Riese – I’d Rather Be Boring (2025)
Singer-songwriter Riese from New York City is back with her fourth single, ‘I’d Rather Be Boring’, from her debut EP. Her previous single, ‘9th Life’, explores the fear of not getting better, but ‘I’d Rather Be Boring’ is a pleasantly defiant number in which she refuses to identify with an illness that has dominated three years of her life.
As a survivor of a Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis at 22 years old, Riese has taken the turmoil of her battle with cancer and crafted songs that give listeners a POV on what that battle feels like. From contemplating the loss of personhood to the loss of a friend, Riese balances a smooth, cleanly crafted, and generally upbeat pop aesthetic with material that could easily (and understandably) drown in its own sorrow.
‘I’d Rather Be Boring’ is about wanting to move on from a disease that often tries to claim its survivors through the trauma of having survived it. The song starts with an electric guitar pattern over the chord progression, and Riese sings, with a scuff of reverb before some of the lines, “I wanna be known for the thoughts in my head/ Not the nights that I spent in a hospital bed/ Don’t want my only claim to fame/ To be that I’m here another day/ There’s more to the plot line/ But I feel so misread.” Nice turn of phrase.
As the song gains urgency and colour with a strummed acoustic guitar and background vocals that whisper in and out of the mix, Riese manages the drama well. Yes, the song has a climactic chorus, but at 2 minutes and forty seconds in length, there isn’t a lot of time to dwell on any one part. I think that’s called metaphor.
For her fourth single, Riese continues to reveal her emotional journey with a work-like precision that makes it another sparkling piece of pop music. One does wonder about her penchant for abrupt endings (maybe a fade out sometime?), but I guess that’s what the kids are into these days.
Find out more about Riese on her Instagram, TikTok and Spotify.
Listen to more pop music on The Other Side Reviews Pop playlist:
