Last week Militarie Gun announced details of their new album God Save The Gun and dropped the lead single “B A D I D E A.” It’s a great song that we instantly put on The FADER’s songs you need playlist. It turns out, however, that the song could have just as easily ended up coming from a very different source.
Appearing on Apple Music on Monday, the band’s frontman Ian Shelton told host Zane Lowe that he had written the instrumental to “B A D I D E A” after hearing that Doja Cat was interested in making a hardcore album.
“B A D I D E A” was a song that was at the very last minute hatched, and it was actually hatched ’cause I wrote it for a hardcore record that Doja Cat wanted to do,” Shelton said. “And then I was like, “Nah, I’m taking that.” For the instrumental, not the vocal. So I wrote the vocal when I knew it was for me.”
The interview Shelton mentions was a Variety piece published in 2023. It makes reference to Doja Cat playing IDLES music at the accompanying cover shoot and speaking about her love of punk and hardcore music. “I want to explore punk,” she said in the interview. “But not pop-punk. I feel like we have enough pop-punk artists right now. And if there needs to be more, then let there be more, but I don’t think I’m the one to do it. I want to explore more of a raw, unfiltered, hardcore punk sort of thing. It’s just something that I’m doing for my own personal fun — getting some drummers and guitarists together. And I don’t even know if that’s gonna make it out there.”
It’s not clear if Shelton is suggesting that he was actively writing for Doja Cat, or just using her interview quotes as a creative prompt. Either way, it doesn’t seem like an actual Doja Cat punk record is happening any time soon so it’s probably for the best he kept the song to himself. Militarie Gun’s God Save The Gun will be released on October 17.