"Take Me Away" has become an anthem of teen angst. The song, performed on-screen and officially recorded by the fictitious band Pink Slip, fronted by Freaky Friday actress Christina Vidal Mitchell, anchors an important moment in the story. The 2003 Disney movie Freaky Friday, an adaptation of a 1972 novel by Mary Rodgers and remake of the 1976 Jodie Foster-led film, has captivated audiences for decades. The film, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as a mother and teen daughter who switch bodies, features the absolute banger "Take Me Away" which has been (thankfully) kept alive for more than two decades as a landmark in the cultural diet of millennials and Gen Z cuspers. Now, 22 years after the movie’s original release, Freakier Friday is hitting theaters. Luckily for Freaky fans, the follow-up arrives complete with a “Take Me Away” rerecording from Vidal Mitchell and Pink Slip.
But despite the overwhelming popularity of the aughts version, casual fans might not know that the movie’s featured track “Take Me Away” wasn’t actually written by in-house Disney songwriters. The song was written by Australian alternative/punk rock band Lash. It was released on 19 March 2001 as the group's debut single and lead single from their album, The Beautiful and the Damned (2002). The song peaked at number 33 on the Australian Singles Chart.
Lash was formed by a group of girls who attended an all-girl Catholic school in Perth, Western Australia. They considered themselves rebels. They used to play music in the old part of the school at lunchtime, where the nuns used to live and there were old, battered-up musical instruments. Jaclyn Pearson, Lash’s drummer, met the other three girls who would sneak into the music room, and realized they were very talented, writing their own songs, playing their instruments. So she started hanging out with them, even though they were a lot younger than her. They asked her to record some songs with them. Pearson, who currently works as a lecturer and researcher of microbiology at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, recalled the band's early days. By the time it got to writing “Take Me Away,” there was already record company interest after playing pubs and writing more songs and lots of rehearsing.
Lash's song "Take Me Away" expresses a longing for escape from a monotonous and suffocating routine. The song starts with a call to action for the listener to get up and move on, with the realization that the singer is "all wrong" and the other person is "right." This could refer to a perceived power dynamic in a relationship or it could be more introspective, with the singer feeling inadequate or trapped by their own self-doubt. The repeated phrase "so do I" reinforces the idea that the singer is similarly confused and unsure. The chorus is a desperate plea to be taken away from this mundane existence, with the singer longing to shout out their frustration to the world. The repetition of the phrase "take me away" suggests that this is a recurring desire, and that the singer feels trapped or stifled in their current situation. The second verse repeats the refrain that "here we go again," reinforcing the notion that this cycle of monotony is never-ending, with the same old start and the same old end. The singer seems to want to escape this pattern but feels powerless to do so.
Pearson described the band as angsty teenagers, particularly Micaela, the singer, who put a lot of feeling into her lyrics. It’s a little bit But I’m tough and I’m going to get through it and I don’t care what you think, this is me and this is how I’m going to live my life. It was a response to all those sorts of things-family pressures, school pressures, and being a woman as well-and that’s probably not something I’ve appreciated until later. And it was immensely satisfying, by the time we were playing that song live to crowds, hearing the roar of everyone knowing the words. Everyone feels that every day, every part of their life.
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The lyrics, "Yeah, yeah, get up, get out, move on, move on, there's no doubt," serve as a powerful call to action, urging listeners to break free from their circumstances. The overall meaning of the song encapsulates the universal desire to escape the mundane and embrace a life of freedom and authenticity.
Lash had no concept that "Take Me Away" was going to be a central theme throughout the movie. They saw nothing before the film came out, and then they went and watched it at the cinema, and they were just like, “My God.” They were laughing, saying, “This is so cool. It is! We sat and waited at the end for the credits to come up, and we saw our names at the very end, and that was just really satisfying. But it was mind-blowing. We had no idea, and then no idea that people would talk about it for years to come. They would be like, “I love that movie, I love that song,” and they wouldn’t realize that it was us. The [others] would’ve been 16, and I was 19 at the time.
The band found out only yesterday, when they went to visit the studios, that there was someone really great working on the film, Lisa, who was scouting for a song for the band to play in their garage [in the movie]. She’d come across it and thought, This is perfect. At the time, the band were told, “You are going to come to the premiere and you’re going to play the song,” and that was probably the most exciting for them. But then, closer to the time, they said, “Oh, there’s not enough budget to do that,” so they couldn’t go.
When Freakier Friday was announced, Lash felt a sense of indignance. All this media started coming out, and people were calling it “ ‘Take Me Away’ by Pink Slip,” and other bands started covering the song and they were saying things like, “Oh, this is ‘Take Me Away,’ from Freaky Friday.” The band got really worked up and were like, “No, this is not it. We worked so hard. We were teenagers when we wrote this, and we worked our asses off and we didn’t get the opportunities we deserved at the time. Things did not turn out how we wanted it to. We never got to take in the glory of the moment. So this time we want to make sure that we are noticed and we are recognized and we get a little bit of acknowledgment, and we went really hard with Disney especially. Please can you let the actors know that there’s someone else behind this?” Because there was a lot of praise on Pink Slip for the song. They did listen. They spoke to the musical director, they spoke to the actors, so now everyone knows who we are.
Pearson noted that about two or three weeks ago, it really hit her that what people want is Pink Slip. That’s what they know and that’s what they want, and that’s OK. We got the recognition. We got a bit of acknowledgment. That’s fine with us. It was quite interesting. We’re really pleased and really excited. Plus, since Freakier Friday was announced earlier in the year, our Spotify streams for “Take Me Away” went from 3 million to over 10 million since March. All credit to Disney, and probably us pushing a bit too, but they recommended that we write “From Freaky Friday” in the song title on Spotify so that when people searched, they could see it.
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Pearson finds it funny about the song and the main scene it’s used for in the movie is that it’s a scene where nothing is going right. It’s a scene where the song actually gets horrendously messed up for the first half. Yet the song itself is still so relatable that even though it’s somewhat played for laughs in the first bit, it really gets you by the second bit.
Pearson chuckled about that. It reminds you of your own songwriting process when you’re getting things right. I mean, we have countless early recordings of “Take Me Away” when it does not sound like it does. You’re just like, Oh God. So, yeah, we had a good chuckle when we were watching the film as well, laughing and nudging each other.
The members of Lash are not currently playing together as a band. Pearson lives in Scotland, and the others, two live in Perth and one lives in Melbourne in Australia. So they’re on opposite sides of the country. I mean, we talk to each other almost every day, but three of us have got kids, and we’ve all got jobs. Jess, she is building a recording studio, and she still actively plays in a number of bands, so she’s very, very active in the music industry. But as much as we’d like the opportunity to, we would just have to be right with the timing.
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