Am I a party girl? Uh, yeah. I mean, I’ve stayed out drinking many nights because I liked the version of me everyone else got after midnight. She flirted harder and totally convinced everyone including herself that Tuesday deserved a 2 a.m. ending. For a while, that can feel hot as hell, especially when everyone around you seems to like her too. Then the drink starts getting credit for your personality and suddenly your own mystique has a fucking sponsor. CA in LA’s ‘Waking Up’ goes straight at that ugly little transaction, taking the tortured-artist fantasy out under bright bathroom lighting where the bullshit gets harder to hide. Courtney Birk and Ashleigh Coffelt wrote it after admitting alcohol had become woven into how they worked and socialized. If I need tequila to remain interesting, babe, I have bigger branding problems.
The production makes the confrontation sexy. Dream-pop guitar curls around haunting piano while Marc Nieto leaves enough room for the vocals to feel almost too close. The track stays nocturnal and a little dangerous, which matters because nobody needs three minutes of beige wellness content after a song about drinking too much. Thank fuck CA in LA lets the darkness keep its lipstick on.
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That little shoulder demon gets the best line early with “Tell me I’m no fun sober.” Six words and the entire party-girl cliché is suddenly under fluorescent lighting looking cheap. I know that bitch. She thinks being the loudest girl in the room is personality and treats another round like proof she still has a pulse. CA in LA clock the lie without turning the song into a lecture. The vibe stays gorgeous while the excuse starts looking like shit.
Then the whole thing gets physical. The song keeps reaching for drowning imagery as the vocals push toward air, which turns clarity into something you can practically feel in your lungs. Chaos is fun while I’m the one picking it but the second it starts running my schedule the whole thing gets boring as fuck – and boredom just might be the least sexy accusation a party girl can hear.
You know – artist culture has spent decades romanticizing the fucked-up creative, making drinking too much look like part of the aesthetic instead of a problem. Courtney and Ashleigh have talked about the way the struggling-artist mythology can make self-destruction feel weirdly normal once drinking becomes tangled up with the work and the life around it.
CA in LA finally calls bullshit on that mythology with “Self-destruction isn’t beauty / This won’t be my fate / I choose to separate.” I love how clean that is. The fucked-up creative girl loses her halo in one move. Once the damage stops looking romantic, the whole thing starts to resemble a very expensive costume, and I refuse to let a coping mechanism become my fucking stylist.
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The duo have said the song came out of realizing how thoroughly alcohol had threaded itself through artist life. They used it to stay awake and wind down. They also used it socially until the whole routine became familiar enough to masquerade as normal. A few weeks after they stopped, they described the feeling as waking up. That detail gives the title some bite because clarity arrives here with attitude. She knows what the old version of her was selling. She simply stopped buying.
CA in LA have been building this world together since 2013 when Courtney heard Ashleigh harmonizing to Zedd’s ‘Clarity’ in a Mustang convertible and immediately knew they should sing together. They moved to Los Angeles in 2014 and later shaped their sound around influences including PVRIS and Daughter. Film sits in their bloodstream too – which helps explain why even a personal confession like ‘Waking Up’ feels cinematic without turning into melodrama. The single arrived August 21 as part of the expanded Hindsight era, with Ashleigh on guitar and Courtney on keys. Their origin story is adorable but the grown-up version has sharper eyeliner.
I still understand the appeal of the girl who says yes to one more drink because she likes who she becomes when the room gets blurry. I also know how insulting it feels to realize the interesting part was hers before the glass ever showed up. CA in LA’s ‘Waking Up’ makes that realization hot as hell. “I choose to separate” works because choice is the whole seduction. She keeps the edge and takes the habit off the fucking guest list.
