I was in line at Starbucks pretending to be a functioning adult, earbuds in, when this song dropped and my stomach flipped like it was sophomore year and I’d just heard the rumor about myself. Suddenly I was 14 again eating lunch in the bathroom stall because showing my face in the cafeteria meant getting torn apart by girls who made cruelty their full-time job. You know the ones—they’d smile at your parents during school events then spend Monday morning dissecting every single thing “wrong” with you. The way Genevieve opens with “Girls hanging at those heels” immediately took me back to watching them strut down hallways like they owned the fucking world while the rest of us tried to disappear into our lockers.
Now, I admit I played the mean girl in college—usually aimed at other cruel bitches who bullied my friends, and once or twice, or maybe a dozen times, to attract guys—but I knew exactly what I was doing. The power felt intoxicating. The attention, addictive. That’s what this song stirs up—the messy truth that many of us have worn both sides of the wound. Victim and villain. Hurting and being hurt. It’s why Genevieve’s story hits so deep with me; I see myself in it without pretending it’s pretty.
But this isn’t some sugar-coated empowerment anthem that pretends the trauma wasn’t real. Genevieve goes straight for the jugular, channeling Bowie’s theatrical rawness with Prince’s funk-soaked confidence. The production is this dreamy almost hallucinogenic soundscape that feels like you’re floating through memories you’ve been trying to forget. But then that bassline kicks in—dirty, funky, absolutely relentless—and suddenly you’re not the victim anymore. You’re the one with the power to tell the story.
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When she hits us with “Vivid eyes the masquerade is over / Won’t suffer in silence not tonight,” I literally had to pause and take a breath. That’s the exact moment where you stop protecting your bullies with your silence. We’ve all done it—minimized what they did, laughed it off, pretended we’re over it when really we’re still carrying that shit around like emotional shrapnel. Genevieve said fuck that. The masquerade where we all pretend mean girls grow out of it, where we act like teenage cruelty doesn’t leave permanent marks—that whole performance is done.
The pre-chorus wrecked me and I’m not sorry about it: “You don’t know what you put me through / How I’m crying over you.” She repeats it and each time it hits harder because that’s exactly what we want to scream at them. They moved on and probably don’t even remember our names while we’re still unpacking their damage in therapy sessions we can barely afford. The production swells here, layers building on layers, mimicking how trauma compounds—one cruel comment stacking on another until you can’t tell where you end and their voices begin.
But here’s where Genevieve flips the whole damn script. That chorus—“Oh, left me by the sea / Broken and bruised and everything in between”—should feel defeated, but it doesn’t. There’s this underlying strength, this Kate Bush-inspired theatrical power that transforms victimhood into victory. She’s she’s displaying bruise like goddamn battle scars and when she drops “You came down to rescue me,” it’s not about some savior complex bullshit. It’s about finding that part of yourself that refused to let them win.
The second verse punched me in the gut: “Girls felt so small / When you were dancing in the hallways.” Then she delivers the line that made me actually gasp—“There goes that man in a dress.” Holy shit, the casual cruelty of misgendering, of weaponizing someone’s authentic self-expression, of making someone’s truth into a punchline. And that devastating follow-up: “Made me cry oh it made me cry for my mother.” Because our mothers had to watch us shrink, had to see us come home destroyed, probably wanted to burn the whole school down but could only hold us while we sobbed.
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Genevieve wrote this after years of coaching and being coached, after doing the work to excavate these experiences from where she’d buried them. You can hear that journey in every note—this isn’t raw, unprocessed trauma. This is trauma that’s been examined, understood, and transformed into pure fucking power. The funk elements aren’t just stylistic choices; they’re declarations that she can make her pain dance, that she can take the worst parts of her history and make them groove.
The repetition of “the girls done bad” at the end isn’t vindictive—it’s matter-of-fact. They did bad. Period. No excuses, no “they were young,” no “they didn’t know better.” They knew exactly what they were doing, and Genevieve’s not giving them any more free passes. This track is her standing in her full power, showing every girl who’s ever been systematically destroyed by other girls that you can alchemize that shit into gold.
And if you see yourself as the villain in these stories just know you can use that power for good just as easily as bad.
Stream this immediately. Play it loud. Play it for every woman who’s still carrying around wounds from girls who should have been her allies but chose violence instead. This is the anthem for everyone who survived and came out the other side knowing exactly who the fuck they are.
