkmen.)
• Beastie Boys, “Girls”. This song falls into the cat­e­gory of Sexist Jam About Par­tying And Girls. It is bril­liant, shouty, and hor­ribly incor­rect, and cel­e­brates the girls who might or might not pick up after gross frat­boys. It is an 80s gem and we could not have a Songs About Girls list without it. Period. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Cal­i­fornia Girls,” David Lee Roth.)
• David Bowie, “China Girl.” This one epit­o­mizes the Song About Girls From Places: even though this girl is sin­gular, she’s really a list of cul­tural cliches. Still, we believe Bowie when he says “shhhhh.” (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Amer­ican Girl,” Tom Petty.)
• Queen, “Fat Bottom Girls.” Songs like this one fall into the cat­e­gory of Cel­e­brating Girls With Imper­fec­tions, i.e. pos­sibly the awe­somest cat­e­gory. My room­mate pointed out that this song also could be the begin­ning of its own list – sweeping gen­er­al­iza­tions about girls written by gay men. Pos­sible future list coming?
• Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” This cat­e­gory is the com­panion piece to Beastie Boys’ “Girls” — the Cel­e­bra­tory Jam about Girls Par­tying. Cyndi Lauper is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of this cat­e­gory, still, to this day — as you can read from this hilar­i­ously irrev­erent inter­view. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Jumpin Jumpin,” Destiny’s Child.)
• Bikini Kill, “Rebel Girl.” Although this song is a mil­i­tantly drummed cel­e­bra­tion of one girl crushing on one neigh­bor­hood queen type, it’s really about every girl crushing on every awe­some badass girl ever, and so it qual­i­fies as the (Girl Envious of) Awe­some Megacrush Girls cat­e­gory. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Cherry Bomb,” the Run­aways.)
• The Smiths, “Some Girls are Bigger than Others.” This song demon­strates Morrissey’s ability to make mean­ing­less com­par­isons, and marks his easy fiefdom over the kingdom of Semi­goth Blasé Obser­va­tions About Girls. Often these songs come dance­able; they don’t really reach any con­clu­sion by the end and leave the lis­tener feeling some­what like s/he has just fin­ished reading a repres­sive Vic­to­rian novel. I guess not in the bad way. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “West End Girls,” Pet Shop Boys.)
• Duran Duran, “Girls on Film.” Another song about genre girls (see #9 and #6), this song makes itself note­worthy because it Observes Girls From Afar, rather than giving a tribute to the fan girls or a slightly con­de­scending descrip­tion of exotics. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Amer­ican Girls,” Weezer.)
• Major Lazer, “Keep It Goin Louder”. This one is the most common in the world of songs about girls: Girls As Acces­sory. The note that the girls are present “six chicks deep” totally con­tra­dicts the semi-intimacy of “girl I wanna party with you” because it doesn’t really matter – they’re all fly and we all hella want to party with them. (Hon­or­able men­tion: “Girls Girls Girls,” Jay-Z.)