Beetlejuice

There's something darkly playful in Mariah The Scientist naming a track "Beetlejuice" — invoking the chaotic, boundary-violating spirit of the Tim Burton character as a metaphor for a love that refuses to stay buried regardless of how many times you try to lay it to rest. The production has a slightly more charged energy than her most stripped-back work: an undercurrent of tension in the low end, something restless in the percussion, as though the beat itself is pacing a room. Her voice tilts toward urgency here — still controlled, still precise, but with a current of exasperation running underneath the melody, the sound of someone who knows better and is doing it anyway. Lyrically, the song maps the experience of someone who keeps being summoned despite every effort at closure — the three-times-named thing that won't stay gone, the relationship that should have ended and instead became a habit. It's clever without being cutesy, the pop culture reference grounding what could be abstract emotional territory in something tactile and immediately recognizable. The listener finds themselves implicated: you know you shouldn't keep saying the name, but here you are. This is music for the specific exhaustion of a situation that won't resolve, when you finally notice you've been the one doing the summoning.