If Disney Had Given Avril Her Own Show

Bali Baby shot the Backseat video in twelve hours of freezing cold, which she seemed genuinely proud of. I definitely have permanent frostbite on my fingers, she said, but it’s the hottest video out right now, so it was worth every bit of the work. If I had to describe it, it would be like if the Disney Channel gave Avril Lavigne her own show, in 2001. That’s a good pitch and also a very specific cultural memory to be reaching for in 2018.

Bali Baby is an Atlanta artist who had already made a name for herself with Banana Clip—a track strange enough to get attention in a scene where strange is the baseline. She calls herself a pop-rock newcomer, which is self-aware enough to be almost a joke and direct enough to be a statement of intent. Backseat is a power-earworm in the best sense: loud and dumb in a smart way, the kind of thing that lodges in your head without asking permission and stays there until you’ve made your peace with it.

Her debut album, Baylor Swift—the title earns its smirk—dropped shortly after. The Avril-via-Disney-Channel comparison does the work of explaining what she was going for: something synthetic and earnest simultaneously, nostalgia for an era of pop-punk that was itself synthetic and earnest. It either lands for you or it doesn’t. For me, it mostly did.