The hottest phase of a breakup is when the person who used to ruin your nervous system starts looking aggressively ordinary. One month you are treating every text like evidence in a federal case, then enough time passes and their face pops up on your phone and you cannot believe that man once had this much access to your inner peace. Eventually the person who could wreck your entire night has the emotional gravity of an expired coupon. Avery Cochrane’s Toy Gun catches that comedown perfectly. The mystique is gone and now she can finally see how much energy she wasted holding the relationship together. That kind of hindsight is brutal but it looks fucking good on her.
Avery wraps that realization in driving synth-pop with a disco pulse and little flashes of violin that make the whole thing feel far more glamorous than the relationship deserved. It sounds like getting into the Uber in oversized sunglasses and realizing halfway home you already feel hotter without him. The beat keeps the breakup moving instead of letting it sit there and sulk, which suits a song this fucking pleased with its own escape. She can drag the relationship without sounding trapped inside it, and that freedom is what makes the whole thing so fun.
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She opens with “I met your hero on a Monday / Celebrity sightings, always exciting / But I can’t lie, it was mundane,” which is such a bitchy little flex because the world has apparently already shown her something more dramatic than fame, and unfortunately it was dating this person. Then “Nothing could faze me / Since the mess that you made me” gives the joke its bruise. Once somebody has turned your nervous system into a full-time side hustle, seeing a famous person really can lose some sparkle. Avery sounds almost amused by how much bullshit it apparently took to make her this unfazed.
Then she starts itemizing the relationship with “I booked a ticket to your guilt trip once every month / Killin’ my vibrance, killin’ the fun.” Monthly. Like a subscription service nobody remembers signing up for. I know that shit. You start thinking their moods are somehow your responsibility, then one day you realize you have been paying emotional rent in a place you do not even enjoy living. “Would put the pedal to your bed, oh when you needed some” makes the arrangement even clearer. I have driven across town for sex that did not deserve the gas, then acted surprised when the relationship still sucked in daylight. Sometimes chemistry can keep a terrible situation on life support way longer than dignity recommends.
That is why the title metaphor works so damn well. Avery sings “I used to have to act toughened with a toy gun / But now I don’t owe anything to anyone,” and suddenly the fake weapon makes perfect sense. She was playing the stable one while holding something that could never actually protect her. Avery explained it herself. “I wrote this song about the freedom of leaving a relationship that was emotionally draining,” Avery said. “To me, acting “toughened with a toy gun” means assuming the role of the brave and secure partner, despite being unsure of the relationship yourself.” That is exhausting as hell. She was basically doing an unpaid internship in somebody else’s emotional crisis, and the benefits package was guilt trips.
The second verse is where she gets deliciously mean with “I think of us in the worst way / Never nostalgic, only astounded / We were together in the first place.” That is my favorite stage of getting over someone. Missing them has been replaced by forensic confusion. You look back at the relationship like an outfit from 2014 and wonder who the fuck let you leave the house like that. Avery makes it even sharper with “Would have to settle to your level so I played dumb.” Nothing kills attraction faster than realizing you had to lower the room’s IQ to keep him comfortable. Avery sounds finished clocking in for that shit.
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By the chorus, she has stopped treating the breakup like a loss. “Comeuppance coming to ya, coming undone / It’s not a competition cuz I already won” has the hot-girl confidence this song needs because her victory is already baked into the fact that she left. Then “Bang, bang / Run, run / Never owing anything to anyone” turns the toy gun into a little pop taunt. The weapon is fake, the freedom is real, and she sounds like she is having a fucking blast with that distinction.
Okay so I needed the backstory because Avery Cochrane did not materialize in Los Angeles with a synth and a record deal. The 24-year-old Seattle native played more than 100 hometown shows while paying for studio time by caddying at a golf course and singing covers in a damn seafood restaurant. Her music and videos celebrate queer femininity and sex positivity which I am obsessed with and that makes the sharp confidence on Toy Gun feel completely at home in the world she has been building. Shapeshifting on a Saturday Night became her breakout and Avery eventually moved to Los Angeles to do music full time. Since then she has sold out four EP release shows and joined AJR for two nights at Red Rocks, with her first North American headline tour arriving this fall. That is one hell of a glow-up from singing over somebody’s fish and chips.
The ending seals it with “Keep my peace, as you come undone / Never owing anything to anyone / Keep my peace, and I sold that gun.” That ending is hot because she is finally done performing strength for somebody who kept testing it. The gun is gone, and the ex can come undone somewhere off-camera. Breakups get way funnier once you’re hot again, and Avery sounds like she already knows it.
