Generally speaking, there are two kinds of wallflower at any party…the kind who secretly wish they could be the life of the party, and the kind who just wish they were anywhere else. The former category have been getting songs written for them ever since Duke Ellington wrote “Imagine My Frustration”, but I don’t really think the latter demographic had a theme song until this brooding Pop singer in the Lorde vein provided them with one. Speaking as someone who knows the experience all too well, this song perfectly captures what it’s like to be the person who doesn’t belong with this crowd and is only there because of circumstance, the one sober person in the roomful of drunken revelers, the one who curses the fact that they’re not in a position to leave. Practically everyone can relate to this to some degree, I imagine, but there’s definitely a demographic who feel this way at every party they go to, and I imagine a lot of us in that crowd are grateful that we finally have a song…a hit pop song, no less!…that knows how we feel. This is a song that definitely needed to exist, and the world is certainly a better place now that it does.
Verdict: A modern classic.