NOFX Wields Wordplay to Tackle Identity Questions on ‘F–k Euphemism’
NOFX’s Fat Mike gets into a “gender pronoun bar fight” on the band’s new song, “Fuck Euphemism,” off their upcoming LP, Single Album, out February 26th via Fat Wreck Chords.
The song is a classic bit of blistering pop-punk, and it finds Fat Mike using all sorts of wordplay and double entendre to grapple with the pressure to explicitly define his gender and sexual identity. The song arrives with a lyric video, animated by Chris Graue.
“We had to make a lyric video for this song because these might be my favorite lyrics I’ve ever written,” Fat Mike said in a statement. “Oh, what fun it is to write a song that’s completely PC, but sure as hell sounds like it isn’t!”
In a new interview with Spin, Fat Mike spoke more about what he was trying to convey with the song and what inspired it. “I consider myself queer and part of it, so I can sing a song like this,” he said. “I live a BDSM lifestyle and I’m a crossdresser, so it did bother me when people were calling me a cis male. I like the whole thing of defining yourself using your own terms, because I’m a punk rocker first, and then a submissive crossdressing male. The transgender community and the gay community are taking a stance on how we want to be known, and I’m going to be known as a certain way.”
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Fat Mike went on to highlight the track’s final lines, where he bellows, “I’m a single not a plural person so call me ‘Per’ for the night.” “Per,” Mike explained, is short-hand for “person,” a term he gleaned from Doris Lessing’s 1985 book, The Good Terrorist.
“I think that is really the term that people should be embracing, like ‘I was with per last night’ or ‘I love per’ because it doesn’t give away anything,” Mike said. “It’s singular, and isn’t that what people want to be known as — as a person? They don’t want to be labeled.”
“Fuck Euphemism” arrives on the heels of NOFX’s “Linewleum,” which found the band half-jokingly trying to retire their classic 1994 song, “Linoleum.” Single Album marks NOFX’s first album since 2016’s First Ditch Effort.
