Courtney Barnett Returns With Ferocious New Single “Stay in Your Lane”

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It is a great day for anyone who, like me, spent their formative years furiously scribbling “Pedestrian at Best” lyrics in the margins of composition notebooks—because after four long years, Courtney Barnett is back, voice and all. Her new single, “Stay in Your Lane,” is her first vocal release since 2021’s Things Take Time, Take Time, considering her most recent project was the instrumental record End of the Day (2023). Where those projects leaned inward, “Stay in Your Lane” kicks the door down with the same bite and swagger that first made her a generational voice in rock music more than a decade ago.

The track opens on a wiry riff and a rhythm section that sounds ready to combust. “Gotta get this off my chest,” Barnett drawls before landing on the song’s title phrase, part confession and part reprimand. “This never would’ve happened if I stayed in my lane, stayed the same way.” The result is a tightly wound reminder of her knack for turning unease into propulsion, and introspection into something loud enough to shake loose. And the accompanying music video, directed by filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (Pavements), brings that tension to life through surreal body horror: blood, bandages, and a kind of surgical absurdity that’s hard to watch but harder to look away from. Fitting, perhaps, given that Perry also just directed a segment in Shudder’s long-running series of V/H/S horror anthologies.

Courtney Barnett Returns With Ferocious New Single “Stay in Your Lane”

The Australian songwriter breaks four years of near-silence with a snarling track and a delightfully grotesque Alex Ross Perry-directed video.