B-Side Guys

Co-written with his wife Sarah Craig McEathron, Ryan Wayne’s title track confronts the uncomfortable reality of relationships that survive on shared dysfunction rather than genuine compatibility. The song doesn’t romanticize this dynamic—instead, it documents how two people can become experts at hurting each other while maintaining the illusion of partnership.

Wayne’s blue-collar Oshawa background informs his approach to domestic reckoning. His opening image of “overdue morning roses / Spread out on the ground” captures the performative nature of reconciliation—gestures that arrive too late to mean anything but too predictably to abandon. The metaphor extends through his self-description as “sharp but misguided, like a dart in the wall,” while his partner becomes “the shaky throwing hand.” Both are complicit in missing the target.

The production, shaped by collaborator Annelise Norohna’s mixing and co-production work, creates space for Wayne’s storytelling without overwhelming its rawness. His voice carries the weight of someone who’s survived strokes and returned to music as healing process, lending gravity to lines like “A whole lot of people don’t know what to do with the truth / Sure I might be guilty but hell so are you.”

The song’s most devastating moment arrives with its litany of names—”Damn you Charlie, Steven, Josh and James”—suggesting a wider network of enablers and witnesses to the couple’s public dysfunction. Wayne follows this with the visceral detail of “choke-cherry wine” that “smells like rotten grapes and tastes like turpentine,” transforming self-medication into sensory assault.

“Functioning Dysfunctionals” succeeds because Wayne refuses to position himself as victim or villain. Instead, he examines how two people can perfect the art of mutual destruction while maintaining just enough stability to call it love.