Hot pink. Electric blue. Rainbow tiger. Neon leopard on a hot pink sky. If you know, you know.
Lisa Frank Folders is the most purely joyful song I have written in years. It started with one specific memory: five dollars at the Scholastic table, my mama saying yes, and the absolute queendom of carrying that folder down the hall.
But here is what the song is really about: the unapologetic boldness of childhood before the world teaches you to tone it down.
“Nothing matched and everything did, because that was just the rule when you were a 90s kid.”
Kids don’t second-guess the rainbow tiger. They don’t wonder if the neon leopard is too much. They live in the color and the conviction. We spend so much of adulthood learning to edit ourselves. The Lisa Frank folders remember who we were before we learned any of that.
I never threw mine out. They are in a box. I have no regrets.
Stream Mixtape Mindset on Spotify! Tag me with your Lisa Frank memories!