Bad Cop/Bad Cop frontwoman Stacey Dee discusses their new album, the band’s reinvention following co-founder Jennie Cotterill’s departure, and how Dee was able to delve into her trauma to create the band’s most personal record yet.
We caught up with Stacey Dee of Bad Cop/Bad Cop ahead of the band releasing Lighten Up, their first album in five years. Dee discusses the five-year gap between albums and how the departure of founding member Jennie Cotterill prompted the group to reinvent themselves. Dee also opened up about the themes of the new record, sharing how she was able to dig deeper and unearth her most raw and personal material yet.
Stacey Dee Bad Cop/Bad Cop Interview – Lighten Up 2025
Bad Cop/Bad Cop are no strangers to raising their voices and getting angry about injustice. In fact, bearing their anger on tracks like ‘Womanarchist’ and ‘Pursuit of Liberty’ was what the band was known for.
However, with their new record Lighten Up, Dee shared that she wanted to trade her anger for compassion and confront her grief with a smile and wink.
“I’ve been through a lot in my life. There were a lot of years where I just wrote from a strong perspective, rather than trying to dive into any of the things I had been through. Because, quite honestly, I wasn’t ready to start digging the scab off to see what was under there,” Dee shared. “[For this record], I was finally ready to go back and look at some of the reasons why we’ve had to be so strong in our songs in the past.”
The new record comes after a major turning point for Bad Cop/Bad Cop. In June 2020, the band released their album, The Ride, choosing to drop the record amid the pandemic so fans would have something to tide them over during lockdown. As a consequence, however, this ruined the band’s plans to play those tracks in a live environment, among a crowd of fans, where they were meant to be heard. “We couldn’t tour on it. We couldn’t do anything for years,” Dee admitted.
In October 2022, founding member Jennie Coterill would also leave the band. “We’ve never really spoken about it, and we still haven’t”, Dee quickly admitted. Alex Windsor would replace Coterill the same year as Bad Cop/Bad Cop’s new guitarist.
Despite the lineup change, it wasn’t until 2023 that Dee would slowly start writing new material and reassembling the group to work on what would eventually become their fourth LP.
One of the key collaborators for the album would be Dee’s boyfriend, Antoine Arvizu (Sublime, Slightly Stupid), who would help produce the new album.
“[Arvizu] is just a natural-born producer. He would do things, and I wouldn’t even know that I was being produced,” Dee shared.
After being gifted a digital 16-track recorder and a Beat Buddy, Dee started writing the first round of demos for the album before assembling the band in Palm Springs, Arizona, for the group’s first official writing sessions.
“Writing songs this time was cool because we actually did a lot of it together, and that was something that we didn’t really get to do on previous records,” Dee admitted. Previously, the band would collaborate on finished tracks, tweaking verses or fixing issues an individual member might have had. Lighten Up would be the first record where the band sat down and wrote tracks from start to finish together.
Lighten Up is also the first record for the group without previous frequent collaborators Fat Mike or Davey Warsop’s involvement.
But it wasn’t only the new process and collaborators that influenced some of the biggest changes on the new record. Dee shared that finding a new perspective on life helped her finally start to process the trauma and grief that she admitted had been weighing her down for years and finally put it into her music.
“I was finally ready to touch on [my life experiences] again. I was just too scared to do it for years. I didn’t want to have to go back to a negative mental headspace because all of that shit almost killed me,” she shared.
One of the album’s most poignant and honest statements is found on the track ‘Dead Friends’, where Stacey eulogises several friends in her life who had passed away.
“When I got out of detox [and] got home, my living space was surrounded in photos of all of my friends who had passed away. I had been making myself suffer for years and years about those losses. I [may have] even had survivor’s guilt without even knowing it, and then the trauma of it all – I just felt like I was just carrying that on my back.” Dee admitted.
Dee continued, “‘Dead Friends’ just poured out of me, because those were little snippets of true stories of real people I’ve lost.”
“People ask me about [the song] and I kind of well up with tears, you know? I’m never going to forget those people, and now the world [won’t] either. They’ve been immortalised, and that makes me feel good.”
Make no mistake, while this record trades the band’s usual political anger for introspection and compassion, Dee believes it’s still one of their most punk rock yet.
“I’m sure people were expecting [us] to be a lot more political when, [instead], we’ve come in very personal on this one,” Dee admitted. “For me, I’ve been pissed, I’ve been angry, I’ve been suicidal, I’ve been all of the sad things in life, you know, but I’m not anymore, and I don’t want to stay in the space of just constantly fighting.”
Dee would share that she wants to serve as a healer in the community, rather than continue to get angry at injustice.
“I believe my activism is spreading kindness and compassion and trying to help folks find their way out of desperate mental health issues or desperate living situations.”
In 2017, Dee helped to co-found The Sidewalk Project, a non-profit organisation that works with unhoused communities, providing harm reduction and community support to those in need.
“My role is more of a healer than it is somebody who wants to stay active and fight. Like, I’ve had cancer, man.” Dee said. “I am not happy with what’s going on in this world right now. There are wars, there are children fucking starving, there are people being hurt, and our rights are being taken away.”
Dee continued: “I don’t feel like we’re doing anything enough to combat this. Their side just really had things so buttoned up that they knew exactly what they were going to do. Working with unhoused folks, seeing how vulnerable they are, and then seeing people in the news on the right say we should kill the homeless makes me so sad. Why? Because they’re poor and they’re in poverty, and they don’t have what you have, and maybe the chances in the life that you’ve had. So, I want to see people put their money where their mouth is more. You could be pissed in a song all day long, but what are you really doing in life about it?”
In the final moments of ‘Dead Friends’, Dee sings “So try to love your life, while you can”. An ode following a new perspective on life, one where she’s been able to shed herself of the trauma she had been holding onto. In many ways, Lighten Up isn’t a call for society to stop taking things seriously, but instead a plea for others not to let negativity and dark thoughts overwhelm and shape one’s life.
“I’ve just seen how great life can be, even though it’s tough,” she shared. “I think that a lot of folks out there don’t get a chance to change or go from a very negative mental outlook to a very positive mental outlook. Usually, you get stuck in one perspective for most of your life, and I really had the chance to break free from that. I just really want humanity to be healthy and happy. Because so many people that I loved never got the chance to even try.”
Bad Cop/Bad Cop’s Lighten Up was released September 19 via Fat Wreck Chords / Hopeless Records. You can stream the album here.
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