BY MC GALANG
Cebu-based School Girl Classic’s latest single, “Suzanne,” conjures a vivid scenario in my head: a coming-of-age romance, swirling in self-doubt and impressionable desire to please. “I know you wanna be loved,” sings Karina Cuizon, a sympathetic voice that lends to the fictional character, Hana, whom the entire band’s schoolgirl identity is based on.
In an interview with The Rest Is Noise, Cuizon notes that the song is about “a spectator of [someone else’s] relationships, secretly wishing that the person would give you a chance, too.” The idea for “Suzanne” came to her after watching a film that seemed to imitate her own experience. It’s pining after someone who has their eyes for another, and also admonishing that very feeling, hoping that, in doing so, you can save yourself from a world of hurt.
This instinct for self-preservation seems rare, even uncharacteristically so when we were younger—when we were led so much by gut and heart, and almost everything is devoid of logic, or logic be damned. School Girl Classic’s latest single wants to offer a different take on the young female psyche: one with empathy and wisdom, making allowances in order to experience all the joys and pains of young love in its entirety without belittling it or brushing it aside.
Stream Suzanne
