Coco & Clair Clair, with their sassy, self-obsessed lyrics and hyperpop sound, are the queens of bedroom pop. Their latest album Sexy encompasses their IT-girl personas with cheeky lyrics and catchy beats.
Meeting through Twitter and then at a party, they have progressed from playing friends’ parties (including a dog wedding), to internet sensations with singles like ‘Pretty’ becoming TikTok hits.
In their debut album, we hear their characteristic self-proclaimed ‘demon glam rock’ with Clair’s light vocals and Coco’s rapping, mixed in with their hip-hop, pop and R&B-influenced sounds. Whilst still featuring their typical sing-song tune (most notable in ‘Popstar’, formed from rhyming couplets), this album feels like a development of themselves and their music. Describing the album as “songs we’ve been wanting to make, rather than thinking about what other people want”, the album is undeniably just that: a shameless portfolio of two girls living their best life, singing about partying (“I just wanna party baby / I don’t want a man”), drinking (“drinking vodka out the bottle / playing Chasing Cars”), and dancing with friends.
The album is infused with a plethora of pop-culture references, adding to their relatable yet elitist charm. Each reference, ranging from Jordin Sparks to Betty White, seeks to enhance their status as pop-culture queens, the latest IT-girls (“Chloe Sevigny / I’m the new IT girl”), the girls who know what’s going on and what’s cool, they’re the ones shaping the scene.
Whilst they reference boys and relationships, they do so in a tongue-in-cheek way with their references to men often only serving to further establish their air of unattainability (“No you can’t get with this cause we matched on Tinder”).
Meanwhile, it’s friendship and partying (“blackout one night / next morning not hungover”) that take centre stage in the album, making it the perfect ‘preeing’ soundtrack, with Coco describing it as “definitely pregame music”.
What makes the duo so attractive is their steadfast self-confidence and their unrelenting, unapologetic notion that they’re the best. With lyrics like “realest bitches in the room / always me and Clair” and “yeah I’m so sexy / so hot I’ve got a fever”, the album is teeming with their arrogant, yet admirable, self-confidence. However, Clair comments on this in an interview, saying “There’s a misconception that because our lyrics are bad and bitchy, people think we’re hard to please, tough and rude…but it’s not who we are. It’s a persona”.
Perhaps this is what makes Coco & Clair Clair so refreshing, their ability to be unattainably confident, yet simultaneously real and chill, with Coco keeping track of lyrics on her phone and both enjoying spending “time driving around in the suburbs, like going to Starbucks and having quiet, chill times”.
This relatability makes us want to take on-board their lyrics and become, to quote Euphoria, “the hottest, most confident, bad bitch version of ourselves”.
Image “DJ DECKS IIII Free Stock” by seftonbillington is licensed under CC BY 2.0.