The Last Dinner Party on lyricism, censorship and female sexuality

Q23:56The Last Dinner Party: Opening for The Rolling Stones, starting out as a live act and their viral hit Nothing Matters

The Last Dinner Party wrote their music manifesto with a dollar store pen and paper, promising each other they would keep true to who they were and perform with a theatrical childlike twist. 

During COVID, the indie alternative rock band would practice in the same university basement room, perfecting their sound. It wasn't until a year later that the group actually got to perform their music in front of a live audience, sporting corsets and ball gowns. 

"We wanted to give ourselves and our audience an occasion to dress up because there are too few occasions in your life where you get to wear a ball gown," vocalist Abigail Morris tells Q guest host Talia Schlanger. 

The band's single, Nothing Matters, is a love letter to female sexuality and confrontation. As one of the biggest songs off their debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, the UK-based band did not anticipate the song's lyric change for radio and live performances. "We have to censor the chorus," says Australian bassist Georgia Davies. "And so we say, 'I will have you instead of I will f–k you'."

The group did not want to modify the expletive for the sake of polite society. "I hate doing it," says Davies.

The lyric change also caused a stir among fans, who felt that removing the word f–k softened the song's confrontational message around bodily autonomy. 

"The sense of sexual agency in pop music from young women — like the kind of taking power of I will f-k you — that's a really unusual sense of sexual autonomy," says Morris. "And I think replacing that with a more palatable word does the song a disservice." 

"While expressions of female sexuality have been a part of pop music for a while," says Davies, citing Ariana Grande and Doja Cat,  "I think it hadn't quite reached the alternative rock scene." 

"And [for] women who feel the heaviness and passivity of being a sexual object and not knowing where to put that desire," says Davies on the lyric change. "The f–k is very important. Saying hug or shag or kiss doesn't mean the same as that controlling thing." 

The Last Dinner Party has started their Prelude to Ecstasy tour and do not plan on adjusting the lyrics for their shows. "My hopes for the next year would just be to keep writing, keep being creative, keep following our noses down different creative avenues … and not be perturbed by any expectations, but our own," says Davies. 

The full interview with The Last Dinner Party is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with The Last Dinner Party produced by Vanessa Nigro.