XTINE Leans Into the Chaos on Her Emotional New Single “Nobody Stays”

It’s hard to tell where the production ends and the pain begins in XTINE ‘s “Nobody Stays“. Or if that’s even the point. Released on May 15, the single emerges as a piece of cinematic alt-pop that doesn’t beg to be liked—it dares you to feel something, anything, as it cracks open the vault of emotional volatility. Built on orchestral strings, glitched-out synths, and a vocal that never once flinches, the track doesn’t perform vulnerability—it exists inside it.

XTINE wrote the song as a direct confrontation with borderline personality disorder, using music as a mirror for the highs, the heartbreaks, and the shattering lows of trying to love through a survival mode brain. She’s always treated songwriting as therapy, but this one goes deeper. This is the kind of song you crawl through.

“Music to me is my outlet and escape for everything I have been through,” she said in a recent interview. “It’s been my safe haven, the place I go to let my emotions be free.”

What’s most striking is the balance between scale and solitude. The production is full—string sections swell like panic attacks, while electronic flourishes short-circuit like nervous system static. But the storytelling? It’s lonely in the best way. At the core of “Nobody Stays” is a question that isn’t rhetorical: “Will I keep you, or will I end up pushing you?” She doesn’t have the answer. She’s just singing the question out loud because no one else will.

XTINE’s influences are clear—Sia’s vocal power, Björk’s emotional alchemy, Sleeping At Last’s orchestral soul—but her sound feels earned, not borrowed. She’s been working towards this since she first opened GarageBand at age 11. “Discovering GarageBand was the most exciting time of my life,” she’s said. “I have spent thousands and thousands of hours producing, writing, recording, and learning instruments 24/7.”

There’s a confidence in that obsession, but “Nobody Stays” isn’t a flex. It’s a document. A timestamp from the kind of grief that doesn’t come with a finish line.
And while it might be her most personal track, it’s also her most generous.

“I want people not to feel alone—to relate,” XTINE said. “But I want people to feel heard, understood, and have hope of any kind. I don’t want people to listen to my music. I want them to feel it and experience something brand new.”