Room 101 is a huge storeroom deep in the bowels of i-D that houses the collective fears of an office. An Alcatraz of awful, a hotel for the eternally bad, it is a depot for everything undesirable in life and our guest is here to persuade us to banish the items on her list into it. Will she succeed or will we make her take her horrors home with her? This is GIRLI’s Room 101…
Hello GIRLI. Your new song is called Girls Get Angry Too. Does it take much to make you angry?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I have a really short temper and I sort of will just snap at random things. But then again, I’m not like a complete dick all the time. I don’t get pissed off at the most stupid things. But I feel like, when I do get angry, I express it quite obviously. Hence why I thought it might be a good idea to just make a song about it instead of causing anyone injury.
I think it’s a good idea and a very good song as well. Did you have any difficulty coming up with your choices?
I sort of thought, okay, I could say things that would definitely be in Room 101 like, waterboarding. But then I thought, no, this is i-D magazine, they probably don’t want to hear loads of deep, deep shit like that so I thought, let me come up with some light hearted things that piss me off. I ended up coming up with way too many… Maybe quite a few things piss me off.
How many have you narrowed it down to?
I narrowed it down to three.
Alright. Let’s hear them.
Okay so, this is a bit stupid but it annoys the hell out of me. I would put Vita Coco in Room 101.
Please explain.
Are you aware of Vita Coco?
The beverage?
Yeah. So, Vita Coco is, I dunno, coconut water, a coconut drink. I first came across Vita Coco when I mistakenly went to try and do yoga – which I swiftly realised was not for me – and they were selling it. Vita Coco is like, £2.50 for a bottle and has some shit written on the side which says, “replaces the electrolytes in your body la la la la la”. And at the start I thought, okay, whatever, I’m not going to pay £2.50 for a drink. Then I just started seeing it everywhere! It pops up at London Fashion Week, it’s in every little expensive shop… And it’s just started to really get on my tits because people buy into it! People actually pay £2.50 for a small little bottle of this mysterious, supposedly coconut beverage. I mean the last time I heard the word electrolytes was science GCSEs. I don’t really understand how coconut water can do anything to your electrolytes.
Isn’t it good on a hangover though? Are you never tempted when you’re hungover to think, “Oh I’ll have a Vita Coco, that will replenish me?”
With a hangover, go for a Berocca tablet or a Vitamin C tablet. Those replenish you. I feel if a drink that small is priced over £1, it’s too expensive. Maybe it’s not just Vita Coco, maybe it’s expensive beverages in general.
Is there a non alcoholic beverage that you would pay £2.50 for?
If I was paying £2.50 because it was like, Fairtrade or craftsmanship was put into it, or it came from a country where people weren’t payed that much to work and they made this drink – totally. But Vita Coco, has this pretence that it’s really good for you and really wishy-washy nice and I feel that’s a lie. I feel like that’s false marketing.
It’s the masquerading as this sort of beacon of all that is well in the world of beverage that’s is annoying about it, isn’t it?
Literally. Vita Coco in Room 101.
Okay, GIRLI. Let’s chuck it in.
There it is. Okay my next thing for Room 101 is encores. I just feel like we should just banish them altogether. If I’ve paid money to go and see a gig and I’m having a great time and the main set is done, if they say “bye” but come back on, that’s just deception. I feel like I’ve been lied to. And I don’t understand what the point is! What is the point? If they want to be like, “Yo guys, I want to give you a great end of show so I’m just gonna pop off, have a drink of water, have a shit” then whatever. But they literally say, “we’re going now” and they’re not! They’re coming back! I just don’t understand the deception.
Do you know what they’re doing, the type of bands that do that? They’re going and they’re having a Vita Coco water.
That’s exactly what they’re doing.
They’re the bands that get eight bottles of it on their rider. That’s exactly the band that does encores.
That’s exactly the band. But they’re too ashamed to say, “We’re just going to get a Vita Coco”. They just say that it’s over and then they go off.
Which bands do you think drink Vita Coco before an encore? Coldplay?
Oh, Coldplay absolutely drink Vita Coco. I think Coldplay have like a tank that just follows them around. Who else? I feel like someone like Jack Garratt might drink Vita Coco. Okay, we discussed James Bay before but I feel James, dear James, he’s definitely a bit of a Vita Coco addict.
That’s what’s in the hat.
Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I didn’t realise this before.
Okay, encores. They’re in Room 101 too.
They’re in. So my last Room 101 thing is such a Londoner one: tourists who walk on the wrong side of the escalator need to remove themselves from the that situation and place themselves firmly in Room 101. You know when you’re in a bit of a rush, or you’ve got that little hop, or skip in your step and then you get to the escalator and there’s a group of people standing on the left? It just takes away a part of your soul. You end up being an angry person like, “move, move, excuse me, yep, bye, bye” and you just sort of feel like… Like something has been taken away from you. Like a freedom.
What’s your tube vibe? Are you a lefthand jogger?
When I’m with my mates we’ll just chill out on the right side, no rush. You know, it’s all good vibes. When I’m on my own, I am guilty of being a jogger down the lefthand side. I’m that person that everyone’s like, “Where the fuck are they going? What’s their rush?”. I like to be able to get to my seat on the tube and be a little bit out of breath. The worst thing is when you’re rushing down then you get onto the platform and there’s not a tube for three minutes. Then all of the people you pissed off on the escalator just sort of walk leisurely onto the platform and see you out of breath. They kind of judge you hard.
Is this something that could be enacted on street? A slow lane for people who want to dawdle and a fast lane for people who know where they’re going?
Yeah, this is the thing actually. I think we should just in general banish Oxford Street into Room 101 because that is the most stressful road in London. You can’t walk along that road, you can’t drive along that road, you can’t do anything. It’s given itself over to people who mosey.
Well, let’s have a compromise. I’m not sure we can get rid of the whole of Oxford Street, but lets get rid of people who dawdle on escalators on Oxford Street.
Yeah. Okay, perfect.
Well, thank you, GIRLI. That’s the end of your Room 101 experience. Would you like to do an encore or are you okay?
No, I’m going to go actually… Oh wait, I’m back! I had some Vita Coco in between.
GIRLI’s new single Girls Get Angry Too is out now.
Credits
Text Matthew Whitehouse