Lily Allen and Tate McRae revive the revenge anthem

November 4, 2025·34 min·3 clips

Tate McRae's revenge track is a direct response to Kid LAROI's breakup song 'A Cold Play'.

Revenge begins as an etiquette problem. Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding open with the old line that living well is the best revenge, then poke at whether pop songs buy it. The answer, naturally, comes with receipts. The episode treats revenge anthems as a pop habit that keeps coming back, partly because refusal can turn into a musical counterpunch so cleanly. Tate McRae wins the round. Her track becomes a tiny courtroom, with the line about not being about someone landing as denial, accusation, and victory lap at the same time. Then the theory talk kicks in. Tempo, eerie color, and an appoggiatura lead Charlie toward a similarity that Nate does not hear at first. That gap becomes the joke. The show keeps the technical language loose by making it feel physical, like something Charlie needs to get out before the next chorus hits. David Lynch somehow wanders in. The link is not treated like hard proof, more like a Lynchian hunch where dangling, ghastly details make the listener infer meaning from mood. Coldplay gets pulled in too, which should feel ridiculous, but the fast back-and-forth makes it sound normal inside this little pop lab. The sharpest bit is still Tate. When the pre-chorus turns into song-for-song combat, the analysis hears a narrator insisting she did not want the mud while enjoying the chart position anyway. Number 29 becomes the punchline. The Billboard detail matters because revenge here is emotional release, public scoreboard, and a smirk tucked inside the hook. Then Charlie builds the conspiracy board, hears Tate's spoken phrasing brush against Kid LAROI's opening line in "Stay," asks for the X-Files theme, and turns a tiny melodic resemblance into gleefully flimsy evidence.

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