I’ll set the scene: a small home recording studio with fuchsia walls. There’s calm, electronic music playing in the background. The coffee table is littered with McDonald’s ketchup packets and soda cups, a veggie tray and ranch bottles, and at least three different types of water (Dasani, Evian, and Perrier to be exact). Sitting on an ashtray is a still smoldering J alongside a cute little mason jar storing the rest of the stash. To top it all off, there’s a candle burning at the head of the table. At the other end of the room are three monitors on a desk; behind them, sitting in a swivel chair, is none other than Lindsay Lohan. The background music is the only released recording of her best kept (not so) secret and triumphant return to music: “Xanax” featuring Finnish musician Alma.
The video I just described lives on Lohan’s IGTV and is the culmination of weeks of teasing this song via Instagram, though on Sep. 23 she posted a more cohesive video featuring seemingly mundane scenes of skateboarding, traveling, and life. Lohan commented, “This video is a compilation of vignettes of life. Family, love, the process of moving forward and letting go of the past. To live and be happy, free of fear. Just to be grateful and open our eyes to our opportunities instead of numbing the mind💋.” This “compilation of vignettes” has since mysteriously disappeared from IGTV — though you can still find it on YouTube.
“Xanax” is a total change of pace for die-hard fans of “Freaky Friday” and Lohan’s truly iconic song, “Ultimate” — let’s not forget the garage band rehearsal scene. Were you even a real 2000s kid if you didn’t jump off the couch and shred the air guitar solo along with LiLo during “Take Me Away”?
The song samples a 2000 Alice Deejay track called “Better Off Alone” — appropriate given the theme of “Xanax”. With this new single’s bass drops, synthesizer chords, and harder-hitting themes of mental health (“I don’t like the parties in LA//I go home in a bad mood, pass out, wake up alone//just to do it all over again”; “I got social anxiety, but you’re like Xanax to me”), it’s a far cry from the punk rock styles of early 2000s music.
So, let’s cut to the chase: is it a good song?
Honestly, reader, I love it. I’ve been religiously tracking Lohan’s passive-aggressive Instagram comments via Instagram drama connoisseur @commentsbycelebs for months now (never forget when Lohan shaded Ariana Grande for casting Liz Gillies as Cady in the ”Mean Girls” section of her “thank u, next” music video). Because I live for drama, I would’ve loved the song even if it sucked, simply because it came from LiLo’s enigma of a mind. But all drama aside, I can actually say that it’s a good song — I play it and I feel like I’m in a club, which one might say is the essence of the song. The sample of Deejay’s song contributes to the mood and tone of “Xanax” a lot, but I also love the lyrics. They aren’t revolutionary, nothing that hasn’t been done before, but I love them nonetheless.
Though the song itself isn’t extraordinarily unique, the marketing of it is. It first popped up as a series of cryptic Instagram posts beginning in late May and randomly continued until the full version was released via IGTV in mid-Sept. The first of these posts was a photo of Lohan in the studio with a simple caption: “🎧.” As the release date drew closer, the posts began to reveal more — a title, a teaser of the chorus, short videos of Lohan and friends dancing to the song.
Commenters were waiting with bated breath for the full song, only for it to be released exclusively on IGTV, where they couldn’t just stream it at the touch of a button. It’s what I would call a power move on Lohan’s part: Return to music after 11 years, drive everyone mad with anticipation, then keep the much-anticipated song off of any streaming platform, driving millions of Instagram users to her profile as the only way to listen to the song. Call it shameless self-promo all you want, I call it genius.
The question remains: will the song ever be available on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music? We can only hope. I can’t imagine it will live on IGTV forever, but this is Lindsay Lohan we’re talking about — she does what she wants, and we love her for it.