Wednesday, 'Chosen to Deserve'

WNYC | Jan 18, 2023

How long into a relationship before you start telling the really embarrassing stuff? "We always started by tellin' all our best stories first," Karly Hartzman sings at the opening of Wednesday's new single, "Chosen to Deserve." But "now that it's been awhile," she's ready to recount the less savory memories: tales of skipping class and sneaking around, of drinking too much and watching her friends trip on Benadryl hard enough to warrant a hospital visit. Hartzman says that she wrote "Chosen to Deserve" — released alongside the announcement of Wednesday's forthcoming album, Rat Saw God — as an homage to Drive-By Truckers' "Let There Be Rock," but with Hartzman's own "experiences from growing up and f***ing around and getting into stupid s***," as she explains.

Wednesday's best songs are filled with quotidian details that give them a sense of place, and the Asheville-based band has a knack for infusing its shoegaze-indebted rock with classic country twang; here, the band channels a country-rock sound that lends a wistful sweetness to Hartzman's admissions of youthful recklessness. By the song's end, Hartzman makes the disclosures feel nothing short of romantic: "Thank God that I was chosen to deserve you," she sings, "'Cause I'm the girl that you were chosen to deserve."

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