The year was 2010. Drake released the Kanye co-write "Find Your Love" — a very obvious leftover from the cutting room floor of 808s and Heartbreak in retrospect, though I didn't know that at the time. I was 15 that summer, and that song was on repeat on my iPod nano, the video in heavy rotation on MuchMusic. Though "Find Your Love" doesn't sound all that special today, it disrupted the agreed-upon formula — it used to be that a singer was brought on for the hook of a rap song, or a rapper for a verse on a pop song. The idea of a rapper who could also sing radio-ready pop music was somewhat novel, but soon exploded everywhere; Ed Sheeran popped up the following year as a singer who could rap, and his unstoppable journey to chart domination was set.
The rapper/pop singer divide has all but disappeared in the past decade, becoming increasingly commonplace as hip-hop has completely saturated the world of mainstream pop (see: Billie Eilish, Post Malone and numerous others) — but "Find Your Love" felt like a crucial point of entry for a certain kind of pop fan, especially those who'd previously felt unable to really find a place for themselves as a hip-hop listener.
This is the tradition that shaped Julia Wolf. After training in classical piano throughout her youth and eventually attending the songwriting program at SUNY Purchase, she began posting freestyle videos and song snippets from her bedroom in Queens in 2019. She self-released her first single, a liquid gold one-minute earworm called "Captions," that October. Since then, Wolf has continued sharing clips on social media, as well as a couple dozen tracks on streaming services — uploaded with surrealist artwork she designed after teaching herself Photoshop — that have racked up a total of over 50 million streams, all before the release of her debut album.
But Good Thing We Stayed almost didn't happen. Disillusioned by no-show meetings, failed collaborations and being called "nitpicky" by people in the industry who didn't understand her vision, Wolf was ready to give up on music and move to Italy to start a business with her dad. They sold the house and they were ready to leave New York before he suddenly sat his daughter down and said that they couldn't leave. He believed that she and her music were destined for something greater. Two months after being forced to remain in the city, Wolf met producer Jackson Foote, in whom she would finally find a synergistic collaborator.
This origin story binds the album together. Opener "Now" emphasizes Wolf's working class background, writing lyrics on the subway between shifts, while penultimate track "Rookie of the Year" sees her gratefully reflect on her dad's intervention: "I guess sometimes we all get lucky / Way too close to leaving the country / Almost said goodbye to my sister / Made a split decision at dinner." Keeping this collection to a tight 10 tracks must have been difficult for a writer as prolific as Wolf, but those painstaking decisions mean it's all "Hot Killer," no filler, retaining the elasticity of its lead single's synth pads and subwoofer-shaking beats. She hides her poison in a tonic of red rum and its bassy warble, quietly plotting her revenge against those who underestimated her bite.
It's one of several tracks across the album where Wolf's younger sister, Cami, is referenced, underscoring its deep debt to sisterhood. Wolf's raison d'être is "making music for girls that are too afraid to speak their minds," and she makes this mission statement evident across her catalogue. From a big Italian family, she felt out of place as a kid, writing out her musical dreams in invisible ink on the walls of her bedroom. Now she knows she's not alone in it — "A lot of girls like me on Long Island / Loudmouth, but I grew up quiet," she sings on "Get Off My" — and uses her voice to affirm the next generation in a way she never was. That kinship goes even further in "Sorority Girls," where she nods knowingly, "Our pussy is power / They know how it works," about people who ignored her in high school only to rock her merch and play her music at their pregames. "Your girlfriend knowing all my songs / I can keep her up all night long," she raps in the bridge, eviscerating the actual patriarchal nemesis that made her feel pitted against these women.
On the softly thrumming "Virginity," she recounts her first time and deconstructs all the weighty myths around the social construct of a woman's sexual debut. Like many, Wolf wanted her first time having sex to be deeply meaningful and promised she'd wait for "the one" — but oops, life happened. The act wasn't as earth-shattering as it was made out to be, and she definitely didn't feel like she was forever going to be attached to this person. "Then I hear my favourite song / I feel everything at once," Wolf reminds herself as the keys and drum machines begin to crescendo. "It's so good, I forget that I'm driving / I don't know what I'm capable of," realizing in the honeyed refrain, "I just don't want you."
There's an undeniable sense of modern pop grandeur to the simplicity of these compositions, giving off the impression of spacious high ceilings and French windows. The good bones of the architecture enable minimalist decor to feel spellbinding, with Wolf's distinctive tone and deceptively smooth barbs filling its frames with vivid colour. All of this open air doesn't fall stale — the sonic landscape is breezy even when the lyrical content isn't. Even pseudo-ballads "Gothic Babe Tendencies" and "Sad Too Young" find their moments to tastefully explode in catharsis, by way of the former's driving drum pattern kicking in after the first chorus and the latter's evolution into a stadium-sized soft-rocker. "Gothic Babe Tendencies" really could have soared even more without being dragged down by a grating verse from blackbear, but here's hoping his feature will get Wolf some well-deserved exposure. "I always choose the dark," she admits on the hook, before questioning, "What if I surrender to the sun?" and recalling fellow gothic babe Phoebe Bridgers' rallying cry from "Motion Sickness."
Wolf is a complex character, acknowledging that despite her best attempts to stay in her lane, she can still be the villain in other people's stories — and in her own, especially when the walls she built for protection hinder her from connecting deeply. The difference between her as a "Hot Killer" and an antagonist on "Dracula" is that she can look in the mirror without shattering it. In turn, she affirms those of us who grew up with our hearts shallowly planted, feeling fit to burst at any moment and isolated in that emotional volatility. It may have kept her quiet in the past, but Wolf has found her voice: "No option, I made it happen / No choice, I was made to have it," she flows on "Now." By dialling into her sensitivity and discovering a refusal to compromise her vision, she's fully betting on her own premonition.
A lot of hip-hop channels the opposing impulses of braggadocio and getting real about self-doubt, but this duality is rarely balanced in credibility. When she sings, "I'm that bitch that I wanna be," on "Get Off My," it feels more gratifying than empty triplet-flow flexing. It's from the authenticity of Wolf's articulation of mental health struggles, feeling like a social pariah and fighting for her dreams that her hard-won confidence gets its undeniable shine. It makes the element of playfulness stand out all the more when she lets loose on "Hinge Boy," which is probably more fun than you could ever have messing around with a nose ring-bedecked right-swipe. (And you'd never hope for a hookup to be this infectious.)
Good Thing We Stayed is a glistening bildungsroman drenched in breathy stacks of harmony and booming trap 808s, with Wolf's catchy turns of phrase at centre stage — whether she's flowing spitfire bravado about how tall she is in her Filas or singing about the reverberations of childhood trauma in her wispy lilt. It balances nuanced, evocative storytelling and sheer fun, blending fantastical, macabre imagery paying homage to a love of horror movies and the seriously scary trappings of being a young woman trying to find your place in this world.
From wallflower to lighthouse, it's in this interplay of darkness and levity that Julia Wolf becomes the sage in the bar bathroom you drunkenly ask for advice. Her words and the hooky top-line cadence of their delivery stick with you like some past-life revelry, even as the rest of the night slips through memory's cracks. You'll be equally glad she stayed.
(BMG)The rapper/pop singer divide has all but disappeared in the past decade, becoming increasingly commonplace as hip-hop has completely saturated the world of mainstream pop (see: Billie Eilish, Post Malone and numerous others) — but "Find Your Love" felt like a crucial point of entry for a certain kind of pop fan, especially those who'd previously felt unable to really find a place for themselves as a hip-hop listener.
This is the tradition that shaped Julia Wolf. After training in classical piano throughout her youth and eventually attending the songwriting program at SUNY Purchase, she began posting freestyle videos and song snippets from her bedroom in Queens in 2019. She self-released her first single, a liquid gold one-minute earworm called "Captions," that October. Since then, Wolf has continued sharing clips on social media, as well as a couple dozen tracks on streaming services — uploaded with surrealist artwork she designed after teaching herself Photoshop — that have racked up a total of over 50 million streams, all before the release of her debut album.
But Good Thing We Stayed almost didn't happen. Disillusioned by no-show meetings, failed collaborations and being called "nitpicky" by people in the industry who didn't understand her vision, Wolf was ready to give up on music and move to Italy to start a business with her dad. They sold the house and they were ready to leave New York before he suddenly sat his daughter down and said that they couldn't leave. He believed that she and her music were destined for something greater. Two months after being forced to remain in the city, Wolf met producer Jackson Foote, in whom she would finally find a synergistic collaborator.
This origin story binds the album together. Opener "Now" emphasizes Wolf's working class background, writing lyrics on the subway between shifts, while penultimate track "Rookie of the Year" sees her gratefully reflect on her dad's intervention: "I guess sometimes we all get lucky / Way too close to leaving the country / Almost said goodbye to my sister / Made a split decision at dinner." Keeping this collection to a tight 10 tracks must have been difficult for a writer as prolific as Wolf, but those painstaking decisions mean it's all "Hot Killer," no filler, retaining the elasticity of its lead single's synth pads and subwoofer-shaking beats. She hides her poison in a tonic of red rum and its bassy warble, quietly plotting her revenge against those who underestimated her bite.
It's one of several tracks across the album where Wolf's younger sister, Cami, is referenced, underscoring its deep debt to sisterhood. Wolf's raison d'être is "making music for girls that are too afraid to speak their minds," and she makes this mission statement evident across her catalogue. From a big Italian family, she felt out of place as a kid, writing out her musical dreams in invisible ink on the walls of her bedroom. Now she knows she's not alone in it — "A lot of girls like me on Long Island / Loudmouth, but I grew up quiet," she sings on "Get Off My" — and uses her voice to affirm the next generation in a way she never was. That kinship goes even further in "Sorority Girls," where she nods knowingly, "Our pussy is power / They know how it works," about people who ignored her in high school only to rock her merch and play her music at their pregames. "Your girlfriend knowing all my songs / I can keep her up all night long," she raps in the bridge, eviscerating the actual patriarchal nemesis that made her feel pitted against these women.
On the softly thrumming "Virginity," she recounts her first time and deconstructs all the weighty myths around the social construct of a woman's sexual debut. Like many, Wolf wanted her first time having sex to be deeply meaningful and promised she'd wait for "the one" — but oops, life happened. The act wasn't as earth-shattering as it was made out to be, and she definitely didn't feel like she was forever going to be attached to this person. "Then I hear my favourite song / I feel everything at once," Wolf reminds herself as the keys and drum machines begin to crescendo. "It's so good, I forget that I'm driving / I don't know what I'm capable of," realizing in the honeyed refrain, "I just don't want you."
There's an undeniable sense of modern pop grandeur to the simplicity of these compositions, giving off the impression of spacious high ceilings and French windows. The good bones of the architecture enable minimalist decor to feel spellbinding, with Wolf's distinctive tone and deceptively smooth barbs filling its frames with vivid colour. All of this open air doesn't fall stale — the sonic landscape is breezy even when the lyrical content isn't. Even pseudo-ballads "Gothic Babe Tendencies" and "Sad Too Young" find their moments to tastefully explode in catharsis, by way of the former's driving drum pattern kicking in after the first chorus and the latter's evolution into a stadium-sized soft-rocker. "Gothic Babe Tendencies" really could have soared even more without being dragged down by a grating verse from blackbear, but here's hoping his feature will get Wolf some well-deserved exposure. "I always choose the dark," she admits on the hook, before questioning, "What if I surrender to the sun?" and recalling fellow gothic babe Phoebe Bridgers' rallying cry from "Motion Sickness."
Wolf is a complex character, acknowledging that despite her best attempts to stay in her lane, she can still be the villain in other people's stories — and in her own, especially when the walls she built for protection hinder her from connecting deeply. The difference between her as a "Hot Killer" and an antagonist on "Dracula" is that she can look in the mirror without shattering it. In turn, she affirms those of us who grew up with our hearts shallowly planted, feeling fit to burst at any moment and isolated in that emotional volatility. It may have kept her quiet in the past, but Wolf has found her voice: "No option, I made it happen / No choice, I was made to have it," she flows on "Now." By dialling into her sensitivity and discovering a refusal to compromise her vision, she's fully betting on her own premonition.
A lot of hip-hop channels the opposing impulses of braggadocio and getting real about self-doubt, but this duality is rarely balanced in credibility. When she sings, "I'm that bitch that I wanna be," on "Get Off My," it feels more gratifying than empty triplet-flow flexing. It's from the authenticity of Wolf's articulation of mental health struggles, feeling like a social pariah and fighting for her dreams that her hard-won confidence gets its undeniable shine. It makes the element of playfulness stand out all the more when she lets loose on "Hinge Boy," which is probably more fun than you could ever have messing around with a nose ring-bedecked right-swipe. (And you'd never hope for a hookup to be this infectious.)
Good Thing We Stayed is a glistening bildungsroman drenched in breathy stacks of harmony and booming trap 808s, with Wolf's catchy turns of phrase at centre stage — whether she's flowing spitfire bravado about how tall she is in her Filas or singing about the reverberations of childhood trauma in her wispy lilt. It balances nuanced, evocative storytelling and sheer fun, blending fantastical, macabre imagery paying homage to a love of horror movies and the seriously scary trappings of being a young woman trying to find your place in this world.
From wallflower to lighthouse, it's in this interplay of darkness and levity that Julia Wolf becomes the sage in the bar bathroom you drunkenly ask for advice. Her words and the hooky top-line cadence of their delivery stick with you like some past-life revelry, even as the rest of the night slips through memory's cracks. You'll be equally glad she stayed.
