‘Unfucktheworld’: Angel Olsen’s “typical breakup” song
Few lyrical subjects have been tackled more exhaustively than the break-up. Heartbreak is one of the most lucrative muses available to artists, but few have been able to channel the universally devastating loss of love entirely into song. While many broken-hearted songwriters fall into the pitfalls of cliché or complication, Angel Olsen once mastered the craft of the break-up song in just two minutes.
Accompanying her vocals with a singular acoustic guitar and burying them both under lo-fi production, ‘Unfucktheworld’ remains one of Olsen’s most beloved songs even a decade on from its release. The track featured as the opener to the indie songwriter’s sophomore record, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, and perfectly set the tone for the album’s swells of emotion, but Olsen never expected it to gain so much traction.
“I didn’t expect it to take off and I think it’s weird that it did,” she admitted to The Line of Best Fit, “It’s the first song of the record and my theory is that’s why it did well. Like, if it had been track ten, I don’t know if people would have noticed it so much.” Against Olsen’s expectations, the song became one of her most enduring works, perhaps due to its distillation of the break-up song.
The song is based around just three chords and an achingly simplistic set of lyrics that almost sound like they could be ripped straight from Olsen’s diary. Her lyrics are at once specific and universal, detailing how she gave up dreams and took up dancing for her partner. “Here’s to thinking that it all meant so much more,” she laments.
‘Unfucktheworld’ is both sad and hopeful; it wallows in its melancholy, but it also finds peace in a break-up. “It’s not just me for you, I have to look out too,” Olsen declares before repeatedly declaring, “I am the only one now.” Her words are so simple that they are likely to resonate with anyone in the same position, but they’re still steeped in vulnerability and emotion, only enhanced by her delivery and the bare instrumentation.
Olsen put her own sadness into the track, which was written about a “typical breakup” she went through. “I was at a point where I had to make a choice between their sadness and mine. It was that thing where you’re in a relationship and you just can’t pass the torch anymore,” she recalled.
Despite being born out of the specifics of Olsen’s love life, the pure simplicity of the break-up song has endeared it to millions of listeners, which the songwriter posits as being down to its straightforward nature. Perhaps the best way to write a great breakup song is to tell it as it is, distilling the emotions and instrumentation down to their simplest form.
Revisit ‘Unfucktheworld’ by Angel Olsen below.
