Alt-pop artist Lakookala unveils her unflinching new track, “The Wrong Places,” a song about how female-identifying individuals are taught to look for love externally rather than from within.
Lakookala explains, “When we continue to hold up unachievable beauty standards for women, it becomes an emotional prison where they are both afraid to be under sexual or over sexual at all times. This for me is exhausting and can leave us feeling unfulfilled in our life and our work. I hope women who listen to my song, and my music understand that wherever they are on this spectrum that they are enough and that however they choose to present themselves every day is enough. This is something I have struggled with in my identity since I was a very young woman and am still learning to grapple with every day as an artist.”
With her potent sound, a blend of alternative and post-punk elements, Lakookala’s music is contemporary and polished, heated and hefty, youthful and expressive. On stage, she plays drums and sings. Offstage, she is a gifted audio engineer, working with artists like John Legend on his song, “Bigger Love.”
The lyrics to “The Wrong Places” narrate the over-sexualization and resultant unfulfillment of women inculcated by synthetic cultural standards, a faux orthodoxy Lakookala relates to – lack of self-love leads to an inability to truly love anyone else.
“Do you know what I’ve been looking for / Oh I’ve been locked out in and out of doors / To feel love without she, he and yours / Oh, I’ve been here, Oh I’ve lived here before.”
“The Wrong Places” opens on dark, heavy colors riding a measured powerful yet ominous rhythm. Brimming with shadowy, gritty textures, the music thrums with brawny blackness. Lakookala’s voice, at once strident and aching, chronicles her fugitive state, looking for love in all the wrong places.
Encompassed in formidable shadowy layers of subterranean tones, “The Wrong Places” hits like an emotional sledgehammer.
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