You ever bite into a piece of chocolate and realize it’s laced with dynamite? That’s kinda what listening to Hana Piranha’s cover of “Toxic” feels like—except instead of your taste buds, it’s your mind that’s left reeling.
It’s dark, sticky, and the slow burn takes a jagged, unexpected turn when Hana Maria’s violin slithers its way through the grit. A pop tune reimagined as rock chaos, bliss and violence weaving through willowy strings and crunching guitars.
If Britney Spears’ version was the glitzy club light under which we dance ourselves dizzy, Hana’s is the basement dungeon where raw truth leaks out of the concrete walls. Sexy, but dangerous. Seductive, but sharp.
The instrumentation? Our old friends Jim Beck (guitar), Andrew Lane (drums), and Mishkin Fitzgerald (bass) step in to layer it up in ways that Britney’s glimmering original could only dream of. Jim’s guitar riffs are less riffs and more rumbles— tectonic shifts that destabilize you as you think you’re getting comfortable.
And while Mishkin’s bass stomps around with a dark swagger, Andrew’s drums, frankly, sound like he’s either punishing them or liberating them. Take your pick.
Thematically, this isn’t just a feminist anthem with a rock twist—it’s a shout from the bowels of selfhood itself. Hana and the band twist the lyrics into a scream loaded with exhaustion, the suffocating expectations of our Instagram-perfect world, a world briefed for destruction by the unstoppable force of human spit and dirt.
Britney’s “Toxic” gave us empowerment in glitter; Hana Piranha coats that empowerment in rust and makes you reckon with the decay. Trust, feminist theory and this track are now on a lovely crash course.
So here’s the real takeaway: this isn’t a cover. It’s a reawakening.
Follow Hana Piranha on Website, Facebook, Bandcamp, Instagram and SongKick.
