Villain arrived fast. The day before I wrote Hurt By My Healing. Same story. Different emotional weather.
Hurt By My Healing is the ache. The sadness. The part of grief that sits quietly and tries to understand.
Villain is the heat. The moment where the confusion clears and something in you says, hang on… this isn’t mine to carry.
It felt like a release of pressure. A shift from absorbing the emotion… to stepping out of it.
Lyrically
The lyrics live inside distortion.
“Trick of the mind, making you blind, all the lines are blurred” came from the feeling of enmeshment... how reality starts bending when you’re too close to someone emotionally. Words come back to you changed. Meanings get stretched. You start questioning yourself.
“Filling in blanks, read between lies, don’t know what you heard” is that surreal experience of hearing your own words reflected back as something you never said. Like someone’s brain is filling in gaps to match how they already feel.
And “Should I press send?” might be the most honest line in the song. I remember hesitating over messages. Pre-editing my tone. Softening my edges. Wondering how anything I said would land. Even kindness felt dangerous, because my growth felt like an attack to someone who experienced boundaries as loss.
“You painted me in shadows so you could shine” isn’t an accusation as much as an observation. When people can’t face their own part in something changing, the mind looks for a shape that makes the pain make sense. Sometimes that shape is you.
The song keeps circling perception versus truth. Who I am versus who someone needed me to be. And the moment of realising… those are not the same thing.
Sonically
Villain doesn’t ease you in. It starts with the chorus. No build-up. No introduction. Just impact. I don’t think I’ve ever opened a song that way before.
The verses are almost monotone. Robotic. Fast. Like thoughts looping in your head. A kind of sung rap. The choruses lift out of that... more melodic, more open, more defiant. Less tangled.
It’s in C minor. I’ve always felt that key carries weight. Darkness. Something grounded and heavy in the chest.
The Logic session is huge. Around 150 tracks, about 40 of those vocals. Doubles. Harmonies. Distorted “monster” vocals. Vocoder layers. Stutter edits to mirror the looping dynamic. It’s dense on purpose. Overstimulating in places. Like being inside an emotional system that won’t settle.
There are power chord guitars, semi-quaver pulsing riffs, screaming guitar textures, dramatic strings, orchestral hits, arpeggiators, pads, and these gritty, fuzzy basslines that feel almost animal. The drums are hard-edged and unyielding. There’s fizz and noise in the top end. Nothing is soft.
It’s anger, but controlled. Structured. Contained in rhythm.
Visually
The artwork came from the same place as the sound.
A lone figure. Still. Upright. Cape moving in the wind. Not attacking. Not collapsing. Just standing.
The red is deliberate. It’s not romantic red. It’s not warm. It’s confrontational. Emotional heat.
In the lyric video, the figure barely moves. The world moves around them. The cape moves. The air moves. But they stay grounded. That stillness felt important.
Because Villain isn’t about lashing out. It’s about not collapsing under someone else’s narrative.
Why this song matters to me
I didn’t write Villain to hurt anyone. I wrote it at the moment I stopped absorbing emotional responsibility that wasn’t mine.
It’s the sound of a boundary being set without a speech. The sound of anger that isn’t explosive… just clarifying. The moment you realise you can be seen as the villain and still know you’re telling the truth.
That’s a strange kind of freedom. And this song lives right in that moment.