Léna Bartels has shared a new single called “Bad Sugar,” which is set to be featured on her upcoming album The Brightest Silver Fish. The follow-up to June’s “Amber” is a country-tinged summer-day burner, featuring a perfectly placed organ line, a delightfully sticky chorus, and a bevy of quotable lines. “All this working and we’ve got nothing all the / Bad sugar won’t get to me if I / Keep drinking gonna kill my baby,” Bartels sings. Come for the lyrics you’ll wanna tattoo on your thigh, stay for the great guitar solo before the last chorus.
“The metaphors in this song are kind of fluid, but at the time I wrote it I was working at a poorly run bakery that would try to incentivize its employees to stay by offloading boxes of leftover baked goods to us at the end of the day,” Bartels shares. “I got so tired of eating them, but I couldn’t stop bringing them home. This kind of dovetailed with a relationship I was in that I couldn’t really figure out, which felt partially loving and partially like we were both just indulging. I think ultimately it’s a song about ignoring consequences in exchange for momentary pleasure, and feeling kind of resentful of being responsible for not giving in to that impulse.”
The Brightest Silver Fish is set to arrive on September 12 via Glamour Gowns Records. Check out the video for “Bad Sugar” below, and pre-order the record here.
