Singled Out: Tarah Who?'s Swallow That Pill

Keavin Wiggins | 01-23-2021

LA grunge-punk duo Tarah Who? just released a new single and video called "Swallow That Pill" and to celebrate we have asked Tarah Carpenter to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

After releasing 'Pantomath', I wanted to release something in the same vibe. People seemed to really enjoy the song and video so I thought "let's write another, fun, light one before going into the deep stuff!" I usually write when I am angry or sad, sometimes it is just sarcasm. 'Swallow That Pill' is about your everyday frustrations in life.

The situations or people you keep in your life, despite the fact that they make you feel horrible, or just bored. I don't really write metaphors, so I think that you can get the gist of the situation by reading the lyrics. They aren't any mysteries or read in between the lines here...The first verse is about an ex-co-worker of mine who I noticed was a really good employee, or at least as you would want them to be. Always on time, if we were slammed, she would offer extra time, even on weekends.. etc... But our bosses made fun of her, and when her contract was up, they did not want to renew it. She was crushed because she tried really hard. How many times, have we been in a situation of harassment, but we want the job, or we too young to know what we are supposed to do, or we are not even sure why we are uncomfortable, so we just stay quiet, but we know something is not right.. That is what the second verse is about.

One of my last jobs, my employer, on my second day, asked me to "turn" so that he could check if my pants were not too baggy, and then asked me to get tighter pants because they were a "classy" establishment. Disclaimer: I don't wear baggy pants.. but I needed the cash, so I just kept it to myself, but then I noticed that he was abusive, and harassing all of the girls. They had NO idea.

This is why this song is on the angrier side! This BS that we have to accept because at the moment, it feels like you don't have a choice!

Something that is sort of new a fun too, I am not sure if I came up with it because I was working on the song with a couple of glasses of wine, but there is a whole French section, that we can take as a bridge. On a sort of jazzy background music with Theremin ( for a little bit of humor), I am pretending to be a Parisian who is just really happy with her routine life that we call in Paris "Metro, boulot, dodo" which means "subway, work, sleep" and repeat.

The music video had to be really fast and we were really limited because of Covid. Erica Torres, a friend of ours shot it. We had a lot of fun. I thought "Ok here is what we are going to do: This song is about BREAKING the habit, and being frustrated so you want to BREAK S$%^ up! so let's just do that!" Luckily the break room was open, so we broke a lot of things for an hour and it turned out to be a lot more exhausting that I thought!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here