You know that specific moment when you finally stop waiting by your phone and suddenly he texts? I was three weeks deep into genuinely not caring anymore. Actually going out, actually hooking up with a new guy. And then he shows up with the “I’ve been thinking about us” message and I felt that stupid flutter before I could stop it. Didn’t respond until the next morning. Went back out that same night, kissed someone else in a bar bathroom and thought about him the whole time anyway, which is maybe the most humiliating thing I’ve ever admitted out loud. He already showed me exactly who he was. My brain registered all of it. The rest of me was taking its sweet time catching up.
‘Fiction’ by OJ DUBZ is about that toxic slow-burn where some loser guy didn’t want you when you wanted him, but the second you start detaching, suddenly he’s “confused” and “thinking about what you could be.” It’s the emotional whiplash of a man who only values you when you’re walking away. Classic. It’s ego-driven regret. And it feeds on that sick little thrill of still wanting someone who already proved they’ll fumble you. You know he played in your face. You know you deserve better. And yet there’s that one stupid spark that keeps you hovering. This is heartbreak with a backbone. You’re hurt, yeah, but you’re also clocking the game in real time.
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OJ DUBZ built this whole thing around a triple threat vocal attack from Emy Smith, Juli Guilleron, and Alyssa Jane, each coming at the story from a completely different emotional angle. The production is slick and charged, the kind of track that sounds devastating at 1am with your feelings still unprocessed and a drink getting warm in your hand.
Emy opens with “I don’t know what to do with you / You call this love and break my heart in two” and she’s sitting in the real confusion of it, where you know the answer but can’t stand it. Then she names what he keeps doing: “You pull me close just to watch me fall / Say it’s nothing but you risk it all / Now I’m the one who’s losing it all.” He risks it all when it’s low stakes for him. She’s the one eating the actual cost. Then Emy moves into something more dangerous, the part where she admits the pull out loud: “He says my name like a prayer in the quiet of the night / Whispering in my ear but the tension’s so tight / I don’t care you’re the fire that’s keeping me alive / You burn me but I like it.” She owns it without explaining it away, which is so much more honest than performing detachment she doesn’t feel.
Then she hits the line that fucking wrecks me: “Got one reason to stay but a million more to go / Must be love on the brain but my heart keeps saying no.” One reason. Just one. Still loud enough to compete with everything else she knows. She follows with the gut punch of the whole dynamic: “When I wanted you, your eyes were not on me / Now you’re sitting here wondering what we could be.” He wasn’t paying attention when he had her. Now she’s halfway out the door and suddenly he’s riveted. She names his whole operation directly: “You were slow baby / Put on a show on me / You played with my heart / But you say love me” and closes her section with “Don’t you lie baby / Don’t play with my heart.” She’s not asking. She’s warning. The whole Emy section comes back around at the end of the track, that reprise landing heavier once you’ve heard everything that comes between.
Juli Guilleron shifts into something rawer and I’m here for every second of it. “You know I’d go back / If it meant one more chance” is the thing most girls would never say out loud. Juli just did, no apology attached. Then the reality of what he left her in: “Now I’m all alone in the quiet of the night / Why’d you have to go and break me like that / I just can’t believe you seem okay.” He’s fine. She’s in pieces. The asymmetry of it is brutal as hell. Then comes the clarity: “If you try and tell me that you miss me anyway / I’d turn and walk away / I’m not the one to blame” followed immediately by the thing that makes this section devastating: “If you try to tell me you can take the pain away / Then think about that day / You chose to watch me ache.” He could have stopped it. He watched her hurt anyway and made a choice about that. Juli’s not letting him rewrite that history.
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She does the thing next you’re not supposed to do: “Went back to the place where I met you / And looked for you / Your ghost was there to haunt me / I saw us two.” Going back to the place. We’ve all done it and it never helps and we do it anyway. She closes with “But no one ever cut me so deep so deep so deep / No one like you oh oh” and that repetition of “so deep” is doing real emotional work. It’s not dramatic. It’s just true and she keeps saying it because she’s still processing it.
Alyssa Jane closes this shit out with venom wrapped in velvet and it’s fucking perfect. She opens simply: “And it’s simple in this moment / The way I see it my heart bleeds / You best believe / That I am broken.” No performance, no armor. Just the stripped-down fact of it. Then she snaps back: “Tied me up with strings and stole the show / I’m glad I could be your puppet / You got what you needed I hope.” The sarcasm in that “I hope” is lethal. Then she gets specific about what makes this so infuriating: “So unfair” lands in the middle of all of this and somehow it’s the most honest two words on the whole track. It IS unfair. Full stop. She gives him the real before pulling the verdict: “Chemistry was just right here / No one held a candle to the way you lit my world up” before landing the title and the conclusion at the same time: “It’s a shame that everything you told me was a fiction.” The chemistry was genuine. What he built on top of it was manufactured. She sees it completely and says it without flinching.
So, he texted again two days later. “You seem different.” Yeah. I am. Deleted the thread and went back out. Same dress. Different guy. No looking back.
