What's A Girl To Do? (song)

Bat For Lashes Writer(s) Natasha Khan Producer(s) Natasha Khan David Kosten Released 25 May 2007 Recorded 2006 Length 2:58 Fur And Gold track listing "Tahiti" "Sad Eyes"

"What's a Girl to Do?" is the fourth track on Bat For Lashes' debut album, Fur And Gold. It was released as the fourth and final single off the album in 2007.

Background

The song was written about Natasha's break-up with her long-term boyfriend at the time. She wanted to write a song that had a spoken word explanation of the break-up and how she was feeling, but with the melodrama of a 60s girl group's songs, such as The Shangri-Las. When the song was recorded, Natasha recreated the 60s sound with a huge "Phil Spector" drum and a tambourine using a plate reverb.

A supposed demo version leaked on 3 July 2021. This version has a different vocal take and lacks drums, acoustic guitar and programming.

Single release

No.	Title	Length
1.	"What's a Girl To Do?" (Edit)	2:46
2.	"Sarah (Reworked)" (Live)	3:52
3.	"Tahiti" (Live)	3:23
Total length:		9:21

Lyrics

We walked arm in arm
But I didn't feel his touch
A desire I'd first tried to hide
That tingling inside was gone
And when he asked me
"Do you still love me?"
I had to look away
I didn't want to tell him
That my heart grows colder with each day

When you've loved so long that the thrill is gone
And your kisses at night are replaced with tears
And when your dreams are on a train to trainwreck town
Then I ask you now, "What's a girl to do?"

He said he'd take me away
That we'd work things out
And I didn't want to tell him
But it was then I had to say
Over the times we've shared
It's all blackened out
And my bat-lightning heart wants to fly away

When you've loved so long that the thrill is gone
And your kisses at night are replaced with tears
And when your dreams are on a train to trainwreck town
Then I ask you now, "What's a girl to do?"
What's a girl to do?
What's a girl to do?
What's a girl to do?

Music video

Bat For Lashes - What's A Girl To Do-1

Development

Natasha on the video:

When I made that video I sent out a brief to the video director that we approached. What I said is that I wanted to capture the feeling of epiphany from films I loved in my childhood like E.T., The Goonies and The Karate Kid and even Donnie Darko. I called them my "hoodie movies" because it's all boys with hoodies and usually at some point they'll all get on bikes and that's a symbolic reference to breaking out of their suburban trappings and going on this journey of self-discovery and this contact with the outside world as something mysterious, shocking, great and frightening. I really wanted the video to capture that exact feeling. Everyone came up with different narratives and complicated videos and Dougal Wilson came up with that thing of just me riding my bike and the boys come out and we put animal heads on. My illustrations of that time had people with animal heads. It brought in the Bat For Lashes visual symbols and it was a nice collaboration with the director.

In a 2013 interview, she said:

I have a soft spot for the “What’s a Girl to Do?” video with the bikes just because it was the first video that I did that it felt like I was in my own brain. I just remember being in it and I’d been drawing people with animal heads, forests and trees, and there are Halloween kids and there’s cars on fire. I felt like I was in a David Lynch film, but for real. It was the most brilliant experience, I was so happy with that video, although we shot it for like – I think it took 22 hours to shoot it. And when they sent the film off, it was corrupt. It didn’t develop. So we had to go back to it again, but it was worth it in the end.

Behind the scenes

Credits

• Natasha Khan - vocals, keyboards, percussin, drums, production, songwriting
• Ben Christophers - bass, guitar
• Tim Byford - drums
• Emma Rammsdale - harp
• David Kosten - programming, recording engineer, mixing engineer, production