November Girl explore the empowerment of women in “Down Bitter”

“November Girl is an idea, I guess,” Willa from NYC-based alt-rock band November Girl says to Eat This Music at the top of our chat about their latest single. “She’s not a real person, she’s not me… It’s sorta like how Debbie Harry is not Blondie, Hope Sandoval is not Mazzy Star. November Girl is my band and she’s dark, sexy, and more rock n’ roll than another other month of the year could ever be!”

Following on from the release of “No Crying In Baseball” back in August, “Down Bitter” is November girls latest single, and it is about sex, power and the empowerment of women in today’s working class society. “It’s about being a woman and questioning whether you’ll ever truly have power or be empowered in situations with men, or Willa they just allow you to have power?” Willa continues. “It’s about sex work and relationships, and I do ultimately believe women have and can have power, of course, but there are certain systems of power that are hard to exist outside of sometimes.”

November Girl’s latest song took on many forms as it progressed throughout its productive cycle, but Willa thinks what was released builds really well as the song plays. Willa continues, “I would say I changed in the lead-up to the release in the sense that now I just want to make something even better.”

Initially, “Down Bitter” began with lyrics that Willa wrote by herself, and then put to a guitar riff and added a melody thereafter. “I showed my band and they all wrote on top of it; I expressed how I wanted it to be muddy and sludgy, and even dissonant at some points,” Willa continues about the creative process of the song. “I had a vision of how I wanted it to sound and when we went upstate to record with our producer, Emmett Kai of Unisex Records, it took a few passes and many layers, especially of the guitars and vocal harmonies, to get it to sound the way I wanted.”

With this song, Willa hopes that it feels relatable to some girls or non-boys out there that have dated men or been in sex work or both and know that feeling of malaise. “You may get a high from some semblance of power or empowerment you have over men when you have something they want, like sex, but later you’re left with a feeling of emptiness,” Willa continues. “You may wonder if that’s really empowerment at all or if they’re just giving you that power. Hence the lyric, “Is it power if they give it to you?”

November Girl is currently working on an EP! Willa hopes it’ll be out in Spring 2024.

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