

"I don't wanna be a buzzkill but I'm sad as f-," she declares, almost gleefully, in the year's most rousing bridge.

And she very explicitly doesn't crave a different kind of buzz. She's exhausted by social media, pissed about politics, but too disillusioned to do anything about it.

It manages to capture modern fears and teenage angst without feeling recycled or corny, like "Royals" with a Gen-Z spin.īaby Queen, aka Londoner Bella Latham, isn't triumphantly counting her dollars on the train to the party she never wanted to go in the first place. "Buzzkill" is one of those rare, lightning-in-a-bottle generational anthems. "Buzzkill" was released as a single on July 8, 2020. The song's only flaw? It can't be true that nobody knows any better anyway, given that O'Connell has emerged as a thoughtful, necessary voice amidst the noise. This is especially true given the song's clever, veiled references to modernity, like Uber ("Somebody's driving you home, but they don't know who you are"), FOMO ("I need to be where you are, for no reason at all"), and doom-scrolling ("Somebody's wasting my time / F- your Confederate flag, you've got no reason to brag"). With its big, open chords and scream-along hook, "Can't Wait to Be Dead" absolutely has the juice to be a hit today. But the ultimate charm of rock-pop is that it rarely feels unstylish. "Can't Wait to Be Dead" would've been a radio hit in 2005. "Can't Wait to Be Dead" was released as a single on October 21, 2020.įor a song about his relationship with the internet, Finneas O'Connell went old school, channeling the spacious rock of noughties bands like The Airborne Toxic Event and Death Cab for Cutie.
