Liza Anne – “Internet Depression”

The Nashville singer-songwriter Liza Anne has been dropping one-off singles all year, and they released one called “Shania Twain Is Making Me Cry” earlier this month. A bunch of those tracks will appear on the forthcoming LP Utopan. Today, Liza Anne follows that track with “Internet Depression,” a new one that tackles the very relatable feeling of spending too much time online even though you can feel it sucking all the life out of you.

On “Internet Depression,” Liza Anne sings over a simple piano line, describing a very common kind of existential crisis: “Scrolling through versions of my friends I’ve never met/ Feeling lonelier now than that birthday where I stayed in bed.” Here’s what Liza Anne says about the track:

There’s such a strange pain to the internet when you’re feeling disillusioned with your own life and swallowed in the discomfort and pain. It’s like being constantly confronted with everyone’s best side — of course, it’s not something to take personally but it feels impossible to not compare the worst feeling inside of you to the projection of “everything is great” that you’d come across on social media.

With this song, I was voicing the frustration and disbelief I had in believing that the people around me were actually experiencing feelings of being in love because, within my experience of “being in love,” I was always only halfway there — I just thought, for years, that the experience of love was one of projection and dissociation — saying something enough so that hopefully you really meant it eventually. It is so relieving to understand that isn’t the case — I was never meant to be with a cis man because I’m a lesbian.

It is so strange to be feeling so disassociated from yourself as I was seeing it projected on the internet – we have such a direct line of sight to everyone at all times. To have that view while experiencing dysphoria in your own experience is especially heavy — it’s hard to find a home in yourself already and to have that constant reminder of everyone’s everything all the time — that’s a lot for a subconscious to hold onto.

Listen to “Internet Depression” below.

Utopian is out 11/3 on Antifragile Music.