Alexander 23 excels at making sadness feel less like a burden to bear alone and more like a collective experience to be shared. His new single, “Sad,” is no exception. It is an achingly honest track that plunges into emotional exhaustion, heartbreak, and the stillness of just trying to be OK.
The Chicago-born songwriter and producer has attracted attention with his introspective lyrics and easygoing, melodic sound. “Sad” is another piece of evidence of his knack for pairing raw emotion with gleaming production. Baked in amber guitar tones, throbbing drums, and his signature falsetto, “Sad” plays like a midnight ride with the mind going a mile a minute, cozy and cathartic.
In typical breakup anthem fashion, “Sad” refuses to dwell in bitterness. Instead, Alexander 23 takes a self-aware tenderness cranky well, more irritable than sad look at the maddening set of feelings that accompany missing a person who’s become a ghost. If the lyrics “I don’t even know why I’m sad, but I still miss what we had” seem succinct but catchy, it’s only because they describe the overall confusing, incommunicable, but potent nature of loss itself.
After bursting onto the scene with “Dirty AF1s,” Alexander 23 has continued to cement his lane in alt-pop, winning praise from tastemakers and joining the stages of artists like Alec Benjamin and mxmtoon. Having done the same thing with “Sad,” he again shows that vulnerability is not a weakness but a superpower.