COMMENTS

August 31, 2010 - nymag.com interview with Debbie

Panic of Girls is a great, evocative album title. Where’d it come from?

We were recording a song, it’s sort of a story of a street person, and I had a question at the end that said, “Is it really the end of the world?” You know, because those people who get out on the street and they’re yelling about the end of the world coming, their lives are sort of miserable (laughs). I was just saying that and Chris [Stein] just popped up and said, “Oh, change it to the ‘Panic of Girls.’” The first version was, "The Panic of Truth."

June 13, 2010 - Bournemouth Echo interview with Debbie

"The title is from this song on the album called The End of the World – oh, how tragic, and it’s a long allegorical poem thing that has this one line about the panic of hurt and Chris said we should change it to panic of girls. I don’t know why, but it stuck.
Then I got this thing that a panic of girls could be like a flock – a panic of girls, like a band of girls, all screaming fan girls. I’ve been that many, many times, I know that panic.”
Somehow it works as a collective noun, but I couldn’t help but be put in mind of the panic of girls, or middle-aged women at least, engendered by the recent release of the second Sex and the City film.
Ah yes, of course, the panic of those girls is really quite powerful, although I don’t get it at all. That’s not really me, I’m a quite different kind of woman altogether."