There is a specific, teeth-grinding exhaustion that comes from nodding politely while someone tries to rearrange your personality, and Shannon Darcy taps directly into that electrical current with “Control Freak”. This isn’t music for a quiet Sunday morning; it’s the soundtrack for the moment you decide you’ve run out of patience.
The track hits you immediately with its texture. It relies on a driving, fuzzy low-end pulse that feels delightfully thick, like a heavy heartbeat when the adrenaline spikes. It stomps. It really does. The rhythm propels you forward with an insistence that refuses to apologize, layered with scratchy percussive elements that feel like they are literally scraping away the varnish of a fake social interaction.
Darcy plays a clever game with her vocal delivery here. The verses are delivered in a talk-sung, conversational style—almost as if she’s leaning across a table in a noisy room, listing the grievances and outlining the absurdity of the antagonist’s inflated ego. It feels intimate and conspiratorial. Then, the chorus breaks the ceiling. The melody soars, transforming that conversational frustration into a melodic hook that acts as a release valve.
It creates a fascinating friction. You have the clash between the narrator’s desire for authentic, messy self-expression and the slick, controlling artificiality of the subject. The song captures the specific grit of Essex alternative rock but dresses it in a pop-hook sensibility that makes the anger catchy. It’s sassy, sure, but underneath the sarcasm, there is a very real, very raw reclamation of autonomy.
Does the song fix the narcissist trying to run your life? Probably not. But does it make ignoring them feel like a victory lap? Absolutely.
