It’s 2026, and Hooray for our Side has come out swinging. The Orange County, California, pop-punk-ska band launched the year with their first new music in over 5 years: a vast new original studio single released on CD, accompanied by a live performance of 5 other great tracks. The latest single, “Better Off Gone,” is one hell of a mood setter for the new year.
The track begins with some horns that grab your attention, and for a half a second, you don’t notice the chords on the keys layered underneath, but it doesn’t take long to pick them up and start tapping your foot. The song is incredibly upbeat and happy, and the keys do a hell of a job creating that atmosphere with a jazzy pop rhythm that plays throughout. The vocal melodies don’t hold back when it comes to the catchy, upbeat rhythms; you almost don’t even notice that the song is talking about the insane hellscape that encompasses everything going on right now.
The catchy danceable rhythms and hella upbeat tempo are dancing around the overbearing sense of depression and the burden of just staying alive while wanting to fight an overbearing and racist backwards regime that controls almost every aspect of our life, and it’s way past time for that ideology to go. The tension and frustration of our present situation has been too much energy disrupting our human synergy, and it’s way past time for it to go. So grab your neighbors and your comrades, pick up your instruments, your dancing shoes, your pitchforks and tools, play your favorite songs, and usher them out the door.
The song really is a bit of an earworm; it’s catchy and cheerful, optimistic and fun, and familiar, and most importantly, a call to action. It’s essential to dance, to sing, to love, and to remember, we’re all in this together.
Written by Gimp Leg
