I Don't Wanna Be an Asshole Anymore

The title announces itself like a confession made at the worst possible moment — embarrassed, self-aware, somehow still half-funny. What follows is the Menzingers at their most emotionally direct: a mid-tempo churn of guitars that never quite resolve into comfort, a vocal performance from Greg Barnett that lands somewhere between admission and plea. The song understands that the desire to be better is not the same as being better, and it holds that gap open without closing it neatly. There's a specific kind of late-twenties reckoning in the writing — the awareness that patterns you told yourself were temporary have started to look permanent, that charm has been covering for something for too long. Production matches the emotional register: not quite polished, not quite ragged, the guitars slightly warm and slightly distorted like something recorded by people who've played too many Tuesday night shows. The rhythm section plants itself and doesn't show off. Barnett's voice has always carried a confessional quality — less stage performance, more talking across a bar — and here that quality does exactly what it needs to: makes you believe he actually means it. From *After the Party*, the band's 2017 record that felt like a genuine artistic leap, this track is the most disarming moment, the one that lowers all defenses by just stating the problem plainly. Best heard alone, probably.