X V I & Jake Warren’s ‘Bad Things’ grabs you the second it hits—club lights flashing, drink kicking in, body already moving before you’ve even made up your mind. It opens with that soft, whispery confession—I’ve been doing bad bad bad bad things—and I’m instantly leaning in like someone just slid a hand up my thigh under the table and pinched until it bruised. It’s dark, pulsing, hyperpop with an alt edge, the kind of beat that makes you want to do something reckless and tell nobody about it.
They’ve both been in the game long enough to have receipts—music in trailers for Maleficent 2, PlayStation, Lexus, Versace, and American Horror Stories. X V I and Jake Warren don’t make safe tracks. Their last collab ‘HAUNT U’ pulled a Golden Trailer Nomination for Best Music in a TV/Streaming Trailer, and here they’re flexing again, making something that feels cinematic but filthy. “Every time we work together, the goal is to make something different and try something new,” X V I said, and you can hear it—they’re pushing the edges without losing that raw club energy. There’s a cold precision in how they build it, too—no wasted sounds, no safe moves. The track just finds you. One second you’re outside, the next you’re in a fucked-up escape room, strobes flashing, and you’re not sure if the screams you hear are pleasure, pain, or both.
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The verses aren’t playing coy. Hiding in the closet / Something like a monster / Creeping through your window / Comin out to haunt ya—it’s giving full predator energy, and I’m not talking horror-movie fake scares. I’m talking the kind of night you willingly walk into knowing you’re not leaving the same. The industrial synths slam in and stay there. Bass pressure builds until it’s pushing through your ribs. Then X V I’s voice rips upward, all whisper gone, and the fantasy’s in your face.
There’s no sugarcoating the violence in this track. Tie you up / Hear you scream / Just so I can / Feel something is pure control, lust, and danger wrapped together. It’s the glamour of sadism—polished edges on brutal fantasies, turning something rough into something you can’t stop wanting. Hyperpop often plays with extremes, but here it’s less glitchy escapism and more straight-up heat. It’s the sound of bad decisions with a body count—yeah, both meanings. You can dance to it, but you can also picture it soundtracking the kind of hookup you don’t tell your friends about until three drinks in.
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The hook is pure obsession fuel. I’ve been doing I’ve been doing bad things loops until it’s less a lyric and more an admission. You’re singing along, and every line drags up a memory—those nights you’ve let someone talk you into shit you knew was gonna end messy. Or when you were the one pulling them in, breadcrumbing them just to watch them squirm.
And then it gets savage. Blood on the walls / Reach for the door / Sound of your body hitting the floor—those lines don’t flinch, and neither does the production. There’s a rush in how far they go, how deep they take the fantasy, and the fact that it still bangs. That’s the rizz here—they make you want it even when it’s dangerous.
By the time it circles back to Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad, it dares you to follow through. You’re already sweaty, heart pounding, maybe grinding on someone you barely know, maybe texting the one person you swore you were done with. Either way, you’re in it. No cap, this track is lit and lethal. Play it loud, and see where it takes you.
