Your Teeth in My Neck

Album: Isolation (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Born Karly-Marina Loaiza, Kali Uchis spent the first seven years of her life in her parents' native Colombia before moving to America at the age of 7. She witnessed firsthand the poverty of many of her relatives who worked day and night in the US to support families back home. This song is a diatribe against the system that traps immigrants in a cycle of poverty. She explained to Pitchfork:

    "We're all born into whatever citizenship, circumstances, or class we happen to be born into. Immigrants and so many people in the working class work so hard every day for nickels and pennies and scraps to just barely get by and then realize that this precious life has been completely drained out of us. We've all gone into making money for corporations, for these people who barely wanna give their employees a raise or give people a fair chance to prove themselves. I sing: 'Rich man keeps getting richer taking from the poor.' A lot of people don't realize how much their time and energy is actually worth because these companies are putting such low prices on people's work.

    My family was never able to take vacations or spend time that we should have been able to spend because we didn't have that opportunity. Everyone was constantly working, making just enough. Meanwhile, these people that don't care about humans or the environment or the health and education of children or anything that matters are scamming the whole world."

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