Rising Australian singer-songwriter Stella Donnelly recently broke through onto our radar with the excellent, sharp-edged single ‘Mechanical Bull’ from her debut EP, Thrush Metal. Another track on the EP is ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, a seemingly peaceful, melodic, lullaby-esque acoustic song that quickly piques the attention of the listener with opening lines, “My friend told me of a secret, / Told me that she blames herself.” In an entirely original piece of songwriting, Donnelly confronts the victim blaming culture surrounding cases of sexual assault. The track highlights many issues, such as boys-will-be-boys shrugs of the older generations, mass media, educators and law enforcers, the sense of shame often felt by victims preventing them from reporting a crime and the misconstrued idea that women who wear so-called provocative clothing and walk home alone are placing themselves in harm's way on purpose. Speaking about the track, Donnelly says that “'Boys Will Be Boys' is my attempt at making sense of society's tendency to blame the victims of sexual assault and rape and make excuses for the perpetrators. It was also my way of dealing with certain events that were occurring in my life at the time. The video itself was intended to express the burden of victim blaming and sexual assault on the victims themselves as the mundane aspects of life go on. A song is just a song but at the very least I hope it will open up difficult yet important conversations between family members, friends, government bodies, organisations and most importantly, boys and men.” ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is an incredibly powerful song that comes at a time of societal awareness and hopeful change, although there’s a long, long way to go. - HT