Best Friend

Rex Orange County has a gift for sincerity that could tip into saccharine but rarely does, and this song is one of his clearest expressions of it. Warm piano chords, soft-focus production, drums that feel organic and unhurried — everything about the sound is gentle without being precious. The song is about the person you love most also being your closest friend, and it treats that overlap as a genuine discovery rather than a cliché. His vocal delivery is unstudied, slightly imprecise in the way that feels real rather than careless — there's a teenage earnestness that he commits to without embarrassment. It belongs to the bedroom pop lineage of artists who record like they're thinking out loud. This is early morning music, weekend music, the kind of thing you'd have playing softly while doing nothing in particular with someone you're very comfortable with.