Nessa Barrett has got parts of Pretty Poison leaking into her latest single “BANG BANG!” To be honest, Barrett has never been tame, or even remotely pretended to be, so fans are used to her vengeful lines by now. I mean, she did sing “I hope you’re miserable until you die.“ So yeah, the girl holds grudges, or at least her songs do.
“BANG BANG!’s” sound is reminiscent of Olivia Rodrigo’s song “Brutal,” but it has way more grunge than Rodrigo has managed so far, as Barrett sings: “I know that it sounds absurd / But sometimes I just get the urge / That if there really was a purge / You’re the one that I’d kill first” – and that’s just the first verse.
Moving on to the chorus, she tells us that she has “intrusive thoughts”, and having been baited by an annoying ex who thinks she’d “never do it”, she’s now plotting to send him “to hell”, along with his “new bitch”. Sometimes the lyrics blur from something that’s still an urge to something she’s acted on – “you said I’d never do it, I did.”
In real life, Barrett confesses that she does have “intrusive thoughts” as a result of her struggle with a borderline personality disorder. “There’s times where I just get so mad that I think about the craziest things I want to do in that moment, I feel like everyone deep down has intrusive thoughts even though they don’t want to admit it,” she says of the track’s relatability.
Her mental struggle is a topic that Barrett has talked about extensively, perhaps as a way to fill the space she said wasn’t available to her when she was starting out as an artist. “If I saw an artist that was successful and they still dealt with mental health, then I would have known it was okay for me as well,” she told Seventeen in a previous interview. At another time, Barrett candidly said that she doesn’t want to feel shame about her diagnosis, but rather, she wants to use her platform to help others not to feel shame about it as well.
“BANG BANG!” is accompanied by a video that’s completely shot in black and white, as we see an obviously angry Barrett sing about her frustrations. Sandwiched in between scenes of a burning car and Barrett with a crowbar are ones where she’s having her mugshot taken with her inmate number in front of her.
The single is Barrett’s first song of the year, and follows her 2022 debut album Young Forever, which spurned singles such as “Die First,” “Madhouse,” and “Dear God.”