Collaborations in rock often feel like a blind date: sometimes you discover chemistry, sometimes you discover why you should never trust your friends to set you up. “Worth It”, the third time Los Angeles alt-rockers Love Ghost and UK outfit The Skinner Brothers have decided to see each other, thankfully lands in the category of oh, of course this works. It’s one of those tracks that sounds less like a collab and more like a meeting that was always destined to happen, inevitable in the way gravity is inevitable; messy, a little unforgiving, but completely irresistible.
The song wastes no time pretending it’s going to ease you in. No, it just hurls you face-first into jagged guitars, the kind that feel like they’re trying to break through the walls of your living room. There’s no polish, no glossy coat of varnish, just a bristling honesty that fits perfectly with the song’s central obsession: Am I enough? Not exactly a question you want answered at three in the morning, but it’s the one the song insists you confront anyway. This isn’t the vague, Instagram-caption kind of self-reflection. It’s the ugly kind, the one you only have when the bathroom mirror catches you off guard.
Lyrically, there’s a kind of refreshing bluntness at work. No extended metaphors about oceans of sorrow or blazing suns of redemption; just a person, very tired, telling you directly they’re not sure if they’re worth the fight. And weirdly, that simplicity makes it hit harder than a thousand tortured metaphors ever could. When the guitar solo bursts in about two-thirds of the way through, it doesn’t sound like someone showing off technical chops; it sounds like someone screaming through their instrument because words were no longer sufficient.
And here’s the thing: listening to “Worth It”, I kept being reminded of Future Islands. Now, these are very different bands, but there’s something about the delivery here that brushes up against Samuel T. Herring’s particular brand of theatrical vulnerability, the kind of performance where you’re not sure if the singer is about to burst into tears or rip their shirt open on stage. It’s that desperate sincerity, the refusal to be cool or detached, that makes the song magnetic. For me, it was like stumbling into a Future Islands song wearing someone else’s clothes, and I loved it for that.
Ultimately, “Worth It” isn’t the sort of track that compromises or tries to be everyone’s friend. It’s messy, emotional, and uncomfortably direct. And that’s exactly why it works. For listeners who want their alternative rock scrubbed clean and airbrushed, this probably won’t be your song. For everyone else who’s ever yelled into a pillow and wondered if the fight was worth it… well, the title answers itself.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
