Wealth – Shame

This is what digital loneliness sounds like in synth pop

If a song can make you dance and throw you off bal­ance emo­tion­ally at the same time, then it's Shame by Wealth.

Shame grabbed me right from the first few bars – these synths and beats aren't just catchy, they march straight into my nervous sys­tem. What imme­di­ately struck me was the bass­line: driv­ing, almost demand­ing, without being intrus­ive. And then there are the cow­bells, which, togeth­er with the soft synth sounds, play out a nos­tal­gic film in my head. This isn't a retro-lov­ing knock-off, but rather sounds like a lov­ing homage to times gone by without com­ing across as old-fashioned.

The vocals really stand out for me: clear, dir­ect and full of warmth. Mark doesn't deliv­er a pol­ished vocal per­form­ance here, but some­thing that feels genu­ine. The lyr­ics are any­thing but access­ible: frag­ment­ary, sur­real, some­times almost cryptic. Lines like "Nostalgia for a cam girl you loved when you were sev­en­teen" or "It takes a lot to love me" stick with me. To me, it sounds like an attempt to make loneli­ness tan­gible in lines of code and chat histories.

What I par­tic­u­larly like is that the song doesn't both­er to explain itself. Shame is not a catchy pop track, but a com­plex piece of synth pop that oscil­lates between club and isol­a­tion. And even if not every line makes sense to me right away, the feel­ing behind it comes across.

Listen to "Wealth – Shame" on Spotify

Listen to "Wealth – Shame" on Bandcamp

Lyrics of "Wealth – Shame"

Beautiful moments cap­tured in time
Binary code, fail­ing hard drive
Bury a memory and fill what’s left
Proof a life was lived, an unex­amined ends
Leave the door half ajar
So I can stare at the past
Think about friendship
In a moment it’s there, anoth­er it’s dust
Nostalgia for a cam girl
You loved when you were seventeen
Now in the white glow, I let go
Of everything

An end­less stream of all you need
An 18 year old explains what’s miss­ing from your life
If you want to know, why I’m how I seem
Hit me up – Isaiah 53:3

Unwashed cups, vape smoke, heavy chest
Dirty desk, ima­gine the nest
Thinking of the missed calls I nev­er received
My replies, you should’ve seen me
I pirou­et­ted pur­pose­fully, a per­fect pwning
God damn, I’m fuck­ing lonely
There wasn’t a crack I couldn’t fall through
Voice memo of a memory
Doxxed by my baby
It takes a lot to love me

An end­less stream of all you need
An 18 year old explains what’s miss­ing from your life
If you want to know, why I’m how I seem
Hit me up – Isaiah 53:3

The sig­nal splut­ters, hacks up your voice
Cut the cord and leave me no choice
Are the win­dows open bey­ond the void?
He was sit­ting in the water watch­ing Youtube on his phone
They were dan­cing at the bus stop all alone
In the park with a drone
I feel as if time, has passed over me
Now I feel as if time, has passed over me