Melbourne's Riot Baby continues to flip the script on children's music, championing safe, expressive spaces for young people through music, community and punk attitude – as they deliver new single and video 'My Body My Choice’.
As evidenced by the title, the fuzz-bass-driven track puts kids' bodily autonomy front and centre, unapologetically.
Riot Baby (made up of four parent-kid duos Erica and John Cheong-Holdaway, Sylvie and Ros Jones, Otto Anticich and Kirri Büchler, and Will Hopkins-Bartsch and Jeremy Hopkins) was formed in 2019 by founding members Cat and John. Their origins were in crafting punk versions of Australian kids books, and now they're covering things like late-stage capitalism, pandemics, disasters, bullies, and big feelings.
Cat is now based in France – with John and daughter Erica bringing in a new line-up to keep the band rocking.
They wrote the new track in early 2024, not long before a noticeable uptick in public misogyny.
“'My Body My Choice' was the first time Erica and I had written the full lyrics to a Riot Baby song,” John Cheong-Holdaway says. “Cat (who wrote all of the lyrics to our first songs, and Rohan who wrote 'Did You Bring Your Jumper' were so good, we didn’t feel the need to, but with a new band, we felt like we had to show them how it was done!”
“The music was meant to be Gut Health meets Hearts And Rockets.”
In the same vein as previous Riot Baby offerings like 'Did You Bring Your Jumper' and 'Listen To Your Mum', 'My Body My Choice' is served with a slick helping of punk, with call and response lyrics like 'step off (step off), if I wanted a hug I would have asked you. . . Get back (get back), give me some personal space.'
'My Body My Choice' takes a painfully relevant subject matter – felt the world over – and turns it into art. . . Delightfully punky, fun, bold, energetic art.
Meanwhile, the music video – which scenestr is super stoked to be premiering today – sees Erica Cheong-Holdaway in the spotlight and on lead vocals, while the band (and some life-sized puppets) rally around her donning colourful outfits and backing her up. There's even some character work from a few of the members, including Erica's dad, driving the point of the song home even stronger.
“In the film clip It was a real struggle to keep dad’s boobs from falling down to his stomach when he dressed up as pinchy grandma!” Erica jokes.
'My Body My Choice' will be officially launched at Northcote Uniting Hall (Melbourne) 25 October.
