As has been proven through her recent singles, Aimee Vant has an all-too-effective way of writing about melancholy. Whether it be the narration of an existential crisis on “Safeword” or the self-depreciating “Trash,” listeners couldn’t help but feel empathetic towards the vulnerability shown in Vant’s songwriting. On her newest release, “Tylenol,” she’s raising the stakes, pairing lyrics of a bluer hue with context to produce her most devastating record to date.

As she explained on her TikTok, the song was written in the aftermath of a dramatic break-up, one that placed Vant in a country halfway across the world in pursuit of a partner who never showed up. She began suffering from physical conditions that were entirely grief-induced, a pain that isn’t quite tangible but surely imaginable from the writing born out of this experience. The song’s production mirrors that of a beating heart, fraught with weird and abnormal sonic compulsions, surely intended to mimic the irregular patterns Vant’s own heart and health adopted in the wake of losing her partner. “I’ve tried to erase you ‘cause I can’t explain you,” she despairs, “Tylenol can’t fix me anymore.”

As effective as she is in building drama into her tracks, there is little hyperbole when it comes to the reality of “Tylenol.” “The stress and grief seemed to tear my body up from the inside,” Vant says of the experience. “In trying to treat it piece by piece, it sometimes felt as though the medicine didn’t work and could never fix the bigger problem.” After writing the song with collaborators James October, Alex Venegas and Jake Bennett, the healing process began to take shape. Though the scars remain, they begin to fade with time, and Vant’s growth as an artist is on display with each release. “Tylenol” serves as the second single for Vant’s upcoming 6-track project, due soon, but not soon enough.

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