Story of a Song is a monthly segment on KCUR's Central Standard in which local musicians tell the story behind a song they have written or are performing.
The band: Rachel Mallin and The Wild Type
The song: "White Girls"
The story: Last year, Kansas City singer Rachel Mallin was recovering from a failed relationship, one that she felt was hijacked by a certain kind of girl. Processing the pain, she started churning out lyrics. Around the same time, she got a job at Forever 21, working eight hour shifts, five days a week.
With the holidays approaching, she spent a lot of time stocking supplies in the back. But, she dealt with her fair share of customers.
"There is a breaking point you reach, just as a human being, when you have to deal with a lot of the same kind of people who come from a very privileged background," she says. "And I dealt with a lot of white girls."
And thus the lyric 'God save the white girls' was born.
Mallin and her band started playing around with doo-wop riffs and shiny guitar tones, and in the end, with the help of playful 'woos' and a child's bell set, produced what they hope is a whimsical, satirical song.
Mallin herself is, indeed, a "Caucasian female."
"There are a lot of jokes about white girls, in the way of Starbucks and Uggs," she says. "And I'm gonna be honest -- I love pumpkin spice lattes. I'm never gonna deny that."
But, she says, she didn't grow up with a lot of privilege. That, and her personal experiences fuel her song-writing.
"It comes from stuff that's painful, but if I just wrote the painful stuff straight from its core, I would sound like a really angsty girl," Mallin says. "That's not who I am. I'm just a sarcastic beyotch."
Andrea Tudhope is a freelance reporter and producer for KCUR 89.3. You can reach her on Twitter @adtudhope.