44phantom barrels through the wreckage of early fame and his own past mistakes on his sonically explosive, emotionally charged third record ‘IN RETROSPECT,’ an unflinchingly candid album where blown-out guitars and massive hooks carry the sharpest, most human writing of his career. The Oklahoma alternative artist opens up about escaping someone else’s rock-and-roll dream and trusting the instincts that helped him create his most personal and complete record yet.
Stream: ‘IN RETROSPECT’ – 44phantom
I feel like I’m finally making art for the first time in my life.
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At 24, Brayton Matthews has already lived through an ascent that looked, from the outside, like a rock-and-roll dream come true.
Raised in rural Oklahoma, the artist known as 44phantom went from All-District high school quarterback to Columbia-signed alt-pop wunderkind by 19. A collaboration with Machine Gun Kelly generated more than 45 million streams, and the two artists toured arenas across Europe and the United States together.
Yet Matthews moved too quickly to understand what was happening around him. He wanted to believe the praise, but never trusted that he belonged – and when many of those voices disappeared, he had to build a sense of confidence that no audience, executive, or collaborator could give him. Now fully independent, Matthews is finally building this next chapter on his own terms.
That hard-won self-trust sits at the heart of IN RETROSPECT. Released July 10, 2026, 44phantom’s third studio album is, true to its title, an unflinching examination of the road that carried him here, but its greatest revelation lies in how fully present he sounds while looking back. His earlier music captured the angst of adolescence in real time; these eight songs revisit that younger self with greater clarity and enough humor to puncture the tortured mystique. After wondering whether his nieces and nephews could ever understand who he truly was through the work he had already released, Matthews stopped chasing the abstract idea of a great song and started writing in a way only he could.
“I wrote this album during one of the hardest years of my life,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “During that, I reflected on what brought me there, just trying to figure out how to get out where I was mentally and physically. Everything on this album is intentional. The weird lyrics on some songs might not mean much to you, but they mean everything to me.”
That difficult year did more than give Matthews something to write about – it dissolved the distance between his life and his songs, letting his humor and hurt enter the music without disguise.
“I made a point in this album to really start putting myself in my music,” he shares. “Rather than trying to just write a great song, I wanted to write a song in a way only I could.”
“BLUEBERRY COFFEE” immediately makes good on that promise. “Let’s key a car / just for the f*** of it / and complain about our / distrust of the government,” Matthews sings over moody, reverb-laden guitars, before swerving from youthful rebellion into grief displaced as a punchline: “My grandfather died at his childhood residence / now I take it out on the Applebee’s management.” The humor makes the hurt more revealing, not less serious. Beneath the jokes sits the ache of someone who misses “the heat of it all” – those nights spent driving somewhere and nowhere, unaware that their ending had already begun. Big drums and distorted guitars carry the song toward its outsized finish, giving memory momentum rather than preserving it in amber.
i miss the heat of it all
driving somewhere
and nowhere at all
all this time
i was wishing you’d call
it’s too late for the heat of it all
Retrospection does not mean absolution here. The cinematic, emotionally charged “DOES GOD HOLD GRUDGES?” – one of the record’s standout moments – traces romantic resentment back to the guilt Matthews absorbed growing up in the Bible Belt, where forgiveness, shame, and fear of punishment became difficult to separate. “The things I’ve done / all in fear of getting old / and being young, well, young enough / I don’t wanna die alone,” he sings, exposing the anxiety beneath the reckless behavior he once treated as proof that he was living.
of all the things i said
i was just another one
turning off the light?
then f*** me like you wanted to
like everything had almost
brought you back again
it could have would have
almost was and should have been
but it never is
does god hold a grudge?
the things i’ve done
all in fear of getting old
and being young
well young enough
I don’t wanna die alone
Doused in thick distortion and hard-hitting beats, “NO HARD FEELINGS” cuts even closer. Its opening admission – “It’s f***ing annoying that you hate me / but you make a valid point” – strips self-pity of its defenses, forcing Matthews to confront not only the pain of a broken relationship, but his responsibility for breaking it.
The song’s escalating chorus mirrors the panic of realizing that remorse cannot undo what happened. Matthews describes it as “that moment of wanting to run into a wall face-first because you know you messed up and this feeling isn’t going to just disappear, you have to confront it head on.” By compressing three years of emotional fallout into a three-minute song, he gives the memory a shape he can return to – not to keep punishing himself, but to understand why he caused the damage in the first place.
I know, I know, I know
but I couldn’t find the words
to make it out
I never said them
it’s slow it’s slow it’s slow
but I’m spinning in reverse
breathe upside down
baby I’m alright
The anger beneath that self-examination reaches its peak on “CARTIER.” A scathing inner reckoning written a few years earlier at the height of Matthews’ disillusionment, the song hides behind designer shades and status symbols while repeatedly admitting, “I don’t wanna tell you how I feel / I can’t even tell if this is real.” Its glossy armor only makes the emotional vacancy more visible – a feverish snapshot of an artist surrounded by people and praise he could not trust.
Even self-sabotage becomes material for self-parody. On “SIMPLE THING,” 44phantom exaggerates the brooding, emotionally dangerous posture of his first two albums until it collapses into a joke. The song still recognizes the harm behind that persona, but it no longer presents toxicity as romantic proof of depth. That distance marks one of IN RETROSPECT’s most meaningful changes: Matthews can acknowledge who he used to be without defending him – and laugh without dodging accountability.
The album’s most exposed moment comes with “ZODIAC.” “I hate Halloween / I’m painted green,” Matthews begins, recounting the hollow morning after a costumed performance. From there, the song drifts through attractive strangers on movie screens and “fake constellations” before landing on its clearest image of alienation: “Look at me baby / stumbling around and parading / like somebody else.” The absurdity of the costume gives way to a deeper estrangement – the unsettling recognition that he has spent years performing versions of himself he cannot entirely recognize.
“‘ZODIAC’ is the most honest song I’ve ever written, I think,” Matthews says. “I really did a Halloween show and was painted green and the next day I just felt so empty.”
That honesty also guided the album’s sound. Matthews set out to make his most alternative record, embracing the distortion and thunderous finishes that had always come naturally to him. For years, ease made him suspicious; if an idea arrived without a struggle, he assumed he must be doing it wrong. IN RETROSPECT breaks that habit. “I wanted to do what felt natural to me this time,” he explains. “That was the only way to really figure out who I am.”
By trusting what came naturally, Matthews finally made a record that could tell him who he was.
IN RETROSPECT neither glorifies nor disowns the young artist who raced from Oklahoma into arenas before he could legally buy a beer. It looks at him long enough to understand what he wanted, what frightened him, and why the dream could never supply the belonging he lacked within himself. The album’s greatest achievement is not that it explains the last several years; it leaves behind a version of 44phantom his nieces and nephews might actually know.
For all its backward glances, IN RETROSPECT is thrillingly alive: Eight tightly wound songs where massive hooks crash into blown-out guitars and bruising drums, while Matthews’ sharpest lines cut deepest just when they make you laugh. Nothing here sounds tentative or half-formed; 44phantom delivers the wit and emotional force he set out to capture with such precision that the album stands as one of the finest alternative records of the 2020s – not merely a successful reinvention, but the boldest and most complete presentation yet of everything he is and everything he can become.
Atwood Magazine recently caught up with 44phantom to discuss how he turned bruised humor and emotional wreckage into the full-throttle alternative rush of IN RETROSPECT, growing up inside someone else’s idea of the rock-and-roll dream, and making the first album that sounds unmistakably like him.
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:: stream/purchase IN RETROSPECT here ::
:: connect with 44phantom here ::
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Stream: ‘IN RETROSPECT’ – 44phantom
A CONVERSATION WITH 44PHANTOM
Atwood Magazine: Brayton, hello and thank you for your time! For those who are just discovering 44phantom today through this writeup, what do you want them to know about you and your music?
44phantom (Brayton Matthews): I’d like them to know I mean it.
You were signed to Columbia at 19, came up fast, toured with MGK, and lived a lot of life very publicly at a young age. Now you’re 24, independent, and stepping into this next chapter on your own terms. How does this moment feel from where you’re standing?
44phantom: To be completely honest, I’m not sure I know yet. I have a lot of emotions going on at the moment. There’s been a lot of ups and downs. However in general I would say I’m pretty excited to finally be doing things on my own terms. Success or failure (whatever that even means) is decided by me and me only. There’s a weird sense of peace in being on your own. I was, growing up, and still am an introvert, so feeling a bit on my own with the whole thing has been kind of nice actually.
What did that early chapter teach you, and what did you have to unlearn in order to make the music you’re making now?
44phantom: You know, I don’t think I really understood what was going on in my life at that moment. Everything happened so fast, I went from living at home, to living in Nashville for a few months, to living in LA, and then all the sudden I’m meeting famous people and going on tour in Europe, and no matter what anyone said to me, I didn’t feel I belonged at all. I just didn’t believe people when they told me how they felt about my music or how good it was or whatever. But I did want to believe them. One of the toughest parts about that, too, was during these last two years or so, a lot of those people disappeared. That has been an emotional maze to navigate.
I think not believing them was in a way good because the absence of those people was easier to deal with, because I never really put stock into what they said about me. However, in my opinion, there’s almost nothing worse than being right when you want to be proven wrong.
Through that, I’ve definitely learned to find that confidence in myself. I am the best artist I’ve ever been. My songs are the best they’ve ever been. My writing is the best it’s ever been. Over the past couple of years the actual process of coming up with a song from a technical aspect has become truly easy, so now it’s a lot more of finding why that song should exist, and what I want to say. I feel like I’m finally making art for the first time in my life. So in general I wouldn’t really say I had to unlearn anything, I just had to keep doing me and find a way to really trust myself and my own taste rather than relying on the feelings of others.
IN RETROSPECT feels like a turning point – not just a new project, but a real reintroduction. How do you feel this record captures who you are today?
44phantom: This is the first record of mine that feels like it really encompasses my personality. A lot of my older music is really self-serious and “woe is me.” I enjoy being funny and finding humor in the pain of life. I have so many nieces and nephews now, and it hit me that if I die, I don’t know if they’d be able to get a sense of who I really am as a person from my music, and that really bummed me out. I made a point in this album to really start putting myself in my music, rather than trying to just write a great song, I wanted to write a song in a way only I could.
What does the title IN RETROSPECT mean to you?
44phantom: A real examination of the road that led me to where I am at this moment. The wins and losses and everything in between. Hindsight is 20/20. In the process of making this album I was hoping that looking back on the last few years of my life would help me figure myself out a bit, and I’d say it did.
A lot of these songs seem to look back without getting stuck there – from “the things I’ve done all in fear of getting old” in “DOES GOD HOLD GRUDGES?” to “I was stupid, maybe clueless, using you to fill a void” in “NO HARD FEELINGS.” What were you trying to understand about yourself while writing this project?
44phantom: I just wanted to figure out what I did wrong and what I did right. Barry Taylor, AC/DC road manager said “God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape.” I needed to throw a blanket over myself to figure out who I am. The good parts and the bad parts.
“DOES GOD HOLD GRUDGES?” opens with regret, fear, and that aching question: “Does God hold a grudge? / The things I’ve done all in fear of getting old / And being young, well, young enough / I don’t wanna die alone.” What’s the story behind this song, and what made it the right one to introduce this chapter and set the tone for it?
44phantom: I grew up in rural Oklahoma, the heart of the bible belt. Over the last several years I’ve really deconstructed my religious upbringing and the feelings that come with that. This song is about someone who did me dirty but there’s still being a part of me that really wants to forgive, as I was raised to do. But with religion comes a lot of guilt and shame. When things have gone right for me in life, I feel very underserving, and when things have gone wrong, I feel like I had it coming. Like god is punishing me for something I did in the past, or maybe something I’ll do in the future.
I don’t know. But it felt right to reintroduce myself and this chapter with a question, because this whole process has just been me asking myself questions and trying to figure it all out. Maybe I acted out in my younger years because I felt like that was my only chance to do so. No one could judge a 19 year-old for doing 19 year-old things, but now I realize I was just scared. I was worried I’d get old one day and realize I didn’t have any fun. I didn’t need to feel that way, though. I just need to do what feels right.
“NO HARD FEELINGS” is brutally self-aware, especially in lines like “I was stupid, maybe clueless, using you to fill a void” and “I’m such a man, I didn’t have the guts to call.” What did it take to write that honestly about your own mistakes - and how (if at all) do you feel saying it all out loud helped you to make peace with your past and move forward?
44phantom: It took looking back at my relationship objectively. I’m very thankful that the girl this song is about forgave me, and we are together to this day. When we weren’t I just wrote songs about how upset I was and how sorry I was. In reality I just had to call her. It took coming to terms with not just what I did but why I did it.
The chorus of “NO HARD FEELINGS,” to me, is this swirling crescendo that really feels like a panic attack. That moment of wanting to run into a wall face-first because you know you messed up and this feeling isn’t going to just disappear, you have to confront it head on. It’s the text you send when you realized you were in the wrong. Saying it out loud doesn’t do as much as making it a song does. It makes the whole story about a three-minute ride that encapsulates three years of my life, haha. It turns something very complicated into a tangible and repeatable experience.
“SIMPLE THING” feels like it’s caught between wanting someone close and knowing you’re hard to be close to – “I can’t believe what you’ve seen / And you’re still around,” then later, “you get what’s left of me.” How were you thinking about intimacy while writing this song?
44phantom: Honestly, this song is parody to a certain extent. My first two albums are very “just stay away girl, i’m too edgy and emo and I’m toxic. I’m gonna hurt you emotionally.” SIMPLE THING is me making fun of that. I’m poking fun at who I used to be a bit and people who are still currently like that. Don’t get me wrong I still understand the honesty in writing about self-sabotage, and I’m sure I’ll write more about that in the future, but when I was writing the song I wasn’t sure how I felt about it until I realized it’s a joke.
Across these singles, there’s a lot of guilt, longing, humor, and self-interrogation. How do you know when a song has pushed far enough into the truth?
44phantom: I think I’ve been trying to write the song that makes me feel whole my entire life. Since I was a kid, I’ve just felt like there’s something missing in me that isn’t missing in everyone else, and when I write a song that feels honest and truthful, I feel better for a while. So whenever I feel better, and also slightly scared because a good song has to take some risks.
The album opens with “BLUEBERRY COFFEE,” which immediately drops us into this very specific world: “Let’s key a car, just for the f*** of it, and complain about our distrust of the government.” Why did that song feel like the right way to open IN RETROSPECT?
44phantom: It brings a sense of nostalgia that I think is necessary to taking an honest look back and reflecting on your life. In Oklahoma I did a lot of dumb things with my dumb friends, also Oklahomans don’t like the government. Which is funny because they keep voting for Republicans anyway, but that’s a conversation for a different time. In general, I think this song is a summary of the whole album both lyrically and sonically. It’s funny and serious and sad and honest, plus it finishes with big drums and distorted guitars. The moment Mike Kamerman started playing that riff I knew this song was the intro, and it really made the whole body of work go from a “project” to an album.
“CARTIER” is the focus track for the project. What made that song feel central to this record?
44phantom: I actually wrote “CARTIER” a couple years ago. Kind of at the peak of being disillusioned with the life I was living. Going out all the time with people I didn’t really know, and again that feeling of not believing the hype people were placing on me. It felt right to use the climax of the anger on the album as the main point of it.
How did you want IN RETROSPECT to sound and feel as a complete body of work - what was your vision for this album sonically?
44phantom: I knew I wanted it to be the most alternative album I’ve made. I really didn’t grow up listening to a lot of alternative music, but that’s because I didn’t get to choose what I listened to most of the time. I’m the youngest of five, so I had to just find a way to like whatever one of my sisters or brother were listening to, and they all had very different musical tastes. However, alternative music really just found me naturally, the moment I got to work in the studio with someone who could play guitar (before I learned) it just happened. I liked distortion and big finishes and loud drums. But in my life I tend to run from things that come easy. I had a vocal coach a few years ago who told me that if I feel like something is easy I think I’m doing it wrong. That never left me. I wanted to do what felt natural to me this time. That was the only way to really figure out who I am.
Do you have any definitive favorites or personal highlights off this record?
44phantom: “ZODIAC” is the most honest song I’ve ever written, I think. I really did a Halloween show and was painted green and the next day I just felt so empty. I put my guitar in some weird tuning I had seen on Instagram and forgot about it for a couple days, and then I picked it up and just immediately sang the first few lines of the first verse. It puts me right back there every time I listen or play that song.
What do you hope listeners take away from IN RETROSPECT, and what have you taken away from creating it and now putting it out?
44phantom: I have no expectations for what people take from this album. Music is like a color we all see differently. Take from it what you take from it. Cry, laugh, scream, skip it and go listen to Olivia Rodrigo, I’m cool with all of it. I guess maybe I just want to you to think for a moment. I’m not sure about what, but if I made you think I’d say I did my job. I’ve found something in myself in making this album that I wasn’t sure I had. I’d also like to thank my friend Taylor who produced a lot of this album for really helping me out of the rut I was in, glad I met him during this process.
In the spirit of paying it forward, who are you listening to these days that you’d recommend to our readers?
44phantom: No Love For The Middle Child, Teenage Priest, Tom The Mailman, and diveliner.
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:: connect with 44phantom here ::
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