I’ve been busting my ass making music for eight years and every single person who could help me get heard has a different opinion about what I should sound like. The label guy says I’m too raw and need polish. Play it safe and you’re boring. Take risks and you’re unmarketable. Write what you feel and it’s too personal. Write for the audience and you’re a sellout. Every demo I send out gets picked apart by people who’ve never written a fucking song in their lives. The system is designed to keep you chasing their approval while they keep changing what approval looks like. My ex did the exact same thing. Loved my ambition until it took time away from him, then suddenly I was “too focused on my career.” When I backed off to make us the priority, I was “losing my drive” and he missed the passionate version of me. Same moving goalposts, different arena. So when Softmax opens ‘No ID’ singing about nothing being good enough, I felt it. She’s calling out the industry’s impossible standards and that relationship dynamic where you’re never the right version of yourself. Here’s a middle finger to both. Those mother fuckers can sit and spin!
The production here hits with that electronic pop edge Softmax does so well. She produced this with Sam Hudgens, brought in James Richardson from MGMT on guitar, got Joel Ford from Ford & Lopatin to mix it. The result is this sophisticated alternative pop that sounds expensive while critiquing the whole expensive machinery that made it possible. There’s irony in every layer. She’s making a catchy song about how she has to make catchy songs to survive. That’s the trap.
The opening lyric destroys: “Nothing I do / Will ever be good enough for you.” You can work yourself to the bone in the studio. Nail the performance. Get the production perfect. Hit every note, every beat, every fucking metric. Still not good enough for the label, the manager, the algorithm. Same energy as trying everything to make a relationship work – be more available, give them space, communicate better, back off – and nothing ever lands right because they don’t actually know what they want. They just know they want to critique it. Softmax’s delivery here is resigned, like she’s stating a fact she’s made peace with. The game is rigged whether it’s the industry or the relationship. She plays anyway.
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Then she gets into the specifics of the trap. “Take my time / Get it right / Well, guess who went too slow for you to stick around.” If you take the time to craft something meaningful in the studio you miss the moment and the trend’s dead. The internet has the attention span of a goldfish on cocaine. You take three months to make something perfect? Cool, nobody gives a shit anymore. That’s exactly what the industry tells artists: move faster, release more, stay relevant. Quality takes time but time kills momentum. In a relationship, same deal. Take your time processing your feelings, figuring out what you need, working on yourself? Too slow. They’re gone. They needed the instant version of you, the one who’s available and present exactly when they want it. You’re damned either way.
Softmax was born and raised in Chicago, grew up playing guitar and keys while pulling melodic inspiration from the city’s blues heritage. Blues music knows suffering, knows exploitation, knows what it’s like to create art in a system designed to extract value from Black musicians while giving nothing back. When Softmax discovered electronic music, her ears opened up to production’s infinite possibilities. She cites Outkast, Eurythmics, and Roxy Music as heroes because those are artists who packaged avant garde ideas within popular music frameworks. They played the game while pushing boundaries. That’s the lineage Softmax works in.
The next lyric flips the script. “I’ll move fast / Get you back / Oh, now you prefer how I used to sound.” So she speeds up, tries to win them back by being what they said they wanted. In a relationship? You change everything they criticized. You become more available, more flexible, exactly what they claimed to need. And suddenly they miss the old version of you. The passionate one who was “too focused on my career.” The independent one they said was “distant.” Now that you’ve molded yourself to their demands, they want the version they told you to abandon. This shit happens constantly. In music, critics tell you to reinvent yourself then complain you abandoned what made you special. Fans want growth until they want familiarity. Partners want you to change until they’re nostalgic for who you were. The system punishes you for listening. Softmax’s vocals here carry this exhausted amusement, like yeah, of course you prefer the old sound now that I’ve moved on.
‘No ID’ is Softmax’s first release since last year’s dark electronic pop tracks ‘Anaesthesia’ and ‘Ghost In The Shell.’ She spent 2025 writing new music for a future album and appearing on composer CJ Mirra’s soundtrack for surf and environmental documentary ‘The Big Sea.’ She’s been working, creating, contributing. And she’s doing it while fully aware of the promotional machine’s demands.
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The bridge brings it all together. “Make your song / Change your life / Just not quite enough to pay me.” Make your art. Pour your soul into it. Create something that moves people, that changes their perspective, that becomes the soundtrack to their lives. And in return? You’ll get exposure. You’ll get streams that pay fractions of a cent. You’ll get told you’re lucky to even have a platform. The song can change someone’s life and still not earn you rent money. In a relationship? Pour everything into making them happy. Change your whole life around their needs. Sacrifice your time, your boundaries, your fucking career ambitions. And in return? You get taken for granted. You get “I appreciate you but…” You get the emotional labor without the commitment. You can change their entire life and still not get valued. That’s the music industry in 2026. That’s also every relationship where one person gives everything and gets nothing back. Softmax is saying it out loud while everyone else pretends it’s normal.
The closing lyric offers the only hope available. “If you keep it up / Your day will come / And baby, the rest is gravy.” Keep playing the game. Keep making the music. Keep doing the photoshoots and the promotional cycles and the impossible dance between authenticity and marketability. Eventually your day might come in the industry. Maybe you’ll break through. Maybe you’ll get paid what you’re worth. Maybe the system will finally reward you. Keep showing up in relationships even after you’ve been burned. Eventually you might find someone who actually values you instead of using you. Maybe you’ll get the partnership you deserve instead of the moving goalposts. And if either one happens? Everything after that moment is gravy. You’ve won the lottery. You’ve beaten the odds in a rigged game.
I sent my latest demo to three different A&Rs last week. One said it needed more hooks. One said it was too commercial. One didn’t respond at all. My ex texted me two days ago asking if I wanted to “catch up” (that’s guy-speak for ‘tap that ass.’) Same guy who said I was too focused on music, now suddenly interested again because he heard this track. See what I mean? Softmax made a catchy alternative pop track about the impossible standards in the music industry and in relationships where you’re never the right version of yourself. She played both games while calling them both out. I’m doing the same thing. Every musician who’s ever been in a shitty relationship is doing the same thing. The machine demands participation whether it’s a label or a partner. We participate while naming what we’re participating in. That’s the only move available. Softmax turned it into a damn good song.
