Teddy Swims’s latest single, “Lose Control”, feels like dunking a croissant into black coffee at midnight while scrolling through old messages and knowing you shouldn’t. You’re aware the caffeine won’t help the sleep, just like this song won’t fix your broken memories—but here you are, wide awake in your feels.
Ammo and Julian Bunetta’s production provides a backdrop like velvet curtains being pulled too quickly, revealing a stage you’re not sure you want to be on. The beat pulses, not like a bass-heavy club banger, but like the thump of a heart that really should chill out. Teddy’s voice is raw, yet stupefyingly smooth—like he’s just rolled out of bed after dreaming of every love he’s ever lost. “Lose Control” slides through your psyche much in the way smoke curls out of a confused cigarette in an ashtray: beautifully but inevitably self-destructive.
The theme of love as addiction? Couldn’t be more relevant in today’s swipe-right-hookup-what-are-we world. Teddy doesn’t present love here as soft pop fluff—it’s a beast you wrestle with until you can’t breathe. He doesn’t even try to make it sound pretty. And that’s the thing: love isn’t pretty. It wrecks you, swallows you whole, like those old Greco-Roman myths where people were literally turned into trees or birds or whatever for the sake of obsession.
It’s introspective but doesn’t leave you introspective. It leaves you… breathless, slightly unravelled.
Maybe Teddy Swims is painting addiction with love’s colors, or maybe he’s planting love in the ruins of addiction. Either way, you end up somewhere you didn’t quite plan to go. Like a late-night diner. Sticky vinyl booth, love dripping like syrup from a spoon, and all you can think is: who’s paying the bill?
