Tune-Yards just released their fourth full-length album, I Can Feel You Creep into My Private Life. Lead singer and songwriter Merrill Garbus grapples with white privilege and cultural appropriation on a number of the album’s tunes. The songs are very much a product of the current political climate. In a track by track analysis by NPR, Garbus made the following statement: “A lot of this album is me trying to face things instead of running away from the reality of the world in this era. Thinking, if I could face the realities of climate change, of massive extinction, of white privilege and white fragility, then maybe I could guide listeners into also looking at things and not running away in all the ways that we do.”
“ABC 123” covers a lot of ground lyrically. It addresses the effects of climate change (“California’s burning down”) and misuse of natural resources (“I’m on a desert island and I ate up all the coral”). The lyrics are also Garbus way of figuring out her role as a white woman when advocating for social change (“I ask myself, “What should I do? But all I know is white centrality”). The song concludes with a call to arms (“But we’ll unite before the very next election, No abstentions! VOTE”).