Welcome back, everyone, and happy Friday! I am excited to discuss the newest album from Taylor Zeager today. Taylor Zeager, an independent artist from Lancaster, PA., released their album “ZETA” on February 22nd of 2025. Melding post-punk and electronica, this album is entirely written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Zeager himself, taking about two years to complete. Let’s get right into it.
COMING OF AGE:
The opening track is an experimental, stream-of-consciousness piece that leans into abstraction, emotional vulnerability, and existential introspection. The song feels like a surreal, internal monologue set to music—one that captures the turbulence and fragmentation of early adulthood or mental/emotional upheaval. There's no traditional narrative arc or clean hook structure; instead, the piece prioritizes mood, metaphor, and internal logic. The opening lyrics “I don't know what I'm feeling right now, insides out, I can't tell what you're telling me to do” establish the speaker’s emotional disorientation. The phrase “insides out” captures both physical and emotional vulnerability. The ambiguity in communication hints at relational strain or internal confusion, potentially both. “ I'd sue for the rights to my mind but I could no longer find the fine, Shits going sideways up inside the ceiling fan” This section introduces surrealist language. The idea of suing “for the rights to my mind” speaks to a loss of agency, possibly due to anxiety, depression, or disassociation. The “ceiling fan” line is chaotic and disorienting. Life feels scrambled, spinning, and unstable.
“I'm cooking up more than you realize
Soaking
More than when I was
left by myself with the dog
In the ocean”
These lines fuse the personal with the poetic. “Cooking up more than you realize” could mean internal development like emotional growth, ideas, or pain. The memory of being left continues the loneliness theme, but also implies resilience, a nod to past survival.
“I don't wanna always talk about how I'm afraid to die
I wanna pull you into the story
I wanna take you on a journey”
This marks a pivot, both in tone and intention. The artist signals self-awareness, acknowledging the weight of existential themes and expressing a desire to transcend them. There’s a yearning for connection and narrative agency.
“The king is here
The king is here now
He's coming downtown”
The final lines are cryptic. “The king” might symbolize a new self, realization, or external authority. “Coming downtown” implies arrival, movement, confrontation, or change. It’s mythic, evoking a shift, perhaps that of the titular “coming of age.”
TOUR DE PAST:
This song is a moody, introspective track that explores memory, regret, identity, and existential repetition. The lyrics are impressionistic and emotionally raw, layered with cryptic metaphors and temporal dislocation. Like a fragmented dream or a psychological loop, the song cycles through self-awareness, confusion, and emotional fallout. Rather than offering a linear narrative, Zeager invites the listener on a mental tour through their emotional and psychological past, echoing themes of déjà vu, detachment, and internal conflict.
“Merchants I see walking down the same street
I believe I've been here before
This crude paved rock and brick laying beneath my feet
even enemies really can't be concrete”
These lines immediately introduce the theme of repetition and familiarity. The image of merchants suggests commerce, routine, or perhaps roles people play in society. The narrator is walking through a life that feels lived before, either literally or metaphorically. Zeager uses physical imagery to ground the listener in a rough environment. But this groundedness is undercut by the abstract line, “even enemies really can’t be concrete.” This suggests fluid identity, blurred lines between self and other, and a world where even antagonism feels insubstantial or illusory.
“I wish I could see better than everyone
I sometimes think that I could
caught in the rapture
I never get closure”
There’s a desire for superior insight, but also self-doubt. This duality, wanting to understand more, maybe even transcend, while being unsure of one's ability to do so, is a classic internal struggle, especially for artists or introspective thinkers. The use of “rapture” suggests an emotional or spiritual intensity, maybe even ecstasy, but it is fleeting and unresolved.
“Living within a life that doesn't feel like ours
I've always been alive
Repeating each and every one of these lines”
The final lines are steeped in dissociation. The speaker is alive but not living, as if trapped in a shell or simulation. “Repeating each and every one of these lines” underscores the song’s cyclical structure, where trauma or confusion loops infinitely. It also reflects the act of songwriting itself: revisiting, rewriting, and reliving. Much of the song explores not feeling grounded in one’s life or body. There’s a dreamlike, detached quality that suggests the speaker is observing rather than participating. This track is a powerful, introspective work that doesn’t try to make the listener comfortable. It’s less about storytelling and more about emotional geography. Walking down metaphorical streets paved with regret, identity confusion, and damaged memories. Taylor shows an impressive ability to balance abstraction with raw emotion, offering a song that feels personal but also eerily universal for anyone who's ever been stuck between who they were and who they’re trying to become.
SISYPHUS:
The track “SISYPHUS” is a cerebral, emotionally weighted exploration of repetition, communication breakdown, and existential futility, in which it is all framed through surreal and symbolic imagery. Taking its name from the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the song draws a clear parallel between modern emotional labor and the timeless burden of rolling a metaphorical stone uphill, over and over again. There is a strong blend of cryptic language, semi-coherent philosophical statements, and surreal visual references to create a piece that feels part fever dream and part of a quiet revelation.
“Sick as a dog
Walk it off
Gotta embrace empathy
Here with me”
This opening suggests emotional or physical exhaustion, brushed aside with the phrase “walk it off”, a dismissal that contrasts with the next line,“gotta embrace empathy.” It seems to be critiquing or highlighting the tension between suppression of suffering and the need for deeper emotional presence. There's an inner conflict between endurance and emotional openness.
“To communicate
Things you want
You gotta see to be
Consume data in sync with all
Of your pigeons they carry your
Messages no unsend”
This section dives into themes of modern communication, identity, and digital permanence. The phrase “see to be” feels like a play on “seeing is believing” mixed with “I think, therefore I am”, or the notion that perception defines existence. Consuming data in sync with all is a nod to the digital age, referencing social media or algorithm-driven connectivity. The pigeons evoke old-fashioned message carriers, symbolizing how our thoughts or intentions are cast out and can’t be retrieved. The phrase “no unsend” drives this home. Once you've expressed something (especially online or in a vulnerable moment), it’s out there forever, public and irreversible.
“Where the hell have I seen this before
Bright orange hat, dressed like a jester
With blonde hair, blue eyes yeah he looks like he'd enter Pandora's box for good”
Here, memory, myth, and absurdity intertwine. The “bright orange hat” and “jester” imagery conjure a chaotic, clownish figure, possibly referencing a specific person or archetype (maybe political, artistic, or personal). By saying he’d “enter Pandora’s box for good,” Zeager paints him as someone dangerously curious or recklessly self-destructive, seeking forbidden knowledge or chaos without caution. This could also be a critique of performative behavior; someone masking danger with comedy or absurdity, like a modern-day trickster. This closing lyric, “I've rolled that rock up that hill one too many times before”, ties the song’s philosophical and emotional wandering to Albert Camus’ interpretation of Sisyphus; a metaphor for the absurd human struggle. Repetition, emotional labor, trying to make meaning or connect in a fragmented world all become acts of rolling the rock. The repetition of “times before” emphasizes not just weariness, but entrapment in patterns, possibly emotional, behavioral, or societal. “SISYPHUS” is a compact, haunting exploration of emotional labor, modern communication, and existential absurdity. Taylor Zeager once again uses fragmented, layered language and cryptic metaphors to express the chaos of being alive in a world where nothing stays private, nothing makes perfect sense, and the weight of the past rolls back into the present. By the end, the listener is left with a quiet heaviness, the realization that self-awareness doesn’t always bring liberation, and that the burden we carry may not be escapable, but must be endured.
AWAKE:
This song is a candid, introspective unraveling of the modern psyche, restless, self-aware, and deeply human. The lyrics read like a mental journal entry at 3 am: fragmented, emotionally raw, and caught between existential insight and spiraling doubt. It blurs the line between recovery and regression, confidence and collapse, giving us a track that embodies the paradox of being awake, literally and metaphorically. The song weaves together personal struggle, philosophical musings, and a battle with intrusive thoughts, while still managing to maintain a strangely hopeful thread through emotional transparency.
“I don't know how to be comfortable
It's a time crunch it's a lost bunch
of words that I threw into a sentence
What I meant was that it's endless”
Right from the start, the narrator admits discomfort; not just physically, but emotionally and perhaps even spiritually. The time crunch could symbolize external pressure, while “a lost bunch of words” is a metaphor for miscommunication or inner confusion. The final line flips the idea of a crunch (finite, urgent) into a sense of perpetual unrest. “Just make sure the repetitive thoughts aren't the same ones holding you back” This is a direct confrontation with mental health cycles, intrusive thoughts, limiting beliefs, or depressive loops. The advice is straightforward but powerful: repetition doesn’t equal truth, and unchecked thought patterns can become self-sabotaging.
“I just need a little bit of time
I'm doing fine, I've been actually splendid
The confidence I've been expanding on
I cannot know no wrong”
There’s an almost sarcastic optimism here. Phrases like “I’m doing fine” and “actually splendid” feel like they're trying too hard, while “I cannot know no wrong” (a double negative) plays into a mock-invincibility, perhaps masking fragility with bravado.
“Man I'm so fucked up in the head
Every time I still think I'm alive
I have to come to and realize
That this is the end and I guess we're still friends”
This section is the emotional breaking point. The contrast between “I’m splendid” and “I’m so fucked up in the head” is jarring but intentional. The façade of stability collapses and dives into the confusing coexistence of vitality and despair. The relationship reference implies an ending, maybe romantic, maybe platonic, but one that didn’t bring the closure hoped for.
“But it's just a bit too finite for me
A bit egotistical but I still have feelings though
A subject to disciples of a human condition
I know you're still wishing”
This becomes more abstract. “Too finite for me” may refer to endings or boundaries. Calling oneself “a subject to disciples of a human condition” is deeply philosophical; it suggests powerlessness in the face of collective emotional suffering. There’s a tension between ego and empathy, between individual pain and shared human fragility.
“That you could just pull off an all-nighter
Break out the booze and partake the lighter
I know that you know it's not true
But I question myself in this world
How about you?”
The ending turns toward nostalgia and reckless escape. “All-nighter" "booze" and "lighter” conjure images of coping mechanisms, social, hedonistic, but ultimately hollow. The final couplet ties it all together beautifully shifts the emotional burden to the listener. It’s a subtle yet intimate move that implicates us in the questioning of self, reality, and meaning. Rather than offering neat conclusions or tidy choruses, Zeager leaves us in the same uncertainty he sings from. And in doing so, he achieves something rare: a song that feels painfully real in its contradictions.
IN BETWEEN:
Hitting the perfect middle of the album at track five out of nine, we have “IN BETWEEN”, a short instrumental song with the inclusion of a brief spoken-word sample from the Twilight Zone Episode “It’s a Good Life”. The instrumental starts off with a distant, fuzzy guitar riff that (I couldn’t help but point out the similarity) greatly resembles the song “Dumpweed” by blink-182. I’m not sure if that was an intentional nod or not, but I had to point it out because when I first heard this track, I was instantly reminded of what it felt like to be fourteen years old truly believing that music couldn’t get any better than “Enema of The State” (cringe). About twenty seconds in, there is an out-of-key guitar strum and then what sounds like multiple layers of guitar all playing entirely different songs. For anyone that records music, it sounds like a bunch of outtakes of guitar that have all been spread out and layered on top of each other, giving off a very unnatural and uncomfortable vibe. It feels uncanny, and it is “technically” wrong from a music theory standpoint, but that is entirely the point. After another thirty, or so, seconds of these instruments clashing, we are greeted with the Twilight Zone narration sample. It goes as follows:
“Tonight's story on the Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States and there's a little town there called Peaksville. On a given morning not too long ago the rest of the world disappeared and Peaksville was left all alone. Its inhabitants were never sure whether the world was destroyed and only Peaksville left untouched, or whether the village had somehow been taken away. They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing. The cause. A monster had arrived in the village.”
On a surface level, the narration sets up a story about a town isolated from the rest of the world by an inexplicable force. But at a deeper level, it introduces ideas of isolation, reality distortion, psychological captivity, and internalized fear which resonate thematically and emotionally with the lyricism throughout “ZETA”.
BLEED:
Track six is a raw, emotionally visceral track that peels back the layers of identity, anxiety, and disassociation with unflinching honesty. The lyrics read like a journal entry in the middle of a breakdown, unfiltered, poetic, and deeply human. Centered on the desire to escape oneself, it captures the sensation of mental collapse with chilling accuracy. It’s a portrait of someone lost inside their own mind, longing to be seen, yet alienated even from their own body. The opening lyrics establish the song’s emotional core: self-rejection. It's not just a wish to change, but a full-on desire to escape identity. This kind of statement resonates with people struggling with depression, identity dysphoria, or chronic anxiety; the sense that the self is the root of pain.
“You ever feel like you've been wandering?
Through the wind chimed patterned ostinato silence
Searching for some reason to be seen
While you sit and linger at some spot in a serene place”
This stanza is especially poetic and layered. “Wandering” implies aimlessness and loss. “Wind chimed patterned ostinato silence” is a standout phrase. Ostinato is a musical term for a repeated motif, used here to metaphorically describe a repetitive, almost meditative (yet unsettling) silence. It evokes a looping mental state, like intrusive thoughts masked as tranquility. The contrast between being in a “serene place” and still “searching to be seen” suggests inner disquiet in the face of external peace, a hallmark of internalized emotional conflict. This repeated line “my mind is playing tricks on me” works as a refrain and emotional checkpoint. It’s a recognition of dissociation or cognitive dissonance, common in experiences of trauma or mental illness. It also breaks up the verses rhythmically, adding a structural mirror to the chaos being described.
“You ever sit and wonder?
Awkward silence
Being social ain't paint by numbers”
This line flips expectations; social connection isn’t formulaic. "Paint by numbers" implies simplicity and structure; the narrator is expressing how being social can feel like improvising without a guide, especially when burdened by self-consciousness or anxiety. “Feeling like you're too weird, is it me that's too much?” These lines highlight classic impostor syndrome or neurodivergent introspection. The speaker wrestles with feeling out of place, but in a self-aware, vulnerable way. The line “you tell yourself you’re an artist” stings. It might be ironic, defiant, or a desperate self-justification. There's an undertone of creative self-doubt, wondering if the suffering has meaning, if art is a shield or a scar.
“My brain is bleeding I can't see
Even a look is impossible
My feet can't seethe the ground
I'm laying on the floor
And I can hardly breathe”
This is the emotional climax of the song. The metaphor of a bleeding brain evokes overwhelm, emotional hemorrhage, and collapse. The body is failing, sight, breath, touch, presence are breaking down. The speaker has reached a full-body expression of psychological pain.
“My individual parts feel
That it is fair and who am I?
I am inside my mind
I don't exist in my skin anymore”
This closing stanza signals disassociation, a mind-body split. The speaker is so consumed by internal chaos that they no longer feel like they inhabit their own body. They’re fragmented, alienated from both physical presence and identity. The question “Who am I?” isn't rhetorical here, it’s devastatingly sincere. This song is a haunting, deeply confessional track that pulls no punches in its portrayal of mental breakdown. Here was crafted a piece that feels simultaneously poetic and painfully real, using imagery that transcends cliché and speaks directly to those who’ve lived with alienation, anxiety, or inner fragmentation. Where many songs seek to comfort, “BLEED” seeks to witness, to put raw emotion on display in a way that’s unflinching, uncomfortable, and necessary.
INTO THE TREES:
This is the longest track on the album, and I’d like to share a tidbit of information that Taylor offered me when submitting the lyrics for this album: this song is intended to be two songs combined. I will pinpoint when the switch takes place lyrically, but if you listen to the song itself, it is pretty obvious when “INTO THE TREES (pt 2)” is meant to start. This song functions as a two-part psychological descent, or a confrontation, with self-deception, addiction, vulnerability, and the illusion of progress. This track offers an unfiltered view of inner chaos, laced with poetic surrealism and raw self-awareness. It reads like entries from a personal manifesto or confessional diary, where introspection slips into confrontation, and grief folds into angry clarity. If “BLEED” and “AWAKE” were emotional implosions, “INTO THE TREES” is the slow burn collapse, followed by the scorched-earth aftermath.
“Moving out again I wonder where I left that stupid pen again
I've gotta write and find this check
My last regret is unpaid debt”
This opening grounds us in the mundane, a lost pen, a missed check, but what’s really being explored is mental disorganization, emotional burden, and the lingering weight of regret (both financial and emotional).
“Fall apart again
It's all only in your mind
This chemical imbalance could be why you're oh so fragile”
Here, Zeager confronts mental illness head-on, referencing chemical imbalance in a brutally self-aware tone. The mention of fragility isn’t self-pitying, it’s diagnostic, almost clinical.
“But I know what you did in the dark
I was peeping through the covers
You didn't know that I saw you”
A jarring shift into voyeurism or revelation; this could represent a betrayal, hidden behavior, or trauma. The act of watching through the covers blends themes of intimacy, secrecy, and paranoia. It's confrontational and loaded with tension. “Colorful and mystic as art, there ain’t no way of hiding it”. Here, it blurs admiration and accusation. The person (or memory) he refers to is “mystic as art”, alluring, abstract, maybe even beautiful, but what they did can't be hidden. This duality is common in Taylor’s writing: beauty and damage, reverence and rage. “Taking pills to make it dimmer, but there’s always gonna be a light on at the park” captures the futility of numbing pain. Even with medication, the park, a metaphor for memory, the past, or an emotional landmark, remains lit, alive, and undeniable. The pain can’t be erased, only blurred.
“Swimming in the ocean
Amicably soaking
Sitting on a curbside”
These repeated dreamlike images occur again in the latter half. The ocean represents emotional immersion or even dissociation. The curbside and swimming are metaphors for waiting, wandering, coping, and maybe being stuck between movement and stasis. The cryptic closing line, “I'm thinking you should lock the front door” implies a threat or a warning; a need for protection or closure. It could also be metaphorical: lock yourself in, protect yourself from outside, or inner forces. This is when the change over to part 2 takes place.
I’m done
With everything
That makes me
Wanna tie it in to a motive”
This is the rejection of introspection, a furious denial of meaning-making. The speaker’s exhausted by trying to rationalize or frame pain. That exhaustion turns into rage, “either quiet down or get the fuck out”. This abrupt aggression could be aimed at an inner voice, another person, or the listener. The tone is fed-up, defensive, pushing everything and everyone away.
“Cry again
oh well I’ve lost my fucking mind
This idiot transcended to be this way forever”
The "idiot" here is both an insult and a transformation. To transcend into madness is a tragic kind of evolution. The narrator seems to realize they may never return to who they once were. “I know what you did in the dark, I was hiding under covers you were gripping at me” is a near-identical repeat of the Part 1 reference, but now it’s more vivid, physical, and traumatic. This could reference abuse, emotional manipulation, or an overwhelming moment of vulnerability turned violent or violated. “I can’t get anything down, this shit I’ve done has knocked me off the crown” is the destruction of ego. The crown suggests past confidence or status, now reduced to guilt and disillusionment.
“If I get too cocky undeserving
I will get my stupid fucking ass kicked
By the drugs I’m far too comfortable with”
These lines cut deep; the narrator implicates himself in his own self-sabotage, acknowledging addiction or dependency, and how easily it reclaims him when pride creeps in. “Gain the truth that my girl is never not right”. A sobering conclusion. After all the chaos, all the anger, the speaker lands on a moment of clarity: someone was trying to help. The admission comes too late, but it’s some of the most humanizing lines of the song. This track digs into the marrow of emotional decay; where self-reflection curdles into self-loathing, and clarity is bought only after collapse. But beneath all the anger and surrealism is a quiet, painful truth: the narrator wants to change, but can’t outrun himself. This is not sad indie music for aesthetic’s sake, it is closer to emotional documentation, chronicling the moment a person slips from reflection into reckoning.
TWINNING:
“TWINNING” is a compact but emotionally volatile piece that reads like a psychic collision between identities, regrets, and existential fatigue. In barely over a dozen lines, it covers deep terrain of depression, self-image, violence, mythic struggle, and the desire for liberation from internal suffering. This song’s brevity is deceptive; it functions like a pressure cooker of pain, identity confusion, and quiet rebellion. It's a poetic snapshot of a soul caught in flux, between genders, between personas, between survival and surrender. “I don't wanna be afraid, but I keep wishing that I could breathe”. These opening lines immediately introduce anxiety and emotional suffocation. The juxtaposition of not wanting fear, but still wishing for breath, shows a tension between will and capability; wanting calm, but lacking the physiological and emotional tools to access it. “A gasp of air, a broken fist” The contrast of fragility (air) and violence (fist) sets a combative emotional tone. The gasp of air may represent a desperate moment of clarity or relief; the broken fist is both literal and symbolic of self-harm, repressed rage, or conflict with the self or others. “The shit slides inside, I'll take a hit”. This line is visceral, maybe even grotesque. Shit sliding in could refer to overwhelming negativity, trauma, or addictive behavior. “I'll take a hit” evokes both physical impact and drug use, suggesting a resigned relationship to pain. “I can't even bear to reread all the lines”, whether referring to lyrics, text messages, journal entries, or past conversations, this line emphasizes emotional exhaustion. The speaker can’t bear to look back, perhaps because doing so would validate pain, shame, or mistakes. “The sycophant, who's sick of it” is an important shift: “sycophant” suggests someone who conforms or flatters others out of fear or need for approval. But this sycophant is “sick of it”, fed up with playing a part, bowing down, or being false. It introduces a theme of identity rebellion. “A girl who can't, a boy who is” could be interpreted multiple ways, but it deeply evokes gender duality or dysphoria. The girl who can’t (exist, express, survive?) and the boy who is (confident, real, visible?) form a poetic contrast. This line cuts to the heart of invisible identity, a possible trans or nonbinary reading, or simply a fractured sense of self across traditional gender roles. “Every single thing he'll ever wanna be” feels like a recognition of projected identity, the boy is becoming (or already is) what the speaker aspires to. There’s an envy, perhaps even a grief, in this line. It could be a dual self, or a romantic entanglement, or both. “A broken heart and busted lips”. The narrator collapses emotional and physical trauma into a brutal image. The broken heart is classic grief. The busted lips may refer to violence, the aftereffects of a fight, literal or metaphorical. The speaker is battered inside and out. “A tragic end for our Sisyphus” This is the line that reframes the whole song. Calling it a “tragic end” implies a break in the cycle, or perhaps the collapse of the effort to keep pushing. It’s either a release or a death, but either way, it's final. “Can you conjure up the courage just to take this”. This line speaks to the listener, or possibly the speaker himself. “Take this” may refer to a painful truth, the burden of love, or the weight of identity. It’s a plea, a dare, and a moment of confrontation. “I don't wanna be afraid, but I keep wishing that I could breathe” The song closes where it started, underlining that nothing has changed. The cycle of fear, yearning, suffocation remains, but the repetition now feels heavier, having been reframed by everything in between. A devastating, compact song that captures the pain of living between selves, between emotions, between identities. Taylor Zeager once again wields poetic density and mythological resonance to personalize pain without glorifying it. This is a song about not knowing who you are, and grieving every version of yourself that you’re not allowed to become.
CHANGE:
We have unfortunately reached the end of the album, but not without one final track to tie it all together. This ending track captures the deeply disorienting experience of trying to become a better version of oneself while still being haunted by the weight of past behaviors, intrusive thoughts, and existential disconnection. It’s a concise but potent exploration of self-awareness, psychological tension, and the illusion of transformation. “I don't really act like that anymore”. The song opens with a statement of change, but it's already defensive and uncertain. The phrasing with "really" and "anymore" implies that the speaker used to act in a problematic way, they're not sure how much they've actually changed, they're maybe trying to convince themselves as much as others.
“I'm just tryna keep my head from going under
Clearly manifesting my enemies
In every single thing I do
Is it coming through”
This introduces a classic drowning metaphor, trying to stay afloat mentally or emotionally. This line conveys desperation more than confidence. It's not about thriving; it's about barely surviving. A powerful admission. The narrator acknowledges that his inner conflict has led to projecting paranoia or antagonism outward. “Manifesting my enemies” suggests seeing threats where there are none, letting trauma dictate perception, being at war with the self and blaming it on the outside world. There is a deeply honest reflection on how mental health issues, especially anxiety or PTSD, can twist reality. The question stops the flow. It’s a plea. Is the message landing? Does anyone see the effort behind the mask? It signals doubt, vulnerability, and a longing for validation. “Alarms going off inside of my head, I cant member what the fuck I just said”. Classic anxiety imagery. This suggests the speaker’s brain is in a constant state of fight-or-flight, unable to relax or process clearly. It's an urgent, chaotic image that communicates overwhelm. Forgetfulness here is not casual, it’s cognitive burnout. It suggests a mind too saturated with stress to function properly.
“Brain may melt
Then you'll wake up
Find yourself
In disgust”
This is the emotional crash. The speaker anticipates complete mental collapse followed by a moment of clarity that feels worse than the breakdown itself. Waking up in disgust implies regret, embarrassment, and shame for actions during moments of mental distress There’s a recurring theme here; the cyclical nature of pain: the build-up, the breakdown, and the gut-punch of waking up to your own damage. “With what I see I'm taking in the view, but something's not right” offers a calm beat of observation. The speaker sees the world again, maybe from outside the storm. But “something’s not right” suggests an unshakeable disconnect, a subtle form of dissociation or emotional alienation. “It's always been, but never is” is a brilliant paradox to close on. This line encapsulates the whole track. Something has always felt wrong, but it's also never quite tangible enough to name. It's elusive discomfort, the shadow that follows but never faces you directly. This final line is haunting, suggesting that even in change, certainty and peace remain out of reach. “CHANGE” is not a song about triumph; it is a song about emotional exhaustion in the midst of effort. Taylor Zeager resists the easy narrative of self-improvement and instead dives into the murky, painful space between who you were and who you're trying to become. The honesty here is painful, but essential. It’s a reminder that for many people, change doesn’t feel like clarity, it feels like confusion, fatigue, and discomfort, with no guarantee that you’ve left the worst behind. It is far from a linear upward improvement, there are peaks and valleys constantly, and there is an extreme urgency for consistent effort, an effort that often goes unnoticed by outsiders. Attempting to change and break bad habits takes hard work that can sometimes feel monotonous, almost as if you need to constantly remind yourself to breathe.
“ZETA” by Taylor Zeager is not an album that offers resolution. It is a brutally honest chronicle of the liminal space between collapse and healing. It speaks for those trapped in emotional patterns they’re aware of but can’t escape. It's about not trusting your progress, not recognizing your reflection, and not knowing which voice in your head is telling the truth. In a culture that often sugarcoats vulnerability, “ZETA” is raw, non-linear, and uncomfortably real. It’s a mirror held up to the mind in its most haunted, honest, and human form.
Thank you all for reading! “ZETA” is most certainly not an album for everyone, no one is going to lie to you and say this is always the easiest to listen to, between the baffling and absurd lyricism and the weird experimental instrumentation, but if you’re willing to give it a shot, there is a lot to unpack and sink your teeth into! Check out “ZETA” by Taylor Zeager, as well as his other music HERE!
( https://linktr.ee/taylorzeager )
