Nice Girls Finish First On WOLF’s Latest Single “Villain”
Words by Gabrielle Bohrman
Though she admits being too shy to ask for the waiter for more ketchup, Julia Wolf’s music reveals a commanding and feisty alter-ego, accompanied by her trademark 808 drum loops and silky-smooth vocals. The Queens-born songstress left 2020 on a high note with over 5 million streams and placement on Spotify’s handpicked RADAR US: Artists to Watch in 2021 playlist. This year she’s back with a vengeance, dropping a new single that takes aim at industry colleagues who’ve tried capitalizing on her success.
WOLF’s 12-song collection gives voice to the soft-spoken and rewrites the common narrative that shy kids are pushovers. Past tracks like “High Waist Jeans” and “Magsafe” call out ex-lovers who thought they could walk in and out of her life as they pleased. Continuing this thread of empowering anthems, she reads her musical counterfeits to filth in “Villain”, flexing her lyrical prowess with witty bars like “You don’t need canal street/Rip me like a knock off.”
When asked about “Villain’s” missives, WOLF recalls that when her music started gaining traction, producers suddenly came out of the woodworks looking to collaborate again.
“These were people I was specifically always trying to get in the booth with who kept putting me on the back burner,” she explains in a press release. “It’s a sum of moments I have seeing these guys start to use my style, in both my music and artwork, in their own work and the frustration that comes with that.”
This is understandable given WOLF’s meticulously carved out space within the indie soundscape. Producer Jackson Foote, of the electropop duo Loote, provided “Villain’s” hip-hop-influenced foundation with trap drums and moody guitar riffs. WOLF’s breathy vocals invoke a genre-bending contrast when layered on top. With an expansive range, she can effortlessly jump octaves between words. Combined with gothic visuals, the resulting work feels like a Post Malone meets Billie Eilish collab.
A graphic design-savant, WOLF created her own noirish world through album artwork adorned with skeletons and tombstones and her underworld-inspired clothing brand Girls in Purgatory. Macabre-alluding tracks like “Ghost” and “Play Dead” solidify her aesthetic and form a foil to her sweet and unassuming demeanor. Though containing dark themes, WOLF’s music reflects her journey to finding confidence and claiming her wins regardless of how others perceive her.
In “Villain,” she contemplates her own maleficent capabilities in lines like “Pyrokinesis my mind only fire/You been all bark you can’t pull these all-nighters.” She resorts to inflicting psychic powers on her enemies from afar while she continues to grind away at her vision in solitude. Though fans are eager for her first full album release, WOLF works diligently, wielding her artistic precision like a weapon.
“I don’t like being involved in drama seeing as I usually just keep to myself, so my version of retaliation is coming back bigger and fresher,” she says in a press release. “If seeing me do well makes me a villain in their eyes then so be it, I don’t mind proving everyone wrong.”
You can stream “Villain” on your platform of choice. Keep up with WOLF by following her on Instagram and Twitter. Stay tuned, as WOLF has plans to release an EP later this year.
