999,848: Lillix - Tomorrow

When I was teenager, way back in the early 90's, the times were a-changin'. The power of "Grunge Rock" had brought "the man" to his knees, sweeping fuddy-duddy ol' George Bush I out of office, and replacing him with Wild Billy Clinton. Young people were smoking dope, wearing dirty sandals, and attending our generation's Woodstock, Lollapalooza, as well as our generation's other Woodstock, Woodstock '94. This mood of change was perfectly captured by 4 Non Blondes lead singer Linda Perry's hit song "What's Going On" (apparently the actual title of the song is 'What's Up," which I learned during my extensive research for this review.) In the lyrics to "What's Up," Linda confessed to praying "every single day for REVOLUTION."

Ten years after that clarion call to rise up and overthrow the patriarchy, Linda Perry co-wrote the song "Tomorrow" with the Canadian teen-girl pop-rock band Lillix. "Tomorrow" is a sugary pop-punk song. It has slickly produced "heavy" guitars that caress the ears with velvety compression and EQ, layers of nicely sung background harmonies and a bit of of what I think is a mellotron sprinkled in the outro. The lyrics, at first listen, are about a girl who got dumped trying to make herself feel better as she mopes around the house. It certainly doesn't seem like something that would have come from the pen of the fire-breathing revolutionary who stuck a middle finger in the establishment's eye by writing "dyke" on her guitar when she performed at the 1994 Billboard Music Awards. A closer reading of the lyrics, however, have led me to a different conclusion - "Tomorrow" is the "Won't Get Fooled Again" of its time.

Just as "Won't Get Fooled Again" ("Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss") was Pete Townshend's way of parting with the revolutionary ideals of the 60's, "Tomorrow" is Perry's farewell to 1993's "Summer of (Danny G)Love(r in "Lethal Weapon 3"). After spending an entire day "all by myself staring at the TV screen" (undoubtedly watching George W. Bush strip away the hard-won freedoms of the Clinton era), Perry, through the proxy of an attractive all-teen girl band, announces she has had enough of beating herself up about a failed revolution. She decides to "wake up, put on my make up." No more giant top-hat and dreadlocks for Linda Perry - she's putting on make-up, because the only way to affect real change is to dress nice, throw on some foundation and eyeliner, and work the system from within. "Tomorrow" is a piece of throwaway Canuck-pop with a message: We can waste our days away missing our boyfriends/revolutionary ideals. Or we can face reality - nobody wants songs about revolutions and Alanis-esque vocal theatrics anymore. It's 2003, and the leader of 4 Non Blondes is gonna make some serious scratch writing music 4 blondes.