Rancid Eddie Have Doubled Down On Their Lyrics, Saying They Believe In ‘Absolute Free Speech’

Rancid Eddie

Rancid Eddie, the band that has been circulating social media lately for all the wrong reasons, has finally addressed their public backlash in an Instagram post that is certainly ~something~.

The five-piece band from the outer suburbs of Melbourne (Glen Waverley to be exact) has drawn major criticism from the Australian music community. Namely, Rancid Eddie have been accused of writing misogynist lyrics and they’ve been accused of an assault that allegedly took place at one of their gigs (a claim the band firmly denies). We’ve also done a bigger deep dive into these allegations here.

Aussie musician Nancie Schipper asked lead singer Jessy a number of questions over Instagram about some of these criticisms. During this interaction, he said that the lyrics to song ‘Dry’ “in no way means” the band endorses the degradation of women.

For context, these are some of the lyrics to ‘Dry’:

“Sex doesn’t feel very nice no more
And our kiss don’t taste like it did before
I can’t get it up when I’m all out of love
And I’m always drunk cause I hate you so damn much.”

Now, it seems the band have doubled down and released a statement on Instagram defending their lyrics.

“First off, we do not accept the notion that we need to explain or justify our lyrics. Our belief is that music and lyricism cannot itself be harmful because it is diffusive in its expression,” Rancid Eddie wrote on Instagram.

There are ten slides overall explaining Rancid Eddie’s side of the allegations. But to summarise: the band defended their right to freedom of speech (something that we don’t actually have in Australia) and accused those who ‘outed’ them as being a vocal minority who try to “cancel” others.

However, they did say they were “open to more feedback and rebuttals”, so let’s hope that means listening to victims of gendered abuse and taking accountability for what many have labelled as damaging lyrics.


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