Best Ex have today released their new single titled ‘Living In Hell, from their upcoming album ‘Good Girl’, dropping November 6th viaIodine Recordings. Best Ex has figured out the secret to a truly satisfying breakup song: forget the grand revenge fantasy and focus on the little things that make life miserable. A cracked phone screen, a spectacularly bad day, and the slow realization that being a terrible person comes with its own rewards. ‘Living In Hell’ turns post breakup pettiness into an indie pop pleasure cruise, with Mariel Loveland delivering a deliciously dark sense of humor that makes holding a grudge feel less like a character flaw and more like an afternoon hobby. Finally, a song for everyone who has ever wished an ex nothing but minor inconveniences and aggressively mediocre parking luck.
The beauty of ‘Living In Hell’ is that it understands the difference between wanting revenge and actually having the energy to pursue it. Who has time for elaborate schemes when life already provides an endless supply of opportunities for karma to do its thing? Best Ex takes that familiar frustration and transforms it into something cathartic, playful, and wonderfully relatable. Loveland brings a knowing personality to the concept, balancing the sting of emotional betrayal with enough humor to keep the whole affair from collapsing into self pity. It is the kind of song that lets you indulge your worst impulses without having to explain yourself to a therapist afterward.
What makes the single particularly appealing is its place within the larger world of Best Ex. Loveland has never shied away from the complicated business of growing up, figuring yourself out, and dealing with the expectations other people insist on throwing your way. With the forthcoming album ‘Good Girl’, she explores the messier realities of adulthood, and ‘Living In Hell’ supplies a welcome shot of irreverence to that emotional equation. Not every difficult experience needs to become a solemn meditation on personal growth. Sometimes you can acknowledge the damage, reclaim your sense of humor, and hope the person responsible accidentally sits on their sunglasses. That is growth, too, and arguably the more entertaining variety.
‘Living In Hell’ makes a convincing case for Best Ex as a project that knows how to turn uncomfortable feelings into memorable indie pop without sanding away their sharper edges. Loveland finds the sweet spot between emotional honesty and mischievous absurdity, making a familiar breakup subject feel fresh through its wonderfully petty perspective. The song also sets up ‘Good Girl’ as a record with room for both introspection and a well timed middle finger to life’s assorted disappointments. Revenge might be a dish best served cold, but Best Ex has discovered that karma works just fine at room temperature, preferably while somebody watches their expensive phone tumble face first onto the pavement.
Featured image byAlps Lifee.
About Best Ex
“I realized that out of all the songs I had [for the album], there wasn’t a single fun breakup song, which is usually my trademark,” says Mariel Loveland of indie-pop project Best Ex. So naturally, she wrote one and gave karma a starring role. “Living In Hell” is the latest single from Best Ex’s forthcoming sophomore album Good Girl, out November 6, 2026 via Iodine Recordings. Cathartic, darkly funny, and with just the right amount of pettiness to be satisfying, the song finds Loveland contemplating one of life’s most universally relatable fantasies: watching someone who hurt you get exactly what they deserve.
But there’s a catch. Loveland isn’t interested in elaborate revenge schemes, dramatic confrontations, or becoming an antihero. She’d simply like her former tormentor to experience a prolonged series of minor inconveniences. “I wanted to write something powerful, cathartic, and also kind of silly,” Loveland explains. “Like, what if you really do want to watch someone who deeply hurt you suffer, but not that badly? You’re not some supervillain. What if they suffered just enough to be continuously annoyed for the rest of their life? I could live with that.”
Perhaps the real revenge: is the realization that you don’t actually have to do anything. “When someone hurts you, it’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting them to feel the pain they caused you,” Loveland says. “But at a certain point, the ultimate closure is understanding that you don’t have to do anything.” She says that realization is at the heart of “Living In Hell.” “They can’t escape the way they treated you, because that’s how they treat themselves,” she says. “That’s what the song is about. That, and the sweet karma of them dropping their expensive phone and cracking the screen.”
As the final song written for Good Girl, “Living In Hell” was the playful missing ingredient that the album needed. While Good Girl explores the heavier realities of adulthood (anxiety, grief, identity, changing relationships, uncertainty, and the complicated process of figuring out who you are) the record also leaves room for humor, irreverence, and the occasional fantasy of someone else having a truly terrible day.
“Living In Hell” follows previously released singles “Good Girl,” examines the expectations placed on women to define themselves through their relationships to others, pushing back against the idea that women should be understood primarily as someone’s daughter, wife, or mother. “Is This It?” looks outward at the exhaustion of living through political division, misinformation, and an endless stream of alarming headlines, while “Sick Of Myself” turns inward, confronting the anxious self-questioning and insecurity that can make our own minds feel like their worst critics. More recently, “Losing Streak” offered a different kind of hard-earned perspective: accepting that life doesn’t always go according to plan and learning to “sift for gold” in the mess rather than obsessing over what can’t be changed.
‘Good Girl’ Tracklist
- Good Girl
- Eurydice
- Is This It?
- Losing Streak
- Sick Of Myself
- I Will (Superman)
- Papercut
- Man Like You
- Boring
- Living In Hell
- Parallel Lines
Written in Brooklyn and Hoboken, NJ with longtime collaborator and producer Andy Tongren (of indie rock band Young Rising Sons and who has produced Lena Leon, Luxtides, and Halsey) over the course of roughly two-and-a-half years, Good Girl is ultimately a record about the strange territory between the adulthood we imagined as children and the adulthood that becomes our reality. The eleven-track album explores anxiety, identity, relationships, loss, friendship, purpose, and the realization that growing older rarely follows a straight line.
Best Ex’s new single/video “Living In Hell” is out now. Her sophomore album Good Girl will be released on November 6, 2026 via Iodine Recordings.
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