My Girls

My Girls was the first single from Merriweather Post Pavilion, issued on 23 March 2009 as a promo CD only. On the 2007 and 2008 tours it was called House. Panda Bear told Clash it is about his desire, at a basic level, to own his own place and provide a safe house for his family and the people he cares about. The intro contains an audio sample from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, and in September 2017, as the probe ended its mission, the band thanked it on Instagram. The song resembles Your Love (1984) by Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle.

It was the hardest song to record. Portner said the first version had out-of-tune instruments and had been more of a piano loop than a synth loop, so they rebuilt it from scratch. Weitz said it was among the sparsest tracks on the album and had no interesting sonic personality until the mix. Mark Richardson of Pitchfork described it growing from a synth-speckled, half-speed intro into a booming electro-pop burner with handclaps and deep bass. Pitchfork and Slant named it the best song of 2009, and NME ranked it fifth. Paste placed it tenth on its 2015 list of the twelve best Animal Collective songs. The Ringer reported more than 25 million Spotify plays by January 2019, and the critic Ian Cohen said it was the right message for the right moment.

Live and covers

It was tenth in the set at the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom in New York on 20 January 2009. Geologist shared an early ambient version, House, on his NTS radio show in January 2019. Beyonce interpolated it in 6 Inch on Lemonade (2016).