Originally released last year to mark International Women’s Day, the track was partly motivated by the case of an American man receiving a lenient sentence for raping an unconscious woman, the judge saying prison “would have a severe impact on him”.
The band have since performed the song at Glastonbury and used it to promote the #MeToo campaign against sexual misconduct.
#YouAreTheProblemHere live on @wxpnfm @WorldCafe #MeToo ???♀https://t.co/eQs4wPb0Pw
— First Aid Kit (@FirstAidKitBand) January 15, 2018
You can watch the band’s blistering live version of the track here. We caught up with First Aid Kit to talk about their new album ‘Ruins’ (due out this Friday 19th) and also the writing and reaction to ‘You Are the Problem Here’.
”That song was written and fuelled by pure anger,” Klara states. “It wasn’t like ‘Oh we’re gonna write a political song!’ it just happened because it needed to be written. And it’s totally new for us; we’ve never had a song like that, with that kind of statement.”
“But to us it shouldn’t be a statement,” she counters. “It’s not political to us to be against rape, it’s so obvious, like a human right. It’s weird how that song is, in a way, controversial. I think all the people were shocked by us singing something like ‘I hope you fucking suffer’,” she muses. “No one saw that coming, and I think it’s kind of interesting to play with people’s expectations of us.”
With Klara and Johanna having performed ‘You Are the Problem Here’ live across the world, the message and intent of the song have chimed with wider movements in 2017 to stamp out sexual misconduct.
“It’s great that the song has grown, now with the #MeToo movement, we’re really talking about it and it gets brought up in every interview and we think it’s really important to bring these issues up….It’s just shocking that it took so long for it to get truly recognised.”
“It just feels important,” Klara concludes. “It feels too important not to, to do it and talk about it.”
You can read the full interview with First Aid Kit, as well as Dork’s review of ‘Ruins’ in this month’s Dork magazine, out Friday 19th. Check out the full details of what’s inside and pre-order your copy here.
