Lizzy McAlpine is at Her Most Visceral and Vulnerable on “Ugly Things”
Lizzy McAlpine walks us through the good, the bad and the ugly on her newest single
You might want to set up an appointment with your therapist because Lizzy McAlpine just released another absolutely gut wrenching single from her highly anticipated third album Angel. McAlpine ushered us into the era with the serendipitous love song “The Light in the Painting,” a warm and gentle reprieve from the heavy emotional load on her last record. But in typical McAlpine fashion, that ease couldn’t last forever.
“Ugly Things” is the era's second single, and with it McAlpine is slowly gathering her audience in close for a tale of love and loss. If “The Light in The Painting” is meant to represent the simple euphoria of being known, “Ugly Things” is when that once sturdy foundation cracks. The driving force in each single is perception: how McAlpine perceives her muse and whether or not they live up to her version of them. On “The Light in The Painting,” the way McAlpine views herself becomes entwined with the hazy bliss of this new love to the point that she is blinded to the rest of the world moving around her, singing “Time moves slower in a time like this.”
“Ugly Things” forces her eyes to open again. At first she tries to resist it, listing off things that once felt tangible in the relationship: his picture in her wallet, a summer wedding and a shared home together. We zoom out quickly to find her utterly alone, rereading old love letters only to be reminded of this person's absence. “I loved you,” she sings almost questionlike, as she watches her fantasy world fall away and her perfect partner with it.
As the layers of ethereal beauty slip away, she has to reckon with the fact that she no longer recognizes the person that her beloved light in the painting has become. “Ugly Things” captures the loneliness that comes when a spell of limerence ends. She’s mortified with how her former partner has moved on and started anew, but even more so she’s upset with herself for not being able to shake the idealized version of this person that she created.
McAlpine has a knack for making the mundane feel meaningful, and nowhere is that better exemplified than in this song's music video. Filmed entirely alone on her camcorder, the video walks us through a day as she tries to convince herself she's fine. In between doomscrolls she pulls herself out of a cocoon of blankets, begrudgingly brushing her teeth with her phone still in hand. Her world has been thrown entirely off its axis, and it is slowly seeping into every aspect of her life. The simplicity of the video is what makes it resonant — she doesn’t attempt to editorialize or create an aesthetic out of her heartbreak. Instead she shows it exactly as it is in all of its lonely, monotonous glory.
“Ugly Things” is an exceptional track from McAlpine, showcasing her at her most visceral and vulnerable. The song sparkles in the same way that red rimmed eyes do after crying for hours on end. The full album Angel will be available everywhere September 18 and if the singles are any indication of what we can expect from the rest of this project, it is certainly not a release that you will want to miss.