The Feeling You Can’t Quite Name

"Everything Is Embarrassing" arrived in 2012 like a song that already knew it was going to outlast its moment. Dev Hynes produced it, and his fingerprints are all over the thing—that warm, slightly woozy synthpop production, the beat floating just behind where you expect it. But it’s Sky Ferreira’s voice that makes it work: a half-detached delivery that turns a fairly straightforward lyric about romantic humiliation into something more interesting, an inventory of all the ways caring about someone makes you feel exposed. I’ve had this song on more playlists than I can count, each time for a different reason. It doesn’t wear out.