Ben Massey | 07/10/23
Recently, I have lost my love for music. Spending the last year abroad and away from the UK’s music scene meant that I had to push that part of my identity to the side temporarily. Ever since coming back to the UK, I have struggled to find myself within it again. I honestly don’t say this lightly, but seeing Scene Queen really reignited my love for live music again. I remember walking away from this gig feeling truly happy with the experience.
No bands I’ve seen recently actually push those societal, political, and thematic boundaries like Scene Queen. Yeah, they might be great musicians, but did they come up with Bimbo Beta Pi? No. Obviously not. For those who unfortunately didn’t attend a Scene Queen show on this run, Bimbo Beta Pi is Scene Queens’ very own fraternity, for all minority groups who go to rock shows alike. Greek life doesn’t really come naturally to Brits (since we don’t have college frats), but essentially it's supposed to be a community of similar people who all go to the same university. When you think of frats, you normally think of toxic masculine culture, which of course it does have some of that, but it’s not necessarily that (shout out to the last season of Queer Eye for opening my eyes on that front). Scene Queen welcomes every single non-toxic lover of her music into it.
Scene Queen has this ‘no fucks given’ attitude when it comes to saying what she thinks. Finally, a musician who isn’t afraid to speak their mind and make meaningful sense. Please basic-white-guy-pop-punk-bands, keep your mouths shut.
Whilst Scene Queen has a song all about THAT pop-punk band that I don’t need to name, I love how she brought a pop-punk band out with her on tour. She spoke about this during her set. I think it’s great that despite her criticisms, she has that self-awareness that it’s not ALL pop-punk bands that have shit people in them.
On that note, I didn’t want this review to be a “go Scene Queen live she’s really good!” which of course you should absolutely do anyway, but I wanted to go in a more political direction. Ostensibly being a political project, it would be useless not to mention it. Scene Queen stands for everything forward-thinking in the music industry, and honestly, it is so refreshing. Whilst lots of her songs have this jokey undertone, I think the jokes sometimes mask the anger, and rightly so, we should be angry. It is insane how much more difficult women have to work to get to the same point men find themselves in within the music industry. The music scene thrives with diversity. Every scene thrives with diversity. Scene Queen’s message transcends to every walk of life, the Western world was designed by and with only white men in mind - it’s time to change that by at least letting creatives think, say, and be what it says on the tin.
If you hate Tories, think women deserve more equality and like good music, then you’ll like Scene Queen. Listen to her latest song Pink Push-Up Bra here and go see her live, there are not many tickets left.
Edited by: Roxann Yus
Photos by: Ben Massey