There’s more than a hint of Barbiecore in Boys World’s video for their latest single, “me, my girls & i.” Baby pink fits and a glorious, hot pink bedroom dominate the eye as they head out for a wild night, singing “Head up, you know you a bad b*tch! Heartbreak, that's a right of passage” in a paean to friendship and a full-throttle approach to moving on. Olivia, Queenie, Makhyli, Lillian and Elana — all perched in the Los Angeles home they share — exchange a glance and laugh. They are all bonafide doll fans, from Barbie to Bratz.
But it is, they agree, just sheer coincidence that visually it aligns to one of the most anticipated films of the year. In reality, it’s the song the band needed to clear the remains of their tumultuous 2022 from the air. One weekend last year, Queenie, Lillian, and Elana all went through break-ups at the exact same time. “Dealing with three heartbroken girls, oh my god,” recalls Olivia. “We really needed to get out of our heads and back into our healing after all the break ups. We had our moment to be sad and this encapsulates the moment of time to go out again. And we thought that was a good energy for the single.”
Their new EP, also named me, my girls & i, comes more than two years after their debut extended play, While You Were Out, and four years after their formation in 2019, having each been scouted by their label via Instagram. In that time, Boys World, who are all aged between 20 and 22, have built a fandom of two million followers on TikTok, released eight singles, and undertaken a creative journey that has resulted in significant autonomy over their art.
“We went into this EP telling [our team] the tracklist we wanted, how we wanted the videos and the cover to look, the feeling that we wanted to give people,” Elana says. They made a presentation with all their ideas, a decision process that was entirely smooth (“After years of living together you just know each other’s styles,” smiles Makhyli), and dug their heels in to have the cover feature a photobooth concept that they shot in between takes on the “me, my girls & i” set.
“It’s perfect because 2022 was us honing in on being there for each other, we were all generally just going through so much,” Queenie says. “Our other cover arts have been very fun, curated and posed, and this one felt very girls’ girls. It felt personal and this EP is very personal.”
Their private circumstances became shared experiences: “With us,” says Queenie, “if someone’s sad, we’re all sad, and if your personal life isn’t doing so well, it’s hard to want to be in work meetings and it just all falls onto each other, like a domino effect.”
Elana recalls Olivia and Olivia gathering all those difficult moments and funneling them into writing “me, my girls & i”, turning it into something special to the band. It took only two days to craft the song, despite initially wanting “a really freaking sad song,” adds Olivia, “but we were like, ‘Screw being sad,’ let’s just focus on the girls' night out and having a blast.”
Two already-released tracks — the cheekily disdainful “Mantrum” and the bouncing 90s harmonies and adlibs of “So What” — are joined by “me, my girls & i,” “Wrong Side,” and “Funeral.” That last one is angelic and melancholy, tinged with a countrified guitar and anchored by an angular bass line. “Time to bury this relationship, had a funeral for you in my head cos you’re dead,” they croon, in mourning for what was. They plowed through their journals for inspiration while writing it and painful as it was, Olivia says, “There’s power in being vulnerable, and spilling your heart out. That’s the best kind of art. When you’re honest, people gravitate towards that.”
“Funeral” and “Wrong Side” deliver a new angle to Boys World, whose fandom are more likely to associate them with tough openness rather than tender introspection, and it came as somewhat of a revelation to the members also. “‘Funeral’ we got as a demo but when we first heard it, it was kind of lost for a bit, we didn’t really pay attention to it, then we were like, ‘Sh*t why haven’t we, this song is really good,’” Queenie says.
What grabbed them was the premise of putting things to rest. “I don't think any of us had heard that in a while,” Elana says. “Funeral” is the evolved emotional sibling of “me, my girls & i,” in which attempting to outrun pain with a good time is merely a Band-aid on the hard emotional work that needs to be done to truly move on. Queenie sees its premise as multi-layered. “It can be anything in your life, and that captivated me personally because there are so many other things you can put to rest in that everyone else can relate to, rather than just being a person or partner.”
For Makhyli, their youngest at 20, the song exemplifies a process she’s been (and still is) working on. “There’s something about this year. [I’m thinking that] I need to grow up and get my sh*t together. I still have a lot of stuff I’ve brought with me from, like, 12, or when I used to be a brat with my Mom.” Her current relationship is helping push her through hard changes. “He’s downstairs so I’m gonna try and talk quietly,” she laughs, “but oh my gosh, [I’ve realized] I am toxic sometimes, like, f*ck! And he definitely helps with it but it’s a process, I can tell you that. We all have some things to bury.”
When Boys World debuted in late 2020, there was plenty of love but also some seriously expectant hype around them. They were touted as the next Spice Girls, a quintet set to spearhead the resurrection of the American girl group which, for teenagers with no music industry experience, was a divisive mantle to wear. “I think it's a compliment to be called the next Spice Girls because they did such amazing things,” Olivia says. But, Queenie adds, “you want to make your own mark in the world so I can understand that part where we want [people] to be like, ‘They're Boys World and they’re cool.’”
They also emerged at a time when audiences were housebound by the pandemic, consuming and expecting fresh online content faster and faster. Boys World grew as dancers, vocalists, young women, and even as TikTok creators under the gaze of their burgeoning fandom, but a piece of the puzzle still hadn’t quite fallen into place as 2022 unfolded. Thus their release of only one song last year was purposeful; they needed time to figure out the Boys World sound, where it could go and what it could do, and even, says Lillian, “who we truly wanted to be.”
Their relationship with each other was the rock solid foundation off which they began building and exploring. Boys World finish each other’s sentences, absent-mindedly tend to fly-away strands of hair of the member next to them, and talk over one another in a joyful cacophony. This warm, easy rhythm of friendship is what Queenie says keeps her “fresh and motivated,” and allowed them to spend months putting in the work and “honing in and figuring out which writing groups [amongst the band] work the best and what writing camps we wanna work with,” Olivia says. “But because of these sessions we have more songs for after the EP and the top of next year, and that’s very exciting.”
What has ultimately emerged isn’t some hyper-polishing of Boys World but the increased embrace of the strengths in their outward honesty and acceptance of themselves, flaws and all. “Something that we do is just be ourselves. I feel like so many girls are painted this picture of [having to] sit pretty and be a lady,” Queenie says. “No, we will shake our ass and dance and make a mess and be chaotic. I fart, I burp, who gives a sh*t!” Adds Lillian: “We’ve been loving the title of ‘lovable mess.’ We really resonate with that. We’re so different and chaotic in our personalities, and what we do and [how] we have so much fun together.”
But, equally, there’s also a new command in the way they present themselves as artists and pop stars. “Back then, we didn’t know sh*t,” Queenie says. “We have knowledge now, and I want our artistry — the songs and lyrics — to be shown way more. [For] how hard we work to be recognized.” Says Elana with a grin: “I hope there’s a Boys World documentary one day, to show everything that goes into it!”
“We have meetings every week about the ideas and the vision we see for ourselves,” says Olivia. “The first few years, we didn’t have that much control but right now, there’s way more room and freedom.” This opportunity means delving deeper and more candidly into their psyche and real-world experiences for their lyrics, being there for their fans — whom Elana calls “a family” — and championing their womanhood and diversity, even if America’s view on both matters, in general, is increasingly hostile.
“It’s like how people are mad about The Little Mermaid because she’s black,” says Mahkyli, “and I feel like because we’re a diverse group, then people are just going to be mad. If people back in the day just stopped saying equal rights, if they were like, ‘Oh, people are angry, so let’s just shush,’ then you wouldn’t have progress. The only way for us to progress at all is to just keep doing what we’re doing.”
Styling: Ariana Velazquez
Makeup: Marla Vazquez
Hair: Marilyn Lizardo
