Screenshot from Sabina 之淚 in My Little Airport's YouTube Channel. Since the 2019 anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong, many citizens from around the world have shown solidarity through social media hashtags such as #standwithHK. However, very few really understand what the anguished young people in the streets are going through. A dive into the songs and lyrics of My Little Airport (MLA), a 17-year-old indie band in Hong Kong, offers a perspective into young people's discontent in the city. Global Voices created a YouTube and Spotify playlist to catalog the band's impressive musical journey. MLA was founded by two journalism students Ah P Lam and Nicole OuJian in 2004. The duo's music style has been described as twee-pop, a subgenre of indie-pop characterized by its raw, childish, and pure presentation. The indie band also has very strong Cantonese folk and indie-punk themes in its music. The uniqueness of the indie band, however, is in its acoustic presentation and lyrics. Nicole sings as if she is murmuring or talking to herself and the lyrics are poetic presentations of everyday conversations through the narrator's stream of consciousness style. Their songs are embodiments of Hong Kong culture: a mixture of Cantonese, English, and other foreign expressions, such as French and Japanese, full of colloquial foul language and local jokes. Since the release of their debut album “The OK Thing to Do on Sunday Afternoon Is to Toddle in the Zoo” (2004) (在公園散步才是正經事), they have been beloved by young people discontented with the mainstream and those in power. Their second album “Becoz I Was Too Nervous At That Time” (2005) (只因當時太緊張) resembles the twee-pop style of the first and addresses youthful subjects such as puppy love, idols, and leisure activities. The songs “Coka, I'm Fine (2004)” and “Spring is in carriage (2005)” (春天在車廂裡), for example, discuss the highs and lows of teen love. In Hong Kong, space for a proper date is considered a luxury as most families have very limited living space, and the city is generally crowded with people, leaving young people with little privacy. It is not uncommon to see teenagers having dates in subways or bus carriages. In their next album, “We can't stop smoking in the vicious and blue summer” (2007) 我們在抑鬱和炎熱的夏天無法停止抽煙, the mood has changed. The band's signature sweetness turns bitter toward the exploitative working environment in the city. “Sad Purchase” (2007) 悲傷的採購 and “Who invented jobs?” (2009) 邊一個發明了返工? lament being enslaved to capitalism: Soon political motifs appeared in their work. In the album “Poetics – Something between Montparnasse and Mongkok” (2009) 介乎法國與旺角的詩意 the songs “Splitting Stephen Lam's $300,000 Payroll” (瓜分林瑞麟三十萬薪金) and “donald tsang, please die” lambast the city's top government officials. Both Donald Tsang and Stephen Lam were politicians responsible for key conservative legislation in 2010. The political message in “Otaku girls, take to the streets!” (宅女，上街吧), released on YouTube in 2010, is even more strident. The song lists major local protests and urges “Otaku girls” — a Japanese term for female comic lovers who are apolitical and prefer fantasy over reality — to resist: 你錯過了反高鐵 你錯過了保衛天星碼頭 你錯過了包圍禮賓府 你錯過了反世貿 宅女，上街吧 這個政府靠得過嗎？ 宅女，上街吧 你要未來繼續任由人魚肉嗎？ You have missed the anti rapid rail protests You have missed the star ferry preservation protests You have missed protesting outside the government house You have missed the anti-WTO protests Otaku girls, take it to the streets Can you trust this government? Otaku girls, take it to the streets Do you want the future to be exploited and manipulated? In 2010 there was a split within the pro-democracy party as moderate democrats in the Legislative Council voted in favor of the government's controversial electoral reform proposal. The split was characterized as a generational divide, a prominent theme in MLA's 2011 and 2012 albums “Hong Kong is a big shopping mall” 香港是個大商場 and “Lonely Friday” 寂寞的星期五. For example, in “To those on the train at Admiralty 2011″ (給金鐘地鐵站內車廂的人), the indie band turns a common scene in a subway platform into an allegory of generational conflicts: 入了車廂你們就不再行入啲 歷史不會原諒你們 渣滓 你們曾經是夾在月台上有理想的人 理想是什麼？ 人們說理想是在彼岸 但你知道理想就是逼前面啲人行入啲 入啲再行入啲 After you are in the carriage, you don’t move on History won’t forgive you Scumbags, you were once a person with a dream waiting in the platform What is a dream? Some say it is in nirvana But you know that the dream is to push those who stand in the front to move on Move on and move on Against the backdrop of the Occupy Wall Street protests and the Arab Springs in 2011, the indie band expresses hope for change in Hong Kong. In “Young Men of Ngau Tau Kok” (2012) 牛頭角青年 they question why young people in Hong Kong were not rioting like the rest of the world.