B-Side Guys

Some songs arrive with titles designed to provoke before a single note plays. Bay Area artist eggcorn (the musical moniker of songwriter Lara Hoffman) leans directly into this discomfort on “Hitler Was a Vegetarian,” crafting a startlingly vulnerable self-examination that uses historical contradiction as a lens for personal accountability.

The track opens with the jarring confession: “I’m an asshole; I’m a bitch”—a declaration that immediately subverts expectations of how songwriters typically present themselves. What follows is Hoffman’s unflinching retrospective of a drunken fight with her partner, complete with admissions of lashing out and driving while inebriated. Rather than seeking absolution or offering excuses, she confronts these moments with clinical precision, mirroring her professional background as a music therapist with experience in psychiatric facilities.

Musically, the track represents a significant evolution from eggcorn’s synth-based debut album “Your Own True Love.” This new direction Hoffman describes as “pop-tinged chamber folk” provides the perfect sonic backdrop for uncomfortable revelations—warm enough to invite listeners in while maintaining enough tension to prevent easy resolution. The song’s “spirited crescendo” physically manifests the emotional weight of her realizations, building toward her devastating conclusion: “I am tender but that doesn’t make me nice/And I’m sorry and I’m sorry and it’s not fair to you.”

What makes the song particularly compelling is how Hoffman uses historical paradox to illuminate personal complexity. For Hoffman, who identifies as “raised Jewish and mostly vegan,” the historical footnote that Hitler reportedly maintained compassion for animals while orchestrating genocide represents the ultimate contradiction in human nature. This uncomfortable juxtaposition becomes her entry point for dismantling binary notions of heroes and villains, good and evil.

“If someone were to focus only on certain aspects of a person, it’s easy to extrapolate that they are entirely good or entirely bad,” Hoffman explains, “but in truth we all have good and bad and we can all strive to be more self-aware so that we can be kinder.” This philosophical framework allows “Hitler Was a Vegetarian” to transcend simple confession and become something more profound—an examination of how we fragment ourselves and others into digestible categories rather than confronting our whole, contradictory humanity.

As part of her album “Observer Effect”—named for the phenomenon where the act of observation changes what’s being observed—this track exemplifies Hoffman’s ability to make the most nuanced realizations understandable through infectious hooks. By transforming uncomfortable self-reflection into compelling musical narrative, eggcorn creates space for listeners to examine their own paradoxes, ultimately suggesting that acknowledgment of our contradictions might be the most authentic form of accountability.