Want to request a song? Tell us your rating? Send us a Text Message right now!

Score: 7.4

Huntr/x’s Golden arrives like a motivational poster you’d find hanging in a gym bathroom, but set to a synth line that sounds vaguely like it was borrowed from a video game character’s redemption arc. It’s a song that insists on optimism with the ferocity of a Labrador that’s just discovered a tennis ball.

Musically, Golden shuffles between indie-pop earnestness and Spotify algorithm-friendly polish. There’s enough reverb to make you think the band recorded it inside an abandoned cathedral, and a beat that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Peloton playlist called “Empowerment Vibes Vol. 3.” The lyrics are all about light, resilience, and that vague sense of self-actualisation you get after buying overpriced crystals from a weekend market.

Where the track succeeds is in its sheer audacity to believe in something. Huntr/x doesn’t just tell you life can be Golden; they practically kick down your door and hand you a scented candle to prove it. It’s aspirational music, but aspirational in the way a suburban vision board is: sincere, slightly chaotic, and maybe exactly what you need at 2 a.m.

Best moment: when the chorus drops and you briefly believe you might, in fact, be the main character.
Worst moment: the realisation that you’re listening to earbuds you bought off Wish.

Final verdict: not quite solid gold, but definitely gold-plated — shiny enough to keep you dancing until you start questioning your life choices.

DUBBY
DUBBY is declaring WAR on big Energy! Use the promo code "1001songs" at checkout for 10% off!

Support the show

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1001songsthatmakeyouwanttodie/
Follow us on TikTok: @the1001crew

Want to request a song? Tell us your rating? Send us a Text Message right now!

Score: 8.1

In 2006, Petra Marklund, better known by her Europop nom de guerre September, released Cry for You, a track that felt less like a song and more like a government-mandated vaccination against sadness. Somewhere between a breakup anthem and an IKEA flat-pack instruction manual for melancholy, the Swedish queen of cry-while-dancing gifted the world a chorus that managed to be both nihilistic and euphoric, like Robyn if she’d been trapped inside a Ministry of Sound compilation CD for three months.

“Cry for You” is built on a trance-lite backbone that sounds like it was engineered specifically for provincial nightclubs where the carpet is sticky and the smoking area is just a bench. Lyrically, September delivers existential devastation with all the emotion of someone reading out loud from a bus timetable — and that’s exactly why it works. Her stoicism turns heartache into a communal ritual: we’re not crying for him, we’re crying for ourselves, for 2000s fashion, for the tragic return of shutter shades.

Pitchfork has long maintained that pop music is at its best when it convinces you that your heartbreak is part of a collective European experience. Cry for You achieves this in under four minutes, which is more than you can say for most PhD theses on postmodern ennui.

Is it high art? No. But like all essential dancefloor classics, it turns personal despair into a group hug where everyone smells vaguely of Jägerbombs.

Best moment: the chorus, which sounds like the soundtrack to every MySpace breakup ever.
Worst moment: realising you actually did cry for him.

Final verdict: September gave us the perfect reminder that tears and glitter coexist. And sometimes, that’s enough.

DUBBY
DUBBY is declaring WAR on big Energy! Use the promo code "1001songs" at checkout for 10% off!

Support the show

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1001songsthatmakeyouwanttodie/
Follow us on TikTok: @the1001crew

Want to request a song? Tell us your rating? Send us a Text Message right now!

We want to give a shout-out to a brand new podcast from a friend of the show: Moose On The Loose.

If you love the unfiltered chaos of 1001 Songs That Make You Want To Die, you’ll want to add this to your list. It’s funny, it’s wild, and it’s worth your time.

👉 Search Moose On The Loose wherever you get your podcasts and hit follow/subscribe to support a mate of the pod.

https://open.spotify.com/show/2uCopui2iToh9B8t7elKXf?si=1d67a2030ea948b7

DUBBY
DUBBY is declaring WAR on big Energy! Use the promo code "1001songs" at checkout for 10% off!

Support the show

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1001songsthatmakeyouwanttodie/
Follow us on TikTok: @the1001crew

Want to request a song? Tell us your rating? Send us a Text Message right now!

Score: 3.4

It takes a certain kind of courage to title your duet One Too Many when the song itself sounds like it was written after exactly that number of beers. Keith Urban and Pink, two pop-country-adjacent titans, come together here not so much in harmony as in a musical custody battle over who can out-melodramatise the other. Spoiler: nobody wins.

On paper, the song is about drinking too much and dialling up an ex—a theme as old as both Nashville and karaoke machines. In practice, it’s a chorus so sticky it could double as the lining of a barroom coaster. Urban strums an acoustic that sounds like it was fished out of a Spotify “Acoustic Coffeehouse” playlist, while Pink delivers vocals with the intensity of someone who thought she was cutting a demo for a Now That’s What I Call Country 2030 compilation.

The production is its own beast: a Frankenstein’s monster of Top 40 gloss, faux-folk earnestness, and something that might be steel guitar if you squint hard enough. It’s as if Max Martin got locked in a room with a Nashville songwriter and the only way out was to produce something that would make both Walmart shoppers and wine-aunt Facebook groups nod in approval.

Lyrically, One Too Many is a Hallmark card taped to a whiskey bottle. “I’ve had one too many,” they sing, a phrase repeated so often it feels less like confession and more like the Terms & Conditions you’re forced to accept before entering Keith Urban’s radio rotation. It’s supposed to be messy and relatable, but instead it lands with the authenticity of a corporate brand tweeting about “getting lit on Taco Tuesday.”

That’s not to say it isn’t catchy—it is, in the same way a car alarm is catchy when it’s been going off for an hour. It will lodge itself in your brain, make you hum it against your will, and then leave you wondering why you suddenly have the urge to buy boxed rosé and an Urban Outfitters cowboy hat.

In the end, One Too Many isn’t a disaster so much as it is aggressively fine: the sonic equivalent of warm domestic beer. It won’t ruin your night, but you’ll definitely wish you had something better in your hand.

Best moment: When it ends and you realise Spotify auto-play has queued up literally anything else.
Worst moment: Realising you’ll still be humming it tomorrow.

DUBBY
DUBBY is declaring WAR on big Energy! Use the promo code "1001songs" at checkout for 10% off!

Support the show

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1001songsthatmakeyouwanttodie/
Follow us on TikTok: @the1001crew

Want to request a song? Tell us your rating? Send us a Text Message right now!

Sabrina Carpenter — “Manchild”
Pitchfork Score: 5.8

On “Manchild,” Sabrina Carpenter trades in her usual sugary pop flair for what feels like a subtweet set to music. The song drips with sarcasm, which is fitting, because it sounds like it was written directly after seeing an ex-boyfriend post a thirst trap captioned “rise and grind.”

Carpenter takes aim at the boy-men of the world: guys who Venmo you $7.43 for half a burrito but still call themselves entrepreneurs, who post inspirational quotes with typos, who think playing pickup basketball counts as cardio. Her lyrics are clever in spots, but often teeter on the edge of being too pleased with themselves, like a barista who insists on telling you their stand-up routine while you’re just trying to get a flat white.

Production-wise, “Manchild” is all glossy minimalism—like a synth-pop beat that dressed up in Zara to impress its girlfriend’s parents. It’s catchy, but you can’t shake the feeling you’ve heard it before, probably on the soundtrack of a Netflix rom-com where the protagonist realizes her boyfriend is, in fact, a manchild.

Still, Carpenter delivers with a wink and a smirk, and the song thrives in its pettiness. It’s not her boldest work, but it does provide excellent background music for sending passive-aggressive texts or deleting your Hinge app for the seventh time this month.

Best Fit For: playing loudly in your apartment while rehearsing a speech about how you’re “so over him,” only to check his Instagram again five minutes later.

DUBBY
DUBBY is declaring WAR on big Energy! Use the promo code "1001songs" at checkout for 10% off!

Support the show

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1001songsthatmakeyouwanttodie/
Follow us on TikTok: @the1001crew

Want to request a song? Tell us your rating? Send us a Text Message right now!

Benson Boone — “Beautiful Things”
Pitchfork Score: 6.4

Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” is the kind of song that sounds like it was carefully engineered to play during the end credits of a Netflix teen drama—specifically the episode where the main character finally kisses their crush, only for it to start raining in cinematic slow motion. Boone’s voice trembles with the sincerity of someone who just discovered his first heartbreak on Tumblr circa 2012, and the production swells like an Imagine Dragons B-side that got baptized in holy water.

Lyrically, Boone circles around the idea of cherishing love before it slips away, which is both touching and about as revolutionary as finding out water is wet. Every line sounds like it was workshopped by a support group for people who cried too hard at The Notebook. “Please don’t take these beautiful things that I’ve got” could be poignant if it didn’t also sound like a panicked plea to a landlord.

The song itself builds toward a dramatic chorus that is supposed to soar, but mostly just floats politely, like a balloon that refuses to fully commit to either rising or popping. It’s polished, safe, and inoffensive—Spotify playlist glue for people who still write Instagram captions about “living in the moment.”

Still, Boone knows his audience, and in that lane, “Beautiful Things” works. It’s heartfelt enough to make teenagers clutch their pillows at 2 a.m., but slick enough to slide onto Top 40 radio without scaring off your mom. Is it groundbreaking? No. But if you need a soundtrack for your next PG-13 existential crisis, Boone has you covered.

Best Fit For: crying in your car after an argument where you definitely weren’t wrong.

DUBBY
DUBBY is declaring WAR on big Energy! Use the promo code "1001songs" at checkout for 10% off!

Support the show

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1001songsthatmakeyouwanttodie/
Follow us on TikTok: @the1001crew

Want to request a song? Tell us your rating? Send us a Text Message right now!

Pitchfork Review – Katy Perry: Waking Up in Vegas
Score: 7.9 (Best New Hangover)

If Hunter S. Thompson had written Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a sugar-coated rom-com, Waking Up in Vegas would be the soundtrack. Katy Perry delivers a glitter-fuelled ode to bad decisions, late-stage capitalism, and the kind of hangover that makes you question both your life choices and whether you’re wearing someone else’s pants.

The production is a strange hybrid of ‘80s arena rock bombast and Disney Channel pep rally — Max Martin and co. essentially weaponise cymbal crashes and four-on-the-floor drums until you feel like you’ve just mainlined a slot machine jackpot. Perry’s vocals bounce between faux-indignant girlfriend and motivational speaker who’s had three vodka Red Bulls for breakfast.

Lyrically, it’s a manifesto for the YOLO generation before YOLO was a thing. Lines like "Why are these lights so bright?” and "That’s what you get for waking up in Vegas" feel less like pop hooks and more like your friend’s drunken Instagram captions from 2010. This is not a song about Vegas so much as it’s a song about waking up anywhere with glitter in your teeth and an inexplicable hotel charge.

When Perry shouts “Shut up and put your money where your mouth is”, it’s not just a chorus — it’s a philosophy. The song is basically a musical dare, telling you to make the bad choice, own the bad choice, and then write a three-minute pop banger about it.

By the end, you’re not sure if you’ve listened to a breakup song, a pro-gambling PSA, or a piece of subtle anti-tourism propaganda from the Nevada Health Department. But like a $4.99 all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet, it’s cheap, loud, and will haunt you for days.

Verdict: The perfect soundtrack to putting $50 on black at 3am, losing, and telling yourself it was “part of the experience.”

DUBBY
DUBBY is declaring WAR on big Energy! Use the promo code "1001songs" at checkout for 10% off!

Support the show

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1001songsthatmakeyouwanttodie/
Follow us on TikTok: @the1001crew

Want to request a song? Tell us your rating? Send us a Text Message right now!

Pitchfork Review – Joe Dolce: Shaddap You Face
Score: 8.7 (Best New Meme)

Joe Dolce’s Shaddap You Face is the kind of song that makes you question not only the nature of music, but the nature of civilisation itself. In 1980, while the rest of the world was contemplating the looming nuclear winter, Joe Dolce decided to weaponise a mandolin and a catchphrase to wage war on taste.

Dolce’s delivery—equal parts comedy uncle, regional theatre understudy, and man who’s just been told “the karaoke machine’s broken, can you sing it a cappella?”—is the song’s driving force. The accordion wheezes like a pensioner after walking up three steps, while the rhythm plods along with all the swagger of a Fiat Panda in second gear. It’s not music you dance to so much as music you gesticulate wildly to, preferably while wearing a checked tablecloth as a cape.

Lyrically, it’s a work of minimalist genius. Dolce doesn’t waste time with metaphors or subtext—every line is a conversation between him, his mama, and an imagined chorus of Australian radio listeners in 1981 who were too polite to turn it off. The repeated hook, “What’s-a matter you?” isn’t just a question—it’s an existential howl, a postmodern critique of the immigrant experience, or maybe just a man yelling at a cloud.

When it was released, Shaddap You Face dethroned John Lennon’s Woman on the UK charts. Yes, Joe Dolce beat a Beatle. That’s like if Subway released a tuna melt that outsold the Mona Lisa. It’s a reminder that sometimes, the masses don’t want enlightenment—they want an accordion, a bad accent, and a chorus that gets funnier the more you sing it.

In the end, Shaddap You Face is not a song you listen to because you want to—it’s a song you listen to because it will find you. In the supermarket. In a taxi. In your brain at 3am. And you will sing along, because resistance is futile.

Verdict: A masterpiece of cultural persistence. Like herpes, but with a mandolin.

DUBBY
DUBBY is declaring WAR on big Energy! Use the promo code "1001songs" at checkout for 10% off!

Support the show

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1001songsthatmakeyouwanttodie/
Follow us on TikTok: @the1001crew