Formation and career (1990–1997)

Bikini Kill formed in Olympia, Washington, in October 1990, by Kathleen Hanna (vocals), Billy Karren (guitar), Kathi Wilcox (bass), and Tobi Vail (drums). Hanna, Vail, and Wilcox met while attending The Evergreen State College in Washington.^[1] Hanna also published a fanzine called Bikini Kill for their first tours in 1991.^[2] The band wrote songs together and encouraged a female-centric environment at their shows, urging women to come to the front of the stage and handing out lyric sheets to them. Hanna would also dive into the crowd to personally remove male hecklers.^[3] Such male concertgoers would often verbally and physically assault Hanna during shows when the tickets were still inexpensive and easily procured.^[3] However, the band's reach included large male audiences as well as young women.^[3]

Fellow riot grrrl musician Lois Maffeo originally adopted Bikini Kill as a band name, inspired by the 1967 B-movie The Million Eyes of Sumuru. She and her friend Margaret Doherty used the name for a one-off performance in the late 1980s where they donned faux fur punk cave girl costumes. Vail liked the name and appropriated it after Maffeo settled on the band name Cradle Robbers.^[4]

Kathleen Hanna performing with Bikini Kill in Sydney, Australia, in 1996

After an independent demo cassette, Revolution Girl Style Now, Bikini Kill released the Bikini Kill EP on the indie label Kill Rock Stars. Produced by Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi, the album began to establish the band's audience. The band's debut album, Pussy Whipped, was released in September 1993. Bikini Kill toured in London, England to begin working with Huggy Bear, releasing a split album, Our Troubled Youth / Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, and touring the UK. The tour was the subject of a documentary film by Lucy Thane titled It Changed My Life: Bikini Kill in the U.K. Upon their return to the United States, the band began working with Joan Jett of the Runaways, whose music Hanna described as an early example of the Riot Grrrl aesthetic. Jett produced the single "New Radio"/"Rebel Girl" for the band, and Hanna co-wrote several songs on Jett's Pure and Simple album.^[5]

By the following year, Riot Grrrl was receiving constant attention in the media, and Bikini Kill were increasingly referred to as pioneers of the movement. Hanna called for a "media blackout" amongst Riot Grrrls, as they felt the band and the movement were being misrepresented by the media.^[6] The pioneer reputation endures but, as Hanna recalls, "[Bikini Kill was] very vilified during the '90s by so many people, and hated by so many people, and I think that that's been kind of written out of the history. People were throwing chains at our heads – people hated us – and it was really, really hard to be in that band."^[7]

The band's final album, Reject All American, was released in 1996. After the band's breakup in 1997, a compilation of singles recorded between 1993 and 1995 was released in 1998 under the name The Singles.^[8]

Post-breakup (1998–2016)

During the summer of 1992, the band The Frumpies was formed by Karren, Wilcox, Vail, and Molly Neuman of Bratmobile, and toured as late as the early 2000s along with a similar Italian punk rock band Dada Swing.^[9][10]

Vail, notorious for her numerous side projects and being in several bands at a time, later resurfaced in a band called Spider and the Webs, and played with the Old Haunts until the band broke up in 2009. Kathi Wilcox played in The Casual Dots, who released only one album to date,^[11] and Billy Karren played in Ghost Mom. Hanna first contributed to an LP called 'Real Fiction' as a member of the Fakes, and then turned to more dance-based new wave music (with similar feminist lyrical themes) on her solo debut, Julie Ruin. She then became a member of the political new wave outfit Le Tigre.^[12] After Le Tigre broke up, Hanna became the front woman of a band named after her solo project, the Julie Ruin, for which Wilcox plays bass.

In February 2016, a pro-Hillary Clinton clip utilizing the Bikini Kill song "Rebel Girl" began to go viral, but was taken down by Vail (who supported Bernie Sanders in the primary).^[13]

Reunion tours (2017–present)

Bikini Kill in 2019, at the O2 Brixton Academy

In 2017, Kathleen Hanna, Kathi Wilcox and Tobi Vail reunited to play one song at a book-release concert^[14] for Jenn Pelly's book about the Raincoats.^[15] On January 15, 2019, Bikini Kill announced four U.S. shows, in New York and Los Angeles.^[16] The lineup for these shows included Hanna, Wilcox, Tobi Vail and touring guitarist Erica Dawn Lyle, who replaced Billy Karren in the lineup.^[17] The first show was April 25 at the Hollywood Palladium with Alice Bag as opener.^[18] In June the band played two European dates, in London at Brixton Academy, supported by Big Joanie, and with the Tuts and Child's Pose opening.^[19] On September 15, they headlined the third day of the Riot Fest event in Chicago.^[20]

On November 6, 2019, Bikini Kill announced a thirteen-date North American Tour for 2020, beginning in Olympia, Washington.^[21] The lineup for these shows was the same for the previous dates in 2019, and was scheduled to start March 13, 2020 at Olympia's Capitol Theater. The remainder of the West Coast tour included shows in Victoria, B.C., where they were to be supported by Mecca Normal, and in Portland supported by the Lithics. The tour also included some European dates in June and August, including Oslo's Øya Festival.^[22] The tour was rescheduled to 2022 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.^[23]

In October 2022 the band announced an Australian tour for March 2023, their first Australian shows in 26 years, touring to Hobart, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, the Golden Plains Festival in country Victoria, Perth and at the Sydney Opera House. Hanna, Wilcox and Vail were joined by touring guitarist Sara Landeau, who played with both Hanna and Wilcox in The Julie Ruin.^[24] Vail also fell ill for part of the tour, leaving the band's Australian drum tech Lauren Hammel (also of Tropical Fuck Storm) to fill in on drums for the Victorian shows.^[25]

Early in 2020, in an interview with Pitchfork, Hanna stated that the band had no plans at the time to create new material.^[15]

History

Bikini Kill’s close ties to the Riot Grrrl Movement began with the formation of the band in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a ‘noisy message of female self-empowerment voiced by several punk musicians and a few of their friends’ [1] with lead singer Kathleen Hanna at the forefront. Beginning as an underground subculture at Washington State University in 1990, the movement quickly evolved alongside Bikini Kill as a newfound feminine voice in the largely male dominated punk-rock scene at the time.

Activism

Throughout their career, the band frequently engaged in public displays of revolt against standard gender roles. Hanna frequently uttering the motto “Girls To the Front” as encouragement for female audience members to come to the fore front during live performances. Other public displays included Hanna performing live shows in a bra with words like “Slut” written on her midriff as a stance against the objectification the band felt prevalent in popular culture during the 1990s. Generally, the band tended to respond to aggressive audience members in an equally aggressive manner.

Along with public resistance at their shows, the members of Bikini Kill also engaged with activism off-stage. This included organizing marches, holding weekly meetings in Washington, and publicly advocating for the greater introduction of women in the punk-rock scene in conjunction with the Riot Grrrl Movement.

Since their reunion in 2019, the band has continued their contribution to the feminist scene in the punk-rock sphere, noting their commitment to cross-sectionality in feminism they feel the Riot Grrrl Movement may have lacked previously. Hanna even admitting that terms like “Girls To the Front” may have different connotations to white cis-gendered woman today than it had at largely male dominated shows throughout the 1990s.

Reception

In 2013, documentary film The Punk Singer was released, including archival footage following live shows of Bikini Kill and tracing the life of Kathleen Hanna. The archival footage showcases the frequent arguments that broke out between Hanna and audience members during live performances throughout the 1990s. These arguments, often incited by aggressive audience members, lead to violence on more than one occasion. The documentary also detailed the scrutiny and pushback the band received during the height of their career as a direct result of their outspoken feminism and affirmative nature. The band details how misrepresented they felt by popular media outlets at the time for largely disregarding the violence the band faced on a regular basis at their shows by audience members, while simultaneously over extrapolating on the bands oft assertive responses

On April 25th, 2019, the band performed a reunion concert to over 5,000 fans at the Palladium in Hollywood, California. This show was a part of their 2019 reunion tour. During the performance, Kathleen Hanna wore a cheerleading uniform and engaged in profane chants as a public display of the bands support for the Me Too Movement. The performance mirrored that of shows earlier in their career. The band adhered to their reputation as outspoken feminists, garnering a much greater support in popular media than at the start of their career.

Timeline