You Say Party! We Say Die! Interview

My new piece on Becky from YSP!WSD! is in the new issue of Naked Eye. It looks amazing in person! Make sure to pick up a copy if you can.

Party Monster
By Andrea Warner

You Say Party! We Say Die! are a Vancouver-based band known for their kick-ass live shows and dance party extravaganzas. The ingredients? Pop-punk-dance rhapsodies and devilishly cute lead singer, Becky Ninkovic, who’s fearless thrashing in super glam outfits belie her innocent “Who Me?” coo.

Their hit single “Monster” propelled YSP!WSD! out of obscurity, so it seemed a fitting assignment to ask Ninkovic to name her five favourite monsters for Naked Eye’s horror issue. But it’s the real things that go bump in the night for Ninkovic that sound truly terrifying.

The singer suffers from sleep paralysis, but even after describing one vision of a floating child in her Beijing hotel room, she’s still pretty relaxed about the whole thing. “In Beijing they used to do a lot of beheadings, so there are a lot of headless ghosts floating around. People were telling me about them, and I was like, “Yeah! I think I’ve seen one’ but I’m not sure.”

1. Kaonashi from the anime Spirited Away. In English it means "no face." In his natural state he's kind of empty, and kind of simple, but very emotional. Like he feeds off other people's emotions, and gets more and more hungry, and just keeps eating, and starts eating people and eating everything around him, cause he just wants to fill up his emptiness, and he gets super, super huge and gross and then he pukes it all up. And after he pukes he calms down and feels better.

2. Ursula from The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid was my all time favourite movie growing up as a little girl. She just had so much pizzazz and spunk, and she was so like, tough and always showing her bust out and using awesome sea creature makeup. She had Flotsam and Jetsam, her eels that did whatever she ordered them to do. She lived in the remains of a dragon, like a leviathan skull. I don't know, she was banished from Atlantica. She had a lot of intrigue and character to her, she's rad.

3. Teen Wolf. I was going to go with, like, the original werewolf, and I do love the werewolf, too, but I especially enjoyed Teen Wolf. It was like 1985. I probably got into it more around 1990, ‘cause I was born in 1981. But Michael J. Fox was super big. All our family watched Family Ties. When I found out that he was Teen Wolf, it was like, “Oh my god.” He was just awesome, ‘cause he went from being the nice, kind of geeky kid in the neighbourhood, to Mr. Popular, who plays basketball and bangs the prom queen and plays air guitar while standing on the roof of a car, and is like, a super awesome dancer at the prom. He turns into the werewolf and all his dreams come true, basically.

4. Where the Wild Things Are. I love the wild things. That was like my book from my childhood that I still own, that I still read to my nieces and nephews. I just love how they look, the illustrations are amazing and I love the monsters. I love that they live out of his imagination. Like he gets in trouble and gets sent to his room and all of a sudden he has this whole wild land growing, and he gets to be king of them all. I just love the wild things.

5. And, the shuggees. I don't know if you've seen Wonder Showzen. It's like a really insane kids show that's not for kids. And the episode with the shuggees is just like amazing. It's like these little monster characters, and they like, the way they talk is all in code, and it's pretty racist. They have their own language. And not that I like racists, but it's so absolutely—just such bad, naughty humour that it's funny, I guess. I just appreciate anything that will make me laugh so much. I know a monster’s main objective usually is to scare you, but I don't too well with fear. I'd rather laugh. I want things that will make me laugh, more than make me cry and have nightmares for months on end.