Nothing pisses me off faster than being called jealous when I’m actually keeping receipts. I helped a friend prep for the thing she wanted and talked her off ledges at stupid hours. Then she got it and suddenly became impossible to reach, which was fascinating considering the same phone had worked perfectly when she needed me. I was proud of her and still wanted to throw that phone into traffic every time another message sat unanswered. Apparently women are supposed to clap beautifully from the audience while pretending it doesn’t sting when the person onstage forgets who was in the rehearsal room. NYRE’s ‘Oblivion’ gets that nasty little social rule. She writes about watching someone rise after you helped carry part of the weight, then realizing you somehow disappeared from the success story once things got good. Call it jealousy if you need the cheap version. I call it noticing who suddenly forgot my fucking number.
The production keeps the wound dressed for a night out, pushing NYRE’s dark-pop instincts toward dance-pop with synths that lift while her vocal stays cool enough to make the resentment feel expensive. At 2:18, ‘Oblivion’ moves quickly and leaves zero room for wallowing. Good. Nobody came here to watch her ugly cry into an inspirational friendship quote. The whole thing wears resentment in a tiny black dress and refuses to cry in the Uber. NYRE co-wrote the track with Sarah Boulton and Mike Schlosser, while Brandon Unis handled the mix and master.
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She starts with one person taking off while the woman who supported her is crashing in the opposite direction. That image already tells me plenty about who got left carrying the emotional bill. Then NYRE reduces her new position to the “sidelines,” and shit, that word is humiliating. You knew the password to the old version of this person’s life and now you’re watching the upgrade through fucking glass. She helped with the climb, yet somebody apparently decided her access expired once the view got prettier.
Then NYRE brings career language into the breakup and gets mean in the prettiest way. She realizes her name has disappeared from “all these credits,” which might be my favorite idea in the song because friendship labor rarely comes with paperwork. You answer panic calls and read drafts. Years later everybody calls her self-made while you’re standing there thinking, cute story. I would personally need wine for the fucking documentary premiere. NYRE understands how much of this pain comes from being erased rather than simply left behind. Watching somebody succeed without you hurts. Watching them behave as though you contributed nothing is where the claws come out.
The bridge reveals the colder wound. NYRE imagines being in the same room with this person again, rehearsing what she might say in her head, before admitting “you don’t think about me.” That is fucking brutal because anger still keeps two people emotionally connected. Indifference closes the tab. She has apparently become old business to somebody whose absence is still taking up premium real estate in her head, and there is something deliciously awful about hearing her realize the imbalance in real time.
NYRE clearly knew this wound had a whole room inside it. She turned release night into Into Oblivion, an immersive Toronto listening event built around unanswered messages, friendships growing apart and the strange experience of watching somebody rise without you. NYRE turned the fallout into something people could physically walk through, because apparently being emotionally ghosted by ambition deserved production value. That is such a wonderfully dramatic response to getting emotionally ghosted by ambition. Personally, I support turning that shit into an event with merch.
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NYRE is Eryn Young – a Toronto artist who started writing songs at eight and began releasing music in 2019. NYRE is Eryn flipped backward – a name she uses for the bolder version of herself that shows up when the music gets darker and the filter comes off. Her dark-pop world pulls from the emotional storytelling that first drew her toward artists including Halsey and Billie Eilish, while Toronto nightlife feeds the colder electronic side of her sound. Her catalog has already crossed 1.25 million streams, and her music has made its way onto Disney+/Hulu through a television sync. That résumé makes ‘Oblivion’ especially interesting because NYRE knows ambition from the inside. She understands why somebody wants the castle this badly. She also understands how fucking rude it is to arrive there and forget who climbed beside you.
I still see that friend’s wins occasionally and, yes, I’ve double-tapped some of them because I contain multitudes and apparently one of those multitudes has manners. NYRE’s ‘Oblivion’ understands the contradiction perfectly. You can be genuinely thrilled that she made it and still remember every night you helped keep the dream alive before her life got shiny. Pride doesn’t erase hurt. Success doesn’t magically rewrite history. I can clap when you get through the door. I’m simply not helping you edit me out of the story afterward.
