piglet

“Terrific”
Brooklyn Vegan
 
“another beautiful cut”
Loud & Quiet
 
“scrappy and melodic songs try to make sense of the world surrounding him”
FADER
 
“playful at times, thought-provoking at others, unfiltered and honest throughout”
So Young
 
“There’s something of the Xiu Xius to the way piglet combines the delicate and the disarming”
DIY
 

Trigger warning // suicide and self harm statistics are mentioned below

 
piglet is the solo project of Irish songwriter and producer Charlie Loane, born and raised in Belfast and based in South London. 
 
New single 'it isnt fair' is both a singalong anthem and a raging protest song about the injustices of British healthcare provision for trans people. 
 
"I wrote this song around 5 years ago when I had been on a long, seemingly unmoving waiting list for 3 years with no clear end in sight", says Loane in a long post discussing the song published on his Tumblr.
 
"When I revisited this song recently I tried to rewrite the words to reflect some understanding of WHY it isn't fair, but I'm not a smart enough writer to fit this into the song so I decided to leave the lyrics as they were when i wrote them in that amorphous, bending stretch of fuckery." 
 
The healthcare system causes shocking harm to a community made vulnerable to exploitation in all areas of life by a government that is keener to use trans peoples' lives as fuel for a culture war than to ensure their basic human rights are upheld.  
 
Patients in the UK's NHS are usually entitled to treatment within 18 weeks of referral. Current official waiting times for a first appointment at a Gender Identity Development Service are over 2 years, although current waiting lists mean most wait 5 years or more for surgery. At the point of writing there are at least 13,500 trans and non-binary adults on these waiting lists in England alone, for what should be considered emergency healthcare: as 45% of trans young people have attempted suicide at least once and 84% of trans young people have self-harmed.  
 
The music video, directed by trans filmmaker Harv Frost, depicts Loane waiting for care in a dour institution, interspersed with shots of members of the trans community in a never-ending queue; the real faces of those who encounter innumerable barriers to vital care. 
 
The single is coordinated with fundraising activities for the We Exist charity, which does vital work for the trans community in the face of ongoing failings from the current government and health service, including a live launch show at London’s Ivy House Arms venue. All Bandcamp sales of the single plus profits from the live show and special edition t-shirt and temporary tatto merchandise will go directly to the charity.  
 
Previously piglet released a run of solo singles (“mill”, “dans note” “oan”) in 2021 and early 2022, plus two collaboration tracks with Porridge Radio through Secretly Canadian. The songs focused on subjects from mental health, substance abuse, affirmations of self-identity, trans experience and friendship, and received plaudits from FADER, DIY, So Young, The Quietus, Loud & Quiet, Apple Music and a place on NTS Radio's WIP development programme.
 
The video was made possible with the support of NTS Radio and their Work In Progress artist development opportunity.
 
The release is piglet's first with London label Blue Flowers (Puma Blue, Nilüfer Yanya, Westerman).