MMDA Share Debut Music Video "Good Ally (Yass)"
The debut MMDA single and music video “Good Ally (Yass)” are both out now and we couldn’t be more excited about this release, which deftly straddles pointed social commentary and fabulous fun. Unabashedly sampling Hillary Duff’s notoriously iconic “That’s So Gay” PSA, MMDA’s track seamlessly fuses ballroom, house, donk, and industrial to create a track as provocative as it is pleasing. Needless to say, we were delighted when the Los Angeles duo presented us with the opportunity to share “Good Ally (Yass)” here at WMF.
While Peter Kalisch and Aaron December’s past work has been rooted in the respective realms of noise and industrial, the pair are now boldly jumping into new territory together as MMDA by also embracing dance grooves to make —as they describe it— “a soundtrack for the dark underbelly of queer culture.” WMF was fortunate enough to get an early sneak peek of “Good Ally (Yass)”, and soon thereafter met up with MMDA ahead of the official release for some additional exclusive info, which we’re excited to share here:
Weirdo Music Forever: So, we’ve got the “Good Ally (Yass)” track and video coming out this month.
Peter Kalisch: Yes, and the track is all about confronting rainbow capitalism and the idea of allyship. Is it good? Is it bad? So often we’ve seen certain forms of allyship expression co-opted by companies or capitalism in general.
Aaron December: Allyship being performative exclusively. It’s a part of white saviorism or queer saviorism. [There are] people who stand outside of a struggle and are like, “Well, that’s good for you, and I’ll come in and help when it’s convenient.” We’re making fun of that in general, and that’s why we included pictures [in the video] from the current war in Gaza. There’s a combination of the Israeli flag with a rainbow saying “this is the first Pride in Gaza,” and that sort of thing. It’s just absolutely disgusting.
The song itself started off as a joke, and then we were able to understand it more politically as we worked on it.
PK: We used a PSA from 2008 featuring Hillary Duff, and she’s making fun of two girls who called a top “gay,” and she says “that’s so girl wearing a skirt as a top.” It’s become such a meme, but in a way, it was a perfect segue for us to talk about these issues. It’s important for us to make art where we’re able to celebrate queerdom with fun music and create our own spaces, but also talk about important issues.
AD: Also, what’s great about using this PSA is that it was an iconic thing for a lot of queer people in general. It’s silly on its face, but from what I’ve gathered, it was helpful to a lot of people. Now we look at it from the perspective of 2024 and it’s silly, right? But at the time it was helpful to say, because people were saying “gay” as a pejorative, similar to other words.
In understanding that, we could see the PSA on its own has a dualism to it, and we used that as a basis. Also, just having a song say “gay” a million times is really funny!
MMDA (L-R: Peter Kalisch, Aaron December). Photo: WMF
