Shows Personal Confessions: My Favorite Songs from Blondshell’s Debut, Self-Titled Album
Words: Willow Stewart
December 8, 2023
Sabrina Teitelbaum, also known as Blondshell, released the band’s debut self-titled album earlier this year. The album features nine songs, each a deeply personal confession full of self-reflection, deprecation, and awareness. It’s an album I appreciate from this year particularly because of how Sabrina opens up to listeners through humor and radical honesty. Each song is a story from this period of her life where listeners can listen along knowing that things get better.
I want to talk about my favorite songs from the album, but I recommend that everyone listen to the album to take away their own listening experience and engage with the songs that I do not mention (“Veronica Mars”, “Olympus”, “Salad”, “Joiner”, and “Tarmac”).
Kiss City, the second song on Blondshell, is a personal confession of wanting love beyond physical intimacy. Anxious attachment and longing are central where Sabrina’s kink is when her partner tells her that they think she’s pretty. Sabrina reveals how she feels most in love when this person validates and assures her that they’re “not going away.” The song is deeply personal and feels almost as if it was only meant for her lover (and I love it).
The fifth song of the album “Sepsis” is my personal favorite. The song is one I find myself going back to particularly due to its lyricism. Sabrina begins the song by mentioning how she’s pissed to be “going back to him” —a new confession for listeners and her therapist alike. It’s almost as if this reveal to listeners slips from her mouth and carries her away through the rest of the song where she goes on to mention how “The sex is almost always bad, but [she’s] in love” and that “he’s going to start infecting [her] life, like sepsis.” Though, through these reveals, Sabrina remains elusive to the details of what transpired between “him” and her as well as the cyclical nature of their relationship.
“Sober Together” directly follows “Sepsis”; sonically, the sound slows down the pace of the album making this a song that sounds different from the rest of the album. Listening, the sound is intoxicating. It’s a song that is complex and heavy in its material regarding Sabrina’s history with addiction. Through hints, she reveals the fragile nature of holding on to those she deeply cares about, loves, and wishes to support, while harboring a fear of being “[taken] down too.” The song is a piece where Sabrina is reckoning with the intricate boundaries and the complexities of her relationships, specifically the intricacies of maintaining sobriety and friendships.
The final and longest song (4:38) of the album “Dangerous” is the last one I want to talk about. As a downtempo confessional, Sabrina alludes to everything going on at this point in her life. She leaves nothing left unsaid, touching upon fear, anxiety, shame, and exploration before ending the album with a 25-second emotional release. This song is a perfect conclusion to the album, continuing the musical sounds of the album, but not ending with an explicitly happy ending. Instead, “Dangerous” acts as a reminder that not everything in life concludes with a tidy resolution, and listeners are encouraged to appreciate life experiences for their raw authenticity.