B-Side Guys

Alexander Wolfe built “Everythinglessness” around a loop of real, panicked breathing from a friend’s voice note, and that choice determines everything about the track. This isn’t metaphorical suffocation—it’s the actual sound of a body revolting against itself during a first panic attack, the moment when you realize “I wasn’t the same as everyone else,” as Wolfe describes it.

The song runs just five lines. Any more would be overexplanation. The London-born artist uses space like a weapon, letting silence do the work that lyrics can’t. The title came directly from another friend’s voice note while struggling with depression, trying to articulate despair that wasn’t about one missing thing but everything: “Meaning, weight, future, yourself.” It’s a more accurate term than emptiness because emptiness suggests a container that could be refilled. Everythinglessness means the container dissolved too.

Wolfe wrote this after spending time in a mental health rehab facility in 2023, and the entire Everythinglessness album unpacks masculinity in a culture that demands silence instead of support. He’s been explicit about this throughout the album cycle, starting with “Talk”—a response to suicide being the leading cause of death for UK men under 50—and continuing through “The Toughening” and “The Softening,” which document the journey from rigid masculinity to self-defined strength.

The track strips away everything except piano, harmonies, and that breathing loop, creating something as cinematic as it is claustrophobic. Wolfe says he remembers his first panic attack with clarity: “Your body goes off, your brain can’t keep up… ‘Am I dying?’ ‘Is this a heart attack?’” The song doesn’t answer those questions. It just lets you sit inside them until the breathing stops.