The Russian activists / music collective continue to rally against political corruption on their collaboration with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek.
The song lyrics start off critiquing superficial music with the lyric “you thought that I just made this for the club – No way!” It goes on to denounce those that are “drunk on power” and it provides a pointed indictments on “killer cops”, “the death machine”, “hatred”, “populism” and all the “bad apples” that contribute to these destructive forces.
On the YouTube page for the video the band posted the following statement: “Hope you are not going to like this track, since it’s dedicated to really disgusting things. We demand immediate criminal justice reform. We demand firing of corrupted cops and high-level officials. We’re sort of confused about the fact that the most of songs we hear are circling around romantic feelings and friday parties, although only rare tracks are dedicated to not less important topics such as a) climate change, b) gun control, c) arrests of political activists, d) structural inequality e) sexism f) killer cops, brutality and abuse of power that state institutions commit on a daily basis g) urgent need of good-quality accessible healthcare and education. Mediazona, our activist media agency, posts news that you’d rather not read – endless criminal cases for reposts and for participation in rallies, brutal tortures of our fellow activists in secret FSB prisons, kidnapping and beatings of gay people in Chechnya, murders of Kremlin’s opponents. State violence that we’re forced to experience and think about every day. That’s why almost all our our tracks are about bad apples.”
Along with continuing their US tour and recording in English, Pussy Riot also released the Russian language “Election” on March 17, 2018 to correspond with the March 18th Russian election where due to political corruption Vladimir Putin won in a landslide.