MUNA Discuss the ‘Queer Power’ Of New Album ‘Dancing On the Wall’: ‘We’re Trojan Horsing Sad Lesbian Music Into the Gay Club’
Categoria: Musica
The trio reveals how its fourth studio album is a return to “MUNA’s actual DNA.”
Por Billboard | 08/05/2026
From the start of Dancing On the Wall (out today via Saddest Factory Records), the LA-based band’s fourth studio album drops listeners into a sweaty warehouse of queer power pop filed with heartbreak and lust. And it only accelerates from there, hardly letting up until the closer “Buzzkiller” — save for two interludes that serve as brief intermissions across the albums 40 minutes. “This record is super propulsive. We want you to be able to digest everything,” says Josette Maskin, noting that the first break comes before the politically charged “Big Stick.” “You need a moment to take it in, like what has occurred and what is about to occur. We use any interlude to give the listener a break from the information.” The album is a departure from the delicate strumming of “Silk Chiffon,” the Phoebe Bridgers’ collaboration that put the band on the mainstream map. The song – along with MUNA’s triumphant self-titled third album that welded ballads, dance hits and a little bit of country together with unapologetically queer force – multiplied its fanbase and placed MUNA in front of massive audiences as an opening act for Kacey Musgraves, Lorde and Taylor Swift. Instead of attempting to recreate the intangible alchemy of “Silk Chiffon,” MUNA doubled down on the sound that launched the band, what Katie Gavin calls “MUNA’s actual DNA.” “There is an element of all three of us, where we all have a part that’s a little bit like the rebel artist spirit. There’s an urge to defy understanding. There’s an urge to be like, ‘you don’t know the whole story,’” Gavin tells Billboard . “That led to this impulse of like, we need to go back to our roots instead of leaning into, ‘Oh, you guys like “Silk Chiffon?” We’ll make 10 “Silk Chiffons.”‘” “There is a reality in which, if you love ‘Silk Chiffon’ and you don’t know any of our other music, you might not like our first album. And that’s fine. There is a world in which that song could pull you into the other stuff in our catalog or it could be the only song of ours that you like, which is totally fine,” says Naomi McPherson. “We’re not complaining about having a popular song that people like, but we wanted to hone the band sound on this album.” From the first track, “It Gets So Hot,” this album takes off and doesn’t relent until the end. Was the consistent up-tempo intentional? Josette Maskin: We’ve been a touring band for forever, since our inception. We feel like songs really have a use in how they feel in the body that could be some sort of physical release. So, it was definitely intentional. Push the BPM [beats per minute] and make things feel good. You get reinforced in the show. People respond differently to a faster BPM than they do a slow one. And it is where we are at and what we’re interested in. Naomi McPherson: It was also a reaction to a little bit to Katie having done a solo record of folky stuff. So for this one, we were like, “okay, we’re not