ettie's new single "I Let People Be Mean" opens with a guitar build that tightens and for some reason I could feel it in my chest, anxious, coiled before the distorted electrics crash in and the whole thing explodes into this thick, wall-of-sound surge that was overwhelming me.
I so desperately wanted to be liked and to fit in, that I let people be mean to me and pretended I had a thick skin when really I did not and will never.
That honesty lands differently when the music behind it is this loud and this alive. The rhythm section never lets up, anchoring everything so the track stays right in your face instead of drifting somewhere vague and forgettable.
And ettie's voice… high-register, slightly raspy, and when the chorus comes in they push into that upper range, there's a crack in it because they are finally saying the thing they've been swallowing for years.
Pure catharsis.
The kind of pop-punk that actually means something.
