‘Sad Lads Anonymous’: Nadine Shah’s underrated ode to modern disillusionment
In the 1970s, disillusionment made its way into music by criticising the establishment and the exploited rights of the working class. It was community-led, an anachronistic mindset that served to dismantle the factions at the top. Now, disillusionment is an individualist practice reserved for those who have truly felt ostracised by society, their peers, and the unconscious biases that lurk in the industry. Nadine Shah captures this shift in her music, where the sense of collective rebellion has given way to deeply personal narratives of alienation and frustration.
Filtering personal experiences into her music isn’t just a part of Shah’s recent release, Filthy Underneath. It infiltrates all of her work, from the mental health themes in her debut, Love Your Dum and Mad, to exploring the impact of toxic relationships in Kitchen Sink. However, Filthy Underneath turned up the heat by leaning hard into disillusionment, mainly because of the harrowing unravelling of many aspects of her own life, like her mother’s tragic passing, her own substance abuse, the end of her marriage, and her grapple with depression.
Despite the crises occurring in immediate proximity, missing home was still possible for Shah, as evidenced by the album’s bitingly hypnotic upbeat track ‘Sad Lads Anonymous’. An anthem foremost about missing home, the song manages to platform Shah’s personal struggles while representing societal disillusionment and its place in contemporary music. Shah isn’t resigning to her fears here; instead, she is contemplating them in a confessional yet critical manner.
“This is a dumb idea, even for you,” she begins, the idea of not being “straight enough to be straight” and “too damn scared to be wild” tapping into reserve about surroundings even with the promise of them being better than somewhere else, somewhere like London, the place filled with “overexcited” people who convince themselves they enjoy it, like it, even, when in reality it’s all a pretence. A distraction.
The latter part of the 20th century was filled with anti-capitalist societal disillusionment, the heart of the rioter taking to music to express frustrations and aggression like a bludgeoned diary. ‘Sad Lads Anonymous’ shows both restraint and the call for greater justice, a place where calm animosity scythes consciousness like a butter knife, Shah’s warm tones and familiar accent bridging the gap between hostility and authenticity.
“The sea’s not the only thing here that’s full of shite,” the muses, adding, “You think cold water will save you? I roam around on a chequered board of vape shops and nail bars; I came to observe and not to play; I could never properly understand the rules of the game anyway. What’s worse? Dying before your time or living beyond it?” As Shah observes her surroundings, the poverty of northeast England passes her by like a black-and-white board game, the monotony of it saying more about desensitisation than the wrongdoings of the elite. She’s living on borrowed time, and what better way to spend it than to speak a stream of observations about how dystopian the world has become?
“Sad lads anonymous,” she self-refers, lamenting the idea that “nothing is a better option than me,” drawing subconscious connections between her psyche and experiences with the outside world while pondering the contradictory nature of riches. As she points out the irony of a “seven-star hotel in Dubai” and it being crafted by “slaves”, the latter part of the song feels almost like a satirical toast to those who are privy to the world’s prejudices, an honouring of those who live in the shadows, ignored and suffering, while the well-off exist in the spotlight, thriving.
‘Sad Lads Anonymous’ might just be an underrated gem, but it’s also an ode to modern disillusionment, the individualistic nature of anger and oppression permeating its subdued notes, with only Shah’s restricted composure leading the charge and pushing the face of her critique into the spotlight, forcing light upon its ugly features. It could be considered tongue-in-cheek were it not for the sheer poetry, the delicate plucking of her words seeming much more considered to be merely playful.
Amid the poverty-stricken, politically uneducated and societally unaware people she consistently feels surrounded by, her frustrations are intrinsic to her own brand of disillusionment, the friction barely strong enough to stop her from spilling her secrets to anyone who passes by. And at the same time, her home makes her feel homesick, even when she refuses to leave it. In her words: “I feel trapped in this stillness. Trapped in this dilapidated, schizophrenic seaside town.”
