Feature: Vlad Holiday Chases ‘My Favorite Drug’ on His Darkly Romantic Debut Album

Passion and pain coalesce in Vlad Holiday’s darkly romantic debut album ‘My Favorite Drug,’ an intimate and all-consuming “indie noir” record full of raw reflection and inner reckoning.

“I Don’t Wanna Party Anymore” – Vlad Holiday ft. Kacey Musgraves

It’s hard to deny just how darkly romantic Vlad Holiday’s debut album feels.

If “indie noir” were a genre, this would be the new model: A captivating collection of sonically and emotionally charged songs that ache inside and out, the drama within driving the drama without. Passion and pain coalesce in My Favorite Drug, an intimate and all-consuming record of raw reflection and inner reckoning. Every life has its fair share of lows, and Holiday holds nothing back in sharing his own – baring his soul and telling his stories with vivid sound and visceral detail.

My Favorite Drug - Vlad Holiday — My Favorite Drug – Vlad Holiday

Maybe I shouldn’t say
how complicated you are
One or too many shots,
left my card at the bar
My brain is melted,
but you’re ready to go
Second or third in a row,
don’t wanna do it alone

Show me the way that you
want me to dance with you
You make the move and I’ll be
right there behind you
Tell me to stay even though
it’s getting way too late
I don’t wanna party anymore
if I’m not doing it with you

– “I Don’t Wanna Party Anymore,” Vlad Holiday ft. Kacey Musgraves

Released November 15^th, 2024 via ONErpm, My Favorite Drug hits hard and leaves an instant, lasting mark. Vlad Holiday’s first full-length album arrives seven years after the former Born Cages frontman first embarked on his solo career, and follows a host of acclaimed standalone singles and two EPs – 2020’s Fall Apart With Me and 2021’s Write Me Off the Show – that have helped establish the formerly New York City, and now Nashville-based singer/songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist as a unique voice in the alternative music space.

Holiday’s credits include work with everyone from Cage the Elephant to 2010s cult indie band The Virgins, but it’s inevitably his own solo material that proves the interesting, exciting, and original. As usual, it’s not just what he sings about (mental health, substance abuse, the thin line between sanity and insanity, cyclical patterns of familial abuse), but how he sings it that makes Holiday’s artistry so alluring.

**And while it wasn’t his obvious first choice to have such a ‘dark’ debut album, in many ways, this is the music – the topics, the stories, the songs – that chose him.**

“The record is all revolving around my mental health journey,” Holiday tells Atwood Magazine.

“There was no vision when I started it. I was just using writing for therapeutic reasons and never planned to write a full album. But as it started to formulate, it became clear to me that this should be one body of work.”

“I never really wanted to dwell on a topic like this, especially not on my first full length album. But writing these songs helped me get through some incredibly intense times, and saved me in a way. It’s definitely extremely personal and emotional for me. Even talking about this is making me feel strange about being so open about all of it, but my goal is that someone going through the same things can feel seen and find some hope.”

The album takes its title from the song of the same name – a haunting ballad about euphoria, madness, and the utter fragility of our mental states.

“In the title track, the ‘drug’ refers to happiness, joy, contentment,” Holiday explains. “Throughout the record, I’m exploring what that means to me and ways to get there, any way that I could.”

As graceful as it is gut-wrenching, “My Favorite Drug” is without a doubt one of the album’s many standouts. “It’s been so long since I had a good day, since I felt like myself, that I don’t quite remember that world where we’d never part,” Holiday sings, his voice hot on the mic as an acoustic guitar gently plays and background vocals softly harmonize around him like a musical shadow. “Oh joy, why’d you have to leave me? Did I stumble too far down for you to love me dearly? The more I try to see you, the more I can’t believe that you existed in me once.” His pain and yearning come to life through an undeniably moment of beauty that neither downplays, nor sugarcoats, the rawness of his mental and emotional states.

Of course, highlights abound on the journey from album opener “This Was Always Gonna End” to its cathartic finale, “Sink into Me.” Further memorable moments include the dreamy confessional “We’ll Never Be Rich,” the brooding blues rocker “Keep Me Wondering,” and the lone duet, “I Don’t Want to Party Anymore” featuring the one and only Kacey Musgraves, who lends her voice to a brutally honest, irresistibly catchy inner reckoning.

“I think writing the lyrics to ‘Father Figure’ was one of the more intense moments I’ve had writing anything,” Holiday says, citing that song as home to his favorite lyrics. “It’s really hard to listen back to that song, so in a way I hate it, but maybe it’s also my favorite for that reason.”

“It was the hardest one to write on the album, but I’ve always wanted to articulate this. It’s about my relationship with my father, who I met when I was 10 years old when I moved to America. He treated me, my brother, and mother quite badly through the years and was a huge reason for my later-in-life mental health problems.”

**Intense though it may be, there’s not a moment on My Favorite Drug that we, as listeners, would take back.**

In baring his soul and sharing his darkest moments through song, Holiday creates in his album a space to process hardship, a space for cathartic release, a space for authentic connection, and a space to let a little light shine in. Sometimes, you don’t need “10 life lessons” or lyrics about hope and happiness to get you through your pain; you need to hear someone else going through the wringer themselves, bracing for the worst, getting knocked down anyway, and still soldiering on. You need to know you’re not alone in those emotional trenches; that there’s someone else with you, who’s been through it, too, and doesn’t shy away from just how awful life can be.

“[I hope] that people going through tough times can find some comfort listening to the album,” Holiday shares. “My favorite music and art has always given validity to the things I go through in life, and I hope people can experience some version of that.”

Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Vlad Holiday’s My Favorite Drug with Atwood Magazine as he goes track-by-track through the music and lyrics of his debut album!

— —

:: stream/purchase My Favorite Drug here ::

:: connect with Vlad Holiday here ::

— —

Stream: ‘My Favorite Drug’ – Vlad Holiday

:: Inside My Favorite Drug ::

— —

This Was Always Gonna End

This song’s about one of my lowest moments struggling with my mental health. It never felt so physically real before and it was quite scary. Normally my depression puts me in a quite lethargic state, but at this point I was so defeated and angry with my brain that I was willing to do anything to make it stop. Luckily I didn’t.

Closer

A love song. Introduces the romantic partner element of the album. For me it’s about acknowledging and accepting everything that’s led me to this moment, the bad and the good, and not obsessing over things that are out of my control.

I Don’t Want to Party Anymore (feat. Kacey Musgraves)

About the feeling the day after a long bender, sick of going through the serotonin dip over and over again, realizing you should probably change your ways and be better to yourself – but getting pulled back in by your partner and the process starting all over again. Kind of about enabling, or a couple that’s both going through it at different times, which sometimes makes it worse because there’s no days off for either of you.

Downtown Baby

This song’s about my drug dealer in the Lower East Side who I used to buy psychedelics from. For a while that was a huge help. Trying to be more positive, trying to replace alcohol with a happier drug.

Long Long Gone

This one’s about the realization that my depression is dragging down the ones I love around me. Feeling hopeless of ever fixing it, and wanting to just pack your bags and leave.

We’ll Never Be Rich

Looking at the path I chose in life and feeling defeated by it. Not regretful, because it never felt like I should’ve pursued anything else – but feeling tired and financially unstable. Holding on to my integrity as an artist and not playing the game, but just barely scraping by and the confusion that comes with that. Which really made me appreciate the people around me that didn’t judge me for it.

Keep Me Wondering

Appreciating the quirks in someone. Keeping it weird rather than dull and predictable.

My Favorite Drug

It’s sort of a personification of happiness/joy. Not having a glimpse of it for so long that it feels like a foreign emotion. Mid-Covid, homeless people in NYC were absolutely next level, pulling out knives on the subway, doing heroin in broad daylight just outside our apartment, one guy chasing us through Tompkins Square park while yelling at the top of his lungs… But weirdly at the same time because I was going through it so hard as well, I would find myself walking and talking to myself (which was weirdly satisfying), and realizing that the line between the crazy and normal is actually so very thin. The mind is quite a fragile thing. It was kind of eye opening actually.

Father Figure

Hardest one to write on the album, but I’ve always wanted to articulate this. It’s about my relationship with my father, who I met when I was 10 years old when I moved to America. He treated me, my brother, and mother quite badly through the years and was a huge reason for my later-in-life mental health problems. The song also touches on being scared to repeat patterns. Trying to break the chain and be better.

Don’t Even Try

Another about feeling an ultimate low and not wanting to drag down those around me. Feeling guilty, losing touch and self medicating.

Sink into Me

This song is kind of imagining a way out when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel anymore. A defeated couple giving in. It’s a love song too though, there’s acceptance and a weight off the shoulders. While I’m not trying to romanticize anything like that, the thoughts were real and I feel they deserve to be spoken about.

— —