"My Trigger" is a song performed by Swedish indie pop band Miike Snow from their third studio album, iii (2016). Written and produced by the band, the song contains elements from J Dilla's "The Diff'rence" (2006), which samples "Fruitman" (1974) by Kool & the Gang. The writers of both compositions obtained writing credit. "My Trigger" is an electropop and indie pop song, the lyrics of which speak of spending a weekend with a stripper. Lead singer Andrew Wyatt also revealed that it comments on the sex industry in the United States. The song was released on 9 September 2016, through Jackalope and Atlantic as the third single from iii.
Critical response to "My Trigger" was generally positive; the majority of critics applauded its pop sound and production, although some felt it lacked depth. The single became the band's second entry on the American Alternative Songs chart, peaking at number 37. The accompanying music video was directed by Ninian Doff and depicts a dramatization of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis where John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev express doubts about pushing a button to start a nuclear war. The video received positive reviews as critics praised its choreography and entertainment value.
Background
"My Trigger" was written by Miike Snow's three members, Christian Karlsson, Pontus Winnberg and Andrew Wyatt, for the band's third studio album, iii (2016). The instrumental is based on J Dilla's track "The Diff'rence" from his album Donuts (2006), which samples "Fruitman" by Kool & the Gang from their album Light of Worlds (1974). The stems from J Dilla's albums Donuts and The Shining (2006) were made available for use while Miike Snow were working on iii. Karlsson presented the instrumentals to the rest of the band and they found one that was "so inspirational". As the original instrumental is "chopped" and incoherent, Wyatt learned the piano chord progression to complete a continuous pattern that the source material lacked. He noted that the band's own version is somewhat different from the original because of this.
Wyatt explained to Rolling Stone that they experimented with many different samples on iii, stating that they are "all pop songwriters" and they try to conceptualize songs from "as weird of a place" as possible. He added, "Our formula has been take what's great about pop songwriting and leave what's not great about some pop songwriting and present that with as complex an array of instrumental aspects we can add on the production side." Winnberg elaborated to HuffPost on the topic of sampling, "For us, to do a song based on a J Dilla beat is, of course, a huge tribute to J Dilla, and we wish that he could be alive and hear it. And maybe even like it. It's not about taking something and running with it to build on your own success." In an interview for Spin, Wyatt deemed "My Trigger" the album's "best combination of song and track", elaborating on the difference of the two terms, "I think a 'song' is, like, just play it on the guitar and sing it. You look out and see thousands of covers of 'Animal' for example ... There are other tracks that are more reliant upon the beat."
Composition and lyrics
Musically, "My Trigger" is an electropop and indie pop song with a hip hop groove and influences of "old-school Motown". Instrumentation is provided by bass guitar, organ, piano and timpani. Wyatt uses a falsetto vocal style throughout the song. It includes a section with electronically manipulated vocals, which "sounds like a squirrel is ... having a seizure", according to Michael Pementel of PopMatters. Wyatt told musicOMH that "My Trigger" has an almost identical sound to a composition from his unreleased 1993 solo album. He also said it recalls the music he made with Greg Kurstin in the 1990s, while in a band called Funkraphiliacs.