Today’s Song of the Day goes out to all of you getting over a painful breakup–ideally it happened three to four months ago so it isn’t still fresh when you’re listening. If that doesn’t concern you, no worries. It’s not a mandatory thing.

Onto the song:

“Best Friend” by Rex Orange County isn’t an obvious breakup song, but I’m choosing to call it that because that’s how it feels. It chronicles the ultimately doomed relationship between Rex and a girl he still calls “baby,” even though they dated for a solid minute and have now broken up. He’s still a bit hung up on her– she’s his “favorite girl”–and he’s pretty sure that he “just might be the one” for her. This isn’t some failed romance formed in the frenzy of cuffing season; it’s love.

“I can’t wait to be your number one/I’ll be your biggest fan and you’ll be mine/But I still wanna break your heart and make you cry,” sings Alex O’Connor, a teen from a suburb of Surrey, England better known as Rex Orange County. With these lines, he captures the mix of unrealistic hopefulness that you’ll get back together and the persistent frustration that you can’t hurt them the way they’ve hurt you.

He does this in a simple, incredibly effective way where you cannot doubt he has felt the same as you. Being 19, it is probable— one could even say pretty likely —that he has smoked some strain of the classic teenage heartbreak, and it was recent enough for him to write about it. I’m a little bit glad this one happened because it made such a pretty song.

Like what you hear? Rex has released a few more singles since “Best Friend” came out in early 2017. His second album Apricot Princess (a nickname for his girlfriend) was released not long before that, and you can also hear him flitting around on some tracks on Tyler, The Creator’s album Flower Boy which came out this summer.

<3 <3 <3

Zoe