As October comes to a close, there’s a vast collection of media moments that have transpired, but which is the most iconic? Tate Mcrae’s new single “Housewife?” Dedication night on Dancing with the Stars? For me personally, it was Remi’s Wolf release of her masterpiece of an album, Mud.
In her new album, Mud, Remi Wolf does a beautiful job capturing such a specific down-to-earth vibe so unique to her style and voice. She collects the sounds of this grittiness and dirtiness, but contrasts it beautifully with the classy and sparkling feeling of being wine-drunk and dancing in morning rain. It’s an album with anthems of confidence and love, sprinkled with breakup songs that don’t necessarily make you want to cry.
In an interview with Zach Sang on his podcast, Wolf admits she didn’t know what the term “mud” meant to her the first time it left her mouth. It wasn’t until later on that she realized that mud is a metaphor for our baggage.
“You go to a mud bath, you get dirty as fuck, but then once it’s all wiped off, you’re full of all these amazing minerals and your skin is refreshed.” Wolf said.
In the interview she ultimately suggests the baggage we carry is similar to the sticky, dirty residue that gets stuck under our fingernails and lingers even when we think we’ve gotten rid of it all.
However, this idea of seeing our accumulation of baggage as a process that can eventually make us feel more refreshed and clean is an important perspective to have. Especially in a world where the word “baggage” has such a negative weight to it, Wolf redefines what this means for all of us. What if we joined Wolf in seeing our struggles and pieces we resent about ourselves as mud? What if, instead, we saw our baggage as a crucial part of the earth we live and breathe on, natural and crucial to growth? After all, you can’t have the flowers without the dirt and mud. As cringy as it is, it’s a beautiful theme that Wolf explores in her new songs.
Although Mud is truly a no skip album, these are my top five favorites (and why) as follows:
1 . “Champagne”
This song is, by far, my favorite on the album. “Champagne” is a song about falling in love with the messiness of a relationship that is bubbly and sparkling like champagne, but, at the end of the day, is just a cheap bottle that will never be the real thing. It’s a feel good song that perfectly connects ties the two constant themes of this album together, intoxication and grounding
2. “I Won’t Cry”
Only Remi Wolf could make blacking out sound cosmic. In the first verse, she sings “I black out, like a dying star”. She makes painfully relatable and messy situations sound beautiful and earthly without romanticizing it but simply confronting the reality of it.
Within the second repetition of the chorus, she captures the desperation of not necessarily begging for someone to stay but instead simply hoping they’ll change their mind and come around again. In “I Won’t Cry”, Remi is acknowledging how it is a beautiful thing to let someone go but impossible to not miss them and wait for them to want you again. So, instead of crying about it and hating yourself, she suggests maybe a breakup is actually a time to love yourself.
“I could be your favorite track, I know I can”, she sings. Her self confidence never wavers, an attribute often hard to come by in pop songs.
“Oh, you should want me back”, Remi declares. She knows what she’s worth. Instead of hating herself over the breakup, she is using it to remind herself of how worthy she is of love. She is a beautiful song that deserves to be listened to, and she will continue singing until she is heard.
3. “Twiggy”
My “For You” page on Tik Tok is currently packed with different versions of Remi Wolf beautifully belting this bridge with a tambourine in hand, and I am not complaining. She sings this bridge so gracefully, and it deserves all the support it is receiving. The rhythm of this iconic bridge is not only satisfying to hear, “you just miss me, I just miss you, we just missed our exit”, but it is painfully relatable for anyone who has experienced the dizzying back and forth of a breakup. There’s a point in the process of letting someone go where you realize, while you may no longer miss them, you miss the memory of them. Or, in this case, as Remi so boldly suggests, you just miss your mother. Wolf acknowledges this with such power and grace, it’s impossible not to sing along, even if you don’t directly relate.
4. “Guess”
This song slows down the rhythm of the album and provides a breath from the upbeat tempos of her other songs. It confronts the “supposed to’s” of a relationship that many are guilty of falling short of. Similar to the stunning bridge in “Twiggy”, the bridge in “Guess” is just as satisfying but perhaps a little sadder: “We don’t feel like we used to feel. I want you to fight me, I need it to hurt to know that it’s real.” Another painful reality to confront in the endings of a relationship.
5. “Covered in Mud”
Compared to her other songs on this album, “Covered in Mud” is a complete outlier. Wolf leans into a country-like twang, with lyrics like “this bloke in Louisiana looks like my childhood crush” and “fist full of Adderall, corn on the cob on the grill in the backyard”. Wolf grew up in California and is seemingly no stranger to a western curated aesthetic. In many of her music videos for this album, she is embracing a country vibe with cowgirl boots and a hat.
Honorable mention: “Moon so high” featuring John Mayer
Seeing John Mayer featured in this song threw me off at first, but this song does not disappoint. I never really imagined the two collabing, but their voices blended surprisingly well together. The pair explore the letdown and disappointment that comes with having high expectations in a relationship, singing “every shooting star was just a satellite” and “your galaxy of lies” which are two of my favorite lines. The incredible songwriters casually create the most beautiful metaphors, once again tying the cosmos and our earth itself to themes of love and growth and realization.
Whether you fell in love with her through her guest appearance on “Off Campus”, or you’ve been a fan since 2019, Remi is an iconic and unforgettable voice of our time. Her uniquely detailed lyrics paint a muddy picture of shimmering galaxies, dirty cowboy boots, and sparkling champagne. Just like the baggage we all carry, this incredible album deserves to not only be listened to, but celebrated.