Synth Single Review: “Toxic” by Hollywood Brown

by Karl Magi

Hollywood Brown’s “Toxic” explores a poisonous desire. The song opens with erupting drums and gnarly bass as an expanding synth surges outward and a fierce guitar slices through the music with commanding force. Hollywood Brown’s voice rings with anticipation while the beat accelerates and the bass coils tightly beneath it.

His performance brims with attitude and a classic rock sound pulling me inward as the guitar vaults upward with raging strength. The underpinnings continue to pound while he captures reckless longing. Slashing guitar notes provide a shredding counterpoint to throbbing drums and reverberant vocals soar above the howling strings as the bass growls below. The energy flooding the track mirrors the wild hunger within the lyrics.

The guitar solo unfolds in a blaze of airborne complexity, flashing with untethered madness while the vocals leap over the slamming beat. By the end, voice and guitar fuse into a wall of muscled force.

Each night as twilight falls, the narrator stares out his window and listens for the song’s subject, her “siren call build up to crescendo.” Her eyes glow like embers as she waits to be invited in. He asks himself, “Am I alive or am I dead?” knowing he may discover the answer before the night is through. “I always, always feel it in my veins. Are you even real, or have I gone insane?”

He knows her love is toxic, yet insists he will get over her. “Got me acting neurotic, it’s all that I can do,” he confesses. She has broken his heart in half; his “obsession is chronic,” but he swears he will move on. As the city lights fade, “I embrace the darkness” and he’s certain he hears her laugh while wondering if she will keep her promise.

Looking toward her, he sees hungry eyes before she drops her disguise. “I can’t see your reflection,” he realizes, trapped between desire and fear.