Best Ex announces sophomore album GOOD GIRL
The album features singles 'Is This It?', 'Sick Of Myself', 'Good Girl', and 'Losing Streak'.
Best Ex will release its sophomore album GOOD GIRL on November 6 via Iodine Recordings.
The project is the follow-up to Best Ex's 2023 debut, With a Smile, work that the artist's team says earned New Jersey-based songwriter Mariel Loveland positive headlines in Billboard, Kerrang, and Alternative Press, plus airplay on BBC Radio 1 and Idobi Radio. Loveland previously toured in the Warped Tour-era punk band Candy Hearts, sharing stages with New Found Glory, Weezer, and Man Overboard, before launching her solo project Best Ex.
GOOD GIRL is an eleven-track album Loveland wrote in Brooklyn and Hoboken with longtime collaborator and producer Andy Tongren. Steeped in the melodic hooks and glossy production of '90s alt-pop and college radio, the album surveys the road from girlhood to now. It is described as being about the particular experience of being a 30-something woman settling down, watching friends become mothers and old flames move on, while navigating the expectations placed on her by the world around her.
Across the record, Loveland examines the mythology of the 'good girl' archetype: the one who smiles through it, never asks for too much, and holds onto an eternal youth that turns out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
'When I wrote this album, I thought about being a kid in the backseat of my parent's minivan, listening to all these strong women on '90s rock radio. I heard the words, but I didn't really understand them. Now, I know it was like having a crystal ball into the future,' says Loveland. 'I wanted to write a record that could be that for someone else. I wanted to let some little girl in the middle of nowhere—or someone who was once that little girl—know that it's ok. Yes, it's hard. Yes, the world can be really unnecessarily cruel. But you can build a beautiful life on your own terms.'
The album has been previewed by four singles: 'Is This It?,' 'Sick Of Myself,' 'Good Girl,' and 'Losing Streak.' According to the album's promotional materials, 'Good Girl' serves as the album's big-picture statement, pushing back against the idea that women are defined by who they belong to rather than who they are. 'Is This It?' looks outward at the exhaustion of trying to live a normal life amid a constant stream of misinformation, political division, and news headlines. 'Sick Of Myself' turns inward, addressing anxiety, insecurity, and self-doubt.
The newest single, 'Losing Streak,' reflects Loveland's choice to stop trying to control everything and instead, in the words of the release, 'sift for gold' in the mess. Its DIY video was filmed around Hoboken with her twin sister while Loveland was on maternity leave, and features dancing, a high school field, summer heat, and unconventional filming equipment.
GOOD GIRL is available for preorder via Iodine Recordings.
Singles/Videos (out now)
'Good Girl'
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...
.jpg?format=auto&width=300)
