Your 20’s is always a weird time in your life, you’re stuck in this in-between purgatory of mourning over your youth as your friend’s begin to move on with their life, drift away from you with some even getting married before they hit 23 and facing the reality of becoming a full time adult. We look back upon our younger selves and think about how at 23 we thought we’d have the world at our feet and everything would be perfect within our life, owe how wrong we were. The reality of the world ends up hitting us like a personalised blow to the face from Mike Tyson and West Coast indie pop musician and existential dread specialist Wallice showcases all of this within her latest single 23.

She captures the fear of growing a year older, “I’m terrified of the future / Scared that I’ll still be a loser,” along with the delusions that by reaching the age of 23 she’ll soon be married with a family and that her best years are behind her, even though they’re yet to come. The lyrics combine her witty humour, that has a self deprecating quality to them, with her authentic storytelling where we dive into more personal moments of her life, such as her dropping out of college after a year and moving back in with her parents. Have all this over a raw production of grunge influenced guitars that perfectly reflect her own frustrations and you’ve got a piece of music that anyone in their 20’s will find solace within. It’s a fantastic track that I’ll be playing on repeat for months to come.

Speaking about the track Wallice says, “It’s hard not to compare your own professional success to that of your similarly aged peers. I dropped out of university in New York after studying Jazz Voice for a year, and my dad was VERY disappointed to say the least, so it was hard not to feel like a loser in that sense. When I was younger my best friend and I would always talk about the cute apartment we would get after high school, but I found myself at 22 still living with my mom and wanting to move out but not able to quite yet. The specific age 23 doesn’t have any milestones associated with it, but it’s more the idea of just looking forward to the future. Much like how people ‘reset’ every new year, it’s comparable to be ‘older and wiser’ with each birthday, but instead of constantly looking to the future, it is important to be happy with where you are.”