Bad//Dreems have revealed the true meaning behind their new single ‘Bogan Pride’, a cut from the band’s debut full-length, Dogs At Bay. According to the band, the song is a barb aimed at Australia’s new muscle bro culture.

Speaking recently to The Guardian, guitarist Alex Cameron said he was inspired to write the song after watching a friend play at a summer dance music festival which was rife with muscled-up males sporting Southern Cross tattoos.

“I was standing around and waiting by myself, completely sober, looking at all these muscled-up guys with all these Southern Cross tatts and thinking, ‘What the hell was this and where has it come from?’” Cameron told The Guardian.

Cameron and his band aren’t the first to criticise the new “beefcake bogan” culture. Even the co-founder of Stereosonic, the festival widely acknowledged with fostering the movement, issued a statement lambasting his own fan base.

“Everyone is over The Roid up Bro’s muscle culture, can’t they just see that they are a laughing stock…Brother EVERYONE is laughing at your Shorts, singlets, fake tans, bumbags and cartoon shaped bodies,” Frank Cotela wrote last year.

While the outburst centred on Cotela’s own event, Cameron says the problem isn’t confined to music festivals and even emerges on the streets of Australia’s cities, citing Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane as hotspots.

“You go to the Cross, Hindley Street, the Valley – you are out of these places at a particular time of night and it is bordering on chaos. The song is essentially about looking at the young males of Australia,” he said.

“Bogan is a word that is not well defined – it’s thrown around so much. I don’t see it as a social economic class. It’s a cultural class. It’s a trend towards lowest common denominator. I don’t think we should aspire to it at all.”

The clip for ‘Bogan Pride’ corrals all the worst tropes associated with the term, from VB sculled out of the bottle to Southern Cross tattoos. “There’s a homoerotic side to that culture,” said Cameron. “I don’t understand it. Maybe some females find that thing attractive.”

Cameron views it as a new violence in Australian culture, which can be traced back to the 2005 Cronulla riots. “The thing I’m interested in writing about is the ugly side of Australia. We live in a beautiful place, it’s a great lifestyle, [but] you scratch the surface and there’s real ugliness,” he said.

He said ‘Bogan Pride’ is about “all the things that are fucked up about Australia”, of which there are a few, as far as he’s concerned. He cites the rise of nationalism and racism which first began during the Howard government as particularly troubling.

“This has been used as a tool to get votes and it’s been used to stir up fear of other cultures and other races. I can’t think of anything more disgusting than that. It’s been allowed to grow and fester in the mainstream. Nowadays with social media it’s just worse,” Cameron said.

According to Cameron, much of the rage is fuelled by drugs. “Maybe steroids are more readily available, and you combine that with the rise of super amphetamines like ice, then you have this ultra dystopia,” he said.

“All sorts of people are taking it and I think it’s common everywhere. Middle-class people are taking it, and it’s around the dance scene and the gay scene. It’s not a good drug. It’s so strong and potent and makes people crazy.”

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