The Femcels: London's Next Great Export
Introducing the act that has the UK music scene in a chokehold
It is not always clear why acts gain traction. Sometimes, they hardly have any songs. When we first heard about The Femcels, they only had two.
But they had other things. A series of sold out shows in London. Connections to Bassvictim and Worldpeace DMT. Photos by Hedi Slimane in The Face. More photos in a number of other cultural imprints. Being “early” is a compulsion many of us have, and accomplishing it is a matter of interpreting signs like these.
Buzz is one thing, and its time horizon is short. The better question is about staying power. What invisible force determines who ascends to stable relevance and success, and whose motion peters out into aimless cultural entropy? Sometimes, it simply comes down to who people continue to talk about.
Now The Femcels have dropped an album, and people are really talking. We wanted to hear what they are saying. So we conducted an investigation, interviewing the two girls behind the group, questioning their roommates, and querying their fans, all in an attempt to understand the rise of The Femcels, and where it goes from here.
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Welcome: How did you two meet?
Gabriella: She saw me across a bar and she went, “God, that girl looks really dumb.”
Rowan: I didn’t say she looked dumb. She was just having her mouth open for a really long time. And then I heard her talking about how the next day she was going to get a pitcher of cocktails and go to Starbucks, and it made me feel so nauseous that I couldn’t talk to her.
Gabriella: She didn’t like me
Rowan: No, no, no, no. I just couldn’t stomach imagining that much liquid in my stomach.
Gabriella: You’re way skinnier than me. You would never do such a thing.
Rowan: I was way fatter than you. And then she invited me to a sleepover.
Gabriella: And then she tried to set me up with her ex.
Welcome: What’s your power dynamic like? Who’s in control?
Rowan: It’s more of a power struggle.
W: Why did you start making music?
Rowan: Gabriella had the name ‘The Femcels’ and we didn’t know what it should be. We’d have e-girl meetings where we’d draw mind maps and be like “fuck, how do we become like rich and famous?” Music was obviously one of them.
Gabriella: Then we met up with Ike one night, and The Femcels was born.
Was it clear to you how you could use music to make yourselves rich and famous? Did you understand the game?
Rowan: It just seemed really obvious and easy to us. Like, it’s not really a game.
Did either of you have any background in music making or singing before?
Gabriella: Not really.
Rowan: I really like music.
So how does one go about becoming rich and famous through making music?
Gabriella: We got to save this information for our handbook.
You have a handbook coming out? What’s in it?
Rowan: It’s just like loads of drawings of hands we did. Because we heard that to be a proper artist you have to be able to draw hands.
Ok. You’re both artists in other mediums. Tell me a little bit about those artistic practices.
Rowan: I started painting weird girls in Hamburg on study abroad. I didn’t really have many friends so I just spent all my time doing that. Before that I was studying illustration and animation. I made a linkedin so people could find out I got A first1.
Gabriella: I like making generative art and games and nature out of code stuff.
Rowan: She fancies Pythagoras.
Gabriella: That’s like my number one crush.
Speaking of that, what are your most important artistic inspirations?
Gabriella: Elvis.
Rowan: My favourite musicians are like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel and the GTO’s, which were like this band of groupies. And then my sister’s like really good at wearing clothes. I wrote a song called “Daisy” about it.
What kind of music did the two of you set out to make? How would you have described it?
Rowan: “Really cool.”
Gabriella: “Quite nice.”
But where did you want it to fit in the broader landscape of music today?
Rowan: Somewhere coastal? I didn’t know where it was going to fit to be honest. I don’t really like music from now.
Gabriella: She’s so indie.
Rowan: I’m so indie. Hopefully some people like it. That’d be nice.
What is a ‘femcel’?
Rowan: A slut
Gabriella: A whore.
Gabriella: No, someone who’s really not crass.
Rowan: Yeah, we’re not very crass.
Gabriella: Music now seems like if it’s a bit horny and dark, then it’s good. But I feel like it should be the opposite.
Rowan: Every tune’s like “I’m a bad bitch.”
Gabriella: But what if I don’t feel like I can steal your man?
Rowan: Our music isn’t to get ready to. Like your makeup would probably turn out really weird.
So what are the optimal ways or environments or times to listen to The Femcels?
Rowan: If you get a bus and you don’t know where it’s going and you sit on the—actually do you have double-decker buses?—whatever we can build them for you—and you sit on the top deck and it’s like dark, and you’re looking at the city lights, or the trees if you live in the rural area, and you just listen to it
Gabriella: Like sitting in the ground. You dig a hole in the ground. Like you dig your own grave.
What’s going on with incels? What happened with that?
Rowan: Well, they were cool. People have kind of forgotten about them.
Gabriella: I guess it’s become a lot more mainstream, hasn’t it? It’s quite interesting seeing all the stuff I used to see on 4chan when I was like 14 is now just in popular culture.
Rowan: I’ve always been kind of someone that goes on the dark parts of the internet just to see what’s going on. Once I joined a Discord server for Gooning. But then some of them also had this fetish about how they’re so addicted to porn they’d become gay, and they would get off on being humiliated about that. It’s really quite fascinating. Someone was like, “Oh, do you want to jack off with me?” And I was like, “Sorry, I’m a hot girl.” And he was like, “Okay.” And then didn’t want to do it anymore.
Wait, so what were you doing on that Discord?
Rowan: I think of myself as a researcher.
Gabriella: It’s quite good anthropology.
Do you still do that kind of research?
Rowan: Didn’t they shut down 4chan?
Gabriella: I think it just came more into the mainstream. I think it used to be if you were on the internet, you were actually weird. Now it’s like they’re all dispersed.
They’re all looksmaxers now.
Rowan: I don’t think it’s a bad thing, looksmaxing like that. Haven’t women been doing that for ages? Like, yeah, you should be trying to get hot. Like, do you not want to date anyone?
Gabriella: You will make more money and you will date better people if you get hotter. If your jaw is sharper, your life will be progressively better. At least 10%.
Rowan: I can be so ugly. I have too much range.
Gabriella: If I don’t gua sha my face every day I’m chopped.
At the time of this interview your album release is just days away. What are your celebration plans?
Gabriella: Eat haggis.
Rowan: Do you know about Scotland?
Sorrowfully little.
Rowan: Basically they eat this thing which is…what is it?
Gabriella: Is it like—I guess it’s like loads of different meats.
Rowan: It’s loads of different meats put together, right?
Gabriella: And then you put it into a log and then you put it into little bowls and then you put it in the microwave and then you dip it into your whiskey.
Rowan: Is that what you do? I didn’t know that.
Gabriella: And then you play the bagpipes. Sorry, what was your question?
How you were going to celebrate the release of the album.
Rowan: Oh. Checking Spotify loads of times.
Gabriella: Looking on Instagram, going through my story like 50 times.
How did you guys get plugged in with Hedi Slimane?
Rowan: We turned him straight
Gabriella: And By FaceTuning on instagram so we look skinnier than we are
Rowan: Apparently he saw loads of pictures from a casting board, and he was like “definitely them.”
Your personality is clear from your answers, but I feel like to somebody that’s never heard of The Femcels, we’re still lacking some establishing questions and information. Can you guys just, from the top, tell me: who are The Femcels?
Gabriella: Well, I’m blonde and she’s brunette. Fuck. How do we give a serious answer?
Rowan: I would say all of our songs are about personal experiences, as silly as they might sound. Like nothing’s made up. I was heartbroken about this dude. And you were a femcel. And we just made an album where we put it into words. Not subtly, just straight words.
And how have The Femcels found success?
Rowan: We’re just really good at clout chasing.
Gabriella: Not much to say about that really. We’re CEOs.
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At this juncture we asked Rowan and Gabriella to leave the room so that we could question their roommates. These individuals were all originally avid fans of The Femcels, and through a dogged courtship of good-natured stalking and harassment managed to become their close friends. They now live together in an apartment without a living room in London. Some of their quotes are reproduced below.
On why The Femcels are a rising act with cultural traction despite their minimal output:
“They’re characters that you can assign yourself to. You know like the Spice Girls: when you’d be like, ‘I’m Scary Spice.’ There are gay guys out there being like ‘I’m Rowan.’”
“They have this iconoclastic attitude towards what is going on in music. I think people are drawn to it. You just sat through an interview with them: You can’t not be fascinated by those two people. They’re the craziest two girls you’ve ever met.”
On how they met The Femcels:
“I went to a Frost Children show in London and randomly these two girls were opening. Everyone in the room was just like, what the fuck are we watching. They were beating each other up with inflatable animals on stage. I was like, ‘this is the coolest thing ever.’”
“We stayed up all night with them once and then got McDonald’s. That’s like one of two times I ever saw them eat.”
“Every gay man has to make their entire life about fixating on a woman, and everyone else has chosen like Zara Larsson right now. So my advice would be if you pick a really niche internet micro celebrity it will make you feel better about yourself and if you harass them enough they’ll let you live with them.”
On The Femcels’ fanbase:
“They have Brazilian gay fans. When they hadn’t released any music they would do mixes and then the little Brazilian gays would chop up the songs and post them on websites and transcribe the lyrics.”
“I’ve also been to a DJ set they did that was literally full of straight lads. So I guess there’s like there’s like a pocket of gays in between a crowd of nonchalant lads.”
“There’s been a couple of shows where I’ve seen like 18 year olds, like the really pretty girls that dress up, and they’re fucking with it. And I’ve seen some really young people who probably don’t have clout and they’re resonating with it.”
On life as The Femcels’ roommates:
“Surprisingly chill. We just sit and chill.”
“We wake up probably around like probably around like 1:00 p.m. We’ll have a really insane flavor of coffee. There’s no front room, so we wade between the kitchen and bedroom and chill and listen to Jason Derulo and the Lilo and Stitch soundtrack. It’s a very normal day for an unemployed mid-20s person. Wake up way too late, smoke, and then chill, and then go to sleep way too late.”
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In search of less biased data, we also asked The Femcels to ask their Instagram following directly: What do the streets think of The Femcels? Below are some of those responses. Make of them what you will.
The highest grade possible at English university
Couldn't finish reading they're too annoying
sick interview