LOS ANGELES, CA- GIRLI, born Milly Toomey and raised in North London by actor parents who encouraged her creativity, has been doing this since she was a teenager, booking a Roundhouse rehearsal room for a pound an hour. Back then, the music room at her own school was, in her words, “literally just a corridor with some broken trumpets.”
She operates on a brilliant bait-and-switch, using the Trojan horse of infectious, bubblegum-adjacent pop hooks to deliver sharp commentary on what it actually means to navigate the world as a queer woman. She describes her music simply as “opinionated pop.” Her third album, it’s just my opinion, takes its name from a phrase frequently used to shrink an argument after it has already caused damage. The title came together while her feminist content was being pushed toward hostile corners of social media, with men mansplaining in her comments why she’s too angry, too dramatic, or simply wrong. Rather than soften the material, she borrowed their disclaimer. Okay. Fine. These are just her angry queer feminist songs.
The word “opinionated” is rarely neutral when it is attached to a woman. A man with firm views is decisive. A woman becomes too emotional. GIRLI understands the distinction and refuses to perform around it. Her music doesn’t pause to ask whether the listener is comfortable before it continues.
That refusal runs through Matriarchy, her second album, which reads less like a rejection of men than a rejection of the operating system. She has described the idea as a redefinition, not “women in charge instead of men,” but an inclusive structure where women, queer people, nonbinary people, allies, and men can all thrive. The title track was inspired by her relationship with her girlfriend and by the refuge queer women can create beyond the male gaze, placing queer desire, sex, heartbreak, and joy at the center instead of treating queerness as trauma alone.
Politics, for her, isn’t an accessory to the music; it is closer to the reason her music exists. The clearest political statement on it’s just my opinion is “Slap on the Wrist,” a song confronting sexual violence, victim-blaming, and the lack of meaningful consequences for perpetrators. GIRLI has spoken about experiencing sexual harassment from a young age while walking to school in her uniform. For the accompanying video, she collaborated with the feminist platform Cheer Up Luv, using ordinary locations tied to survivors’ experiences: bedrooms, workplaces, parks, and other places that don’t resemble the dark alley society prefers to imagine when it talks about assault. The song isn’t asking listeners to discover that violence against women exists; most women completed that research years ago. It is asking what happens next.
GIRLI has been direct about wanting men to recognize both their privilege and their ability to intervene, to challenge friends, educate one another, and stop treating violence as an issue women should have to solve while also surviving it. There is real anger in the song because anger is the reasonable response, and the music gives it somewhere to go.
“Lifestyle” examines the actual, inconvenient complications of a queer relationship: internalized shame and the frustration of a partner who refuses to name what is happening between you. “Be With Me,” by contrast, turns inward, choosing yourself over another cycle of romantic anxiety. That specificity is what makes GIRLI’s work more valuable than generic empowerment pop. She isn’t singing about loving yourself in a vacuum. She writes about the messy reality of internalized homophobia, family pressure, public visibility, and the inescapable friction of human connection.
Queer representation is sometimes expected to be exemplary. GIRLI allows it to be inconvenient. Her women fall in love. They behave badly. They have sex. They overthink. They go back to people they promised to move on from.
Politics isn’t only an election, a protest sign, or a lyric naming a political party. It is also about who gets to love openly, who feels safe walking home, and whose pain is considered serious enough to investigate. She writes about all of it. Then she writes about texting someone she should have blocked.
That same balance carried into her Lodge Room show. The Los Angeles venue occupies a former Masonic lodge, and it still carries the evidence: vaulted ceilings, dark wood paneling, and star medallions overhead, the kind of room that seems built for secret gatherings. But that night, everyone was welcome. The only entry requirement was not being a bigot about who was standing next to you.
Ahead of the tour, GIRLI described the shows as “quite therapeutic, kind of like group therapy,” and that was exactly the register the night hit: a Highland Park crowd ready to sing, shout, and participate. It was a political space because her politics are embedded in the community she has built, with women and queer people working behind the songs, fans recognizing themselves in them, and a performer unwilling to separate who she loves from what she believes.
But it was still a concert. People came for the music and temporarily handed their problems and hot takes over to someone holding a microphone. GIRLI took them.
Then, near the end of the set, she leaned into the mic and gave us one final piece of advice:
“Don’t text your ex.”
Damn. I needed to hear that.
For the record, I didn’t.
Instead, I left the show feeling a little empowered, a little hyped, and carrying a dose of therapy I didn’t know I needed.
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