Party Nails – Trigger Warning

Gentle, dark, honest – Trigger Warning hits me where it hurts

Trigger Warning sounds like a silent cry – softly pro­duced, but razor-sharp in con­tent. For me, the track is not only the son­ic out­sider on Pillow Talk, but also the most inter­est­ing. While the rest of the album is clearly rooted in indie and alt-pop, this song delves deep into elec­tro and dark pop – with under­wa­ter tex­tures, subtle synth pads and vocals that whis­per rather than sing. I'm not at all sur­prised that this song is being pro­moted spe­cific­ally. For me, it shows how well Party Nails under­stands where this song can have the greatest impact – that's stra­tegic­ally strong and any­thing but a giv­en in the com­pet­it­ive music business.

Lyrically, Trigger Warning also strikes a nerve: "Never thought I'd need some kind of trig­ger warn­ing / For the ways you tore me apart" – that line hit me hard. The vul­ner­ab­il­ity in the lyr­ics is palp­able, but without drift­ing into kitsch. It's not about drama, but about real emo­tion­al dam­age. And about the quiet, ten­a­cious struggle to carry on afterwards.

What hurts me almost more than the lyr­ics is the fact that the accom­pa­ny­ing music video can only be viewed in 480p on YouTube. It's visu­ally really strong – which is not a giv­en in times of arti­fi­cially gen­er­ated AI image floods – and notice­ably hand­made. It's videos like this that are becom­ing valu­able to me again. The fact that the res­ol­u­tion qual­ity of the music video doesn't keep up is almost tra­gic and in no way artist­ic­ally valu­able. A song like this deserves more visu­ally than a nos­tal­gic pixelated mess.

Listen to "Party Nails – Trigger Warning" on Spotify

Listen to "Party Nails – Trigger Warning" on Bandcamp

Lyrics of "Party Nails – Trigger Warning"

Never thought I’d need some kind of trig­ger warning
For the ways you tore me apart
Never thought I’d go so far as to just give up
Never thought I’d give up on my heart

So stop and say you don’t wanna go down this way
You’re gonna keep on rising with the morn­ing sun

When you come you go before you even love me
You make me feel ugly and blue
Some days I lay awake cause I can’t find sleeping
I wish I was dream­ing of you

So stop and say you don’t wanna go down this way
You’re gonna keep on rising with the morn­ing sun

When you come you go before you even love me
You make me feel ugly and blue
Some days I lay awake cause I can’t find sleeping
I wish I was dream­ing of you

So stop and say you don’t wanna go down this way
You’re gonna keep on rising with the morn­ing sun