Breaking the “Good Girl” Script: Inside Loni Lincoln’s “Asian Girl”
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Some songs feel like singles.Others feel like someone finally exhaling.
Essex-based songwriter and performer Loni Lincoln is about to release “Asian Girl,” and it lands somewhere between a diary entry, a cultural reckoning, and a quietly defiant pop anthem you didn’t know you needed.
At first glance, it’s sleek electronic pop, shimmering, modern, self-produced by Loni herself, with production support from Mario Eddie and Charlie King. But sit with it for more than a minute and something deeper starts to surface. This isn’t just a track. It’s a reclamation.
What makes “Asian Girl” hit differently is that it wasn’t born out of a grand manifesto. It started years ago as part of an electronic production project between Loni and songwriter Desmond Lawrence, the two trading vocals on each other’s tracks, experimenting, playing. But time does what time does. Loni recently revisited the song, added a new verse, and suddenly what once felt playful felt necessary. The evolution shows.
At its heart, “Asian Girl” tells the story of being raised to be “the good one.” The obedient one. The quiet achiever. The one who doesn’t make waves. And then slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, becoming the woman who does.
There’s symbolism woven through the track like hidden stitching:
The Dragon - Loni herself, but also the strength of her grandmother and father.
The Snake in the Sun - a nod to her mother.
The Horse - forward motion, carrying her into the next chapter.
And that lineage matters. Loni was born in Essex to a father from Islington and a Chinese Malaysian mother. Her grandmother came from Wenzhou in China’s Zhejiang province, later migrating to Malaysia after World War II. Her mother moved to the UK in the 1970s to work as a nurse. Movement. Reinvention. Survival. It’s all there in the subtext, even when the production feels glossy and contemporary.
There’s something powerful about hearing a song that doesn’t shout its politics, it simply exists unapologetically. “Asian Girl” feels like standing in your own skin without explanation. It speaks to that exhausting middle ground so many women know too well: you’re too much, or you’re not enough. You’re too loud, or too quiet. Too ambitious, or not driven enough. You can’t win, so eventually, you stop playing. That’s what this song sounds like. Stopping the game.
If you’ve followed Loni’s career, you’ll know this isn’t her first big moment. She’s been performing since the age of ten, shared stages with UB40, collaborated with Sam Smith on “Stay With Me,” and even performed at the British Museum. But “Asian Girl” feels personal in a way accolades don’t measure.
You can hear her influences in the emotional architecture, the cinematic openness of Sia, the raw honesty of Alanis Morissette, the atmospheric pull of Lana Del Rey, yet it never feels derivative. It feels lived in. There’s a line in the energy of the track, not necessarily literal, but emotional and that feels like it echoes from deep within a mountain.
A place where peace sits quietly and nature doesn’t argue about who you’re supposed to be. The production keeps its cultural roots intact while still sounding undeniably contemporary. Nothing feels forced. Nothing feels ornamental. It just… fits.
“Asian Girl” isn’t angry. It’s not pleading either. It’s steady. Grounded. Certain.
And maybe that’s the most radical thing about it. There’s a journey in there, one a lot of women will recognise instantly. The moment you realise that no matter what you do, someone will always have something to say. So you might as well live fully anyway.
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