Mercury in Retrograde

From Sound & Fury, this is pure glam-rock satire delivered with synthesizers and snarling electric guitar — the furthest Simpson had traveled from his honky-tonk roots in terms of production while remaining entirely himself in terms of attitude. Mercury in retrograde functions as metaphor for the contemporary media environment: chaotic, full of misinformation, rewarding spectacle over substance. Simpson was in the middle of a period of significant commercial success and apparent dissatisfaction with its terms, and this song reads as a dispatch from inside celebrity culture delivered by someone who finds it ridiculous. His voice is treated and processed to match the maximalist production, less warm baritone than deliberately stylized persona. Lyrically it name-checks astrology, social media anxiety, and the performance of identity in a way that's both funny and caustic. The production — developed with bandleader Laur Joamets — draws from T. Rex and early David Bowie as much as anything in country music. Culturally it marks the moment when the outlaw country revival Simpson had helped lead gave way to something weirder and less classifiable. The companion anime film made the music feel even more deliberately international in its references. Play this in a car at night on a highway with the volume high, when everything feels slightly unreal and you'd rather lean into it than resist.