Song of the Year: Fontaines D.C.’s ‘Starburster’

We can all agree that 2024 beat the shit out of us. We’ve been bloodied and bandaged and bloodied again. Yet here we are, still standing, ready to fight against the injustices of the world. And there’s no song better to ready us for whatever the new year brings than Fontaines D.C.’s trip-hop anthem “Starburster.” 

The Irish punk-poets unleashed an emotional track that’s become a battle cry for the downtrodden and forgotten, and which could only be written by these working-class Dublin natives. There’s an urgency to lead singer Grian Chatten’s voice; a desperate, galvanized chanting that at times struggles for breath, but calls us to action, fused with a driving drumbeat keeping 4/4 time and layered with electric guitar, trickling piano, and a hauntingly romantic synth sound, perfectly encapsulating the weary rage we’ve all been feeling this year. 

When he was on his way to the studio to record, in his words, the “shite lyrics” for “Starburster,” Chatten suffered a panic attack. But during those few minutes of intense anxiety—his heart racing, unable to speak—the only action his body allowed him to take was to write. So he rewrote the lyrics:

I wanna take the truth without a lens on it

My God given insanity, it depends on it

How I feel? How I feel? How I feel? I wanna keel

Over harder than a turned up challenger

The song has been nominated for Best Alternative Music Performance at the upcoming 67th Grammy Awards. As Zach Schonfeld proclaimed in our August review  of the band’s fourth and by far most explosive album Romance, “Starburster” is “exhilarating trip-hop” that “particularly evokes Damon Albarn with its free-associative raps.” 

Like Blur evoked for England, Fontaines D.C. reflects the turbulence of everyday life in Ireland. But with “Starburster,” they’ve managed to capture the intense, manic feeling of what we’ve been experiencing globally—and empower us to be prepared for anything.  

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