Society of Beggars wrote “I Want I Want” a few years ago and left every lyric untouched when they pulled it back out. By then, vocalist Yianni Michalopoulos had watched people close to the Melbourne band, from the music world to their own families, fall into social-media and AI loops that, in his view, fed disappointment back as blame. The song already opened with “I’m here to devour, by the hour”. He saw no reason to update it.
Yianni had the verses and choruses first. His brother Jim, Dimitrios Michalopoulos, later brought in what Yianni calls a “byzantine guitar riff”. The middle breakdown grew out of a rehearsal-room jam and stayed because the band did not want to overthink it. Society of Beggars recorded, produced, mixed and mastered the song themselves.
The band wanted the track to feel “volatile and dense”, with the ending piling up into “the total sensory overload that we’re all living with daily”. Their shorthand for it is a “snotty, punk-rock ode to the modern consumerist doom-loop”.
The opening line also comes from one of Yianni’s favourite writing habits. “I really enjoy writing from a villainous perspective, unhinged and dramatic. It’s a way to exorcise the inner Disney villain.”
“I Want I Want” is out on 18 September as the lead single from Society of Beggars’ upcoming 10-track independent album, “Drunk on Love, Buried in Dust”.
That appetite was already personal when Yianni wrote the song: his own wanderlust, band life and tendency to take things too far were part of it from the start.
“On one level, I was writing about my own wanderlust and my desire to dive into things to absolute excess, the intoxicating lifestyle of being in a band and wanting to absorb absolutely everything until there’s nothing left. So I’m not pretending I’m outside that impulse either. How much is enough?”
He comes back to a party that lasted too long. At the start there was genuine love and joy. People kept going, drank too much and took too much of everything until the party became “completely ugly and gross”. He connects that same appetite to what he calls “the fucking disgusting capitalist orgy nightmare scape that we are living in now”. The lyric eventually loops back to a much smaller instruction: “Take it easy.”
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
The song eventually moves from personal appetite into the politics of wanting and taking. Yianni connects it with what he saw through the 2010s as “this toxic wave of white paranoia”, particularly the instinct to protect a comfortable suburban bubble by deciding who belongs outside it.
“Are they ‘the other’? Are they immigrants? Are they trans? What are they taking away from me? What can I take back from them that wasn’t mine to begin with?”
From there, Yianni links the same thinking to protectionism, the erosion of basic rights and Palestine. “That mentality has created this toxic environment that gets lazily dressed up as populism and protectionism, when really it’s about demolishing the basic human rights of anyone outside the perceived bubble. People are being denied the right to work or live with dignity. What’s yours is mine. More, more, more. It’s happening in Australia, but it’s a worldwide problem. Nowhere is that more obvious than what’s happening to the Palestinian people. Greed corrupts the human soul and feeds the hungry death machine.”
These are not distant examples for the band. People from their own families and music circles ended up inside the same social-media loops, while others around them were struggling with depression and drugs. By the time they returned to the song, they had watched people they loved become “completely lost”, giving themselves over to what Yianni calls “this cult-like, pseudo-fascist machismo that fuels their worst instincts”.
“The algorithm speaks directly to them and whispers, ‘This is why your life hasn’t turned out the way you wanted. It’s because of ‘these’ people.’ And yeah, sadly, plenty of people we know or used to know in the music world, and right inside our own families, completely fell for that bullshit.”
Some of those same people had been part of the parties Yianni remembers turning ugly years earlier. They are conservative now, and he suspects the appetite for taking more was already there. His guess is that the sharper change often arrives around middle age, when someone starts asking why life has not turned out exactly as they pictured it. “Gotta blame somebody.”
Society of Beggars have always kept politics close to the music they care about.
Songwriting and playing have never been cynical exercises for the band. They have always admired rock ’n’ roll and punk culture, including the revolutionary ideas tied to it. Yianni’s frustration comes with the purity test that can follow as soon as a musician touches countercultural or political ideas.
“There’s also this weird double standard where, the moment you touch anything countercultural or political in your music, people expect you to live like a fucking monk. Meanwhile, some loudmouth podcast bro can scream into a microphone, make a fortune and treat people like shit, and nobody questions the contradiction.”
Society of Beggars are independent, and the promotional pressure is mostly self-imposed.
“I love writing and recording music. It’s the one environment where I can completely let go and just let things happen. I’ve never really felt industry pressure because we don’t have a record company. There’s no slimy dude doing coke off a toilet seat telling us what to do or how to look. Maybe we need that!”
Their music still has to pass through channels run by much bigger companies. The band take close care of how everything looks and how it is delivered. The cover art for “I Want I Want” is by Society of Beggars, and Peter Desborough shot the band photo used for the release. “Everything we share carries a real earnestness because it is completely handmade by the band.”
The channels keep changing and come with what Yianni calls “varying levels of scumminess”, forcing artists to spread themselves across whatever format a large company currently prefers. “Anytime you are forcing your art through these channels, you are undeniably selling a little bit of your soul for sure, so you better be fucking proud of what you’re selling.”
The first ChatGPT demo came with an album’s worth of lyrics.
“When I was first shown ChatGPT, the person showing it to me was like, ‘Watch this! I’ve just written an album’s worth of lyrics!’ They were joking that we were going to become extinct because AI was going to replace artists and lyricists.”
“So no, we don’t care about making the most of all that shit.” Rubber Band Gun had already released three records this year when he spoke to us. Yianni calls them “mad, musical geniuses” and likes that they keep making great stuff “without seemingly giving a fuck about streams, likes or any of that temporary bullshit”. “They’re focused on the output and the art itself. Time will show how important it is.”
He also keeps Joe Walsh’s joke handy: “When AI knows how to destroy a hotel room, then I’ll pay attention to it.”
“We just want to connect with other freaks like ourselves, people who are music obsessed and still believe in the freedom of the whole trip. The expectations placed on artists nowadays are insane, but you can also just ignore them and do what you want. It’s not always about the numbers.”
Society of Beggars are, in Yianni’s words, “a bunch of ratbags in a band living right in the middle of this landscape, yelling back at it”. “That’s the loop. We’re just looking at it dead in the eye.”
🔔 IDIOTEQ is ad-free, independent, and runs on one person’s time. If you want it to stay that way: DONATE via PayPal or SUPPORT via Patreon.
NEW: IDIOTEQ Explore 🗺️ Browse 15+ years of our archive by city, country, and style. Find artists on the world map or trace related sounds through the styles map.
Stay connected via Newsletter · Instagram · Facebook · X (Twitter) · Threads · Bluesky · Messenger · WhatsApp.
