From the album King of Having Fun
This is someone convincing themselves they've moved on while accidentally proving they haven't. The entire song builds toward defining 'alright' and 'fine' as lies you tell when you're not okay, then ends by saying exactly those words on a loop. They think they're calling out the ex's fakeness but they're just describing their own.
I thought you were chill, but you weren't / You were checking your neck all the time
The complaint makes no sense until you realize 'checking your neck' means looking over your shoulder, scanning for exits. The narrator needed their partner to be effortless and unbothered because any visible anxiety would reveal how much emotional labor this thing actually required.
Alright is the perfect way to say / I'm not doing okay, I'm fine / Is the last thing that I would say
They define the euphemism with total clarity, naming exactly how people disguise pain as casual okayness. It's a self-aware move that makes the outro's endless repetition of those same words even more brutal.
Yeah, you treat me like a stray that you mind / Hey, I was just an axe you could grind
The metaphors get concrete and mean. A stray you 'mind' is an obligation you tolerate but never wanted. An axe you grind is a complaint you sharpen. Both images land on the same truth: they were never a person to this ex, just a function.
I'm fine / I'm alright / I'm fine / Alright
After spending the whole song proving these words mean the opposite of what they say, the narrator ends by chanting them like a mantra. It might be self-soothing or it might be the joke finally landing on them. Either way, they're doing exactly what they said they wouldn't.
The song's smartest move is how completely it undercuts itself. You spend three minutes watching someone dismantle their ex's phoniness, then realize the narrator is just as trapped in performance. The outro doesn't resolve anything. It just loops the lie until it becomes white noise.
"Chill" by Medium Build constructs a portrait of someone insisting they've moved past a relationship while inadvertently revealing they haven't, according to Scalpel's line-by-line analysis. The song builds toward exposing "alright" and "fine" as lies people tell when struggling, then ends by repeating those exact words on loop, turning the speaker's attempt to call out their ex's inauthenticity into an unintentional confession of their own denial.
"Chill" by Medium Build explores needing them to be low-stakes, defining the lie while telling it, being used without realizing it, and recovery that contradicts itself. The central thread is needing them to be low-stakes: The obsession with whether the ex was 'chill' or 'cool' reveals the narrator's desperate need for the relationship to feel casual and easy, protecting them from admitting how much they actually invested. These themes come from Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of the lyrics.
"Chill" by Medium Build was released on September 4, 2026 on the album "King of Having Fun". Scalpel's analysis covers the full lyrics of the 2026 release.
Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of "Chill" by Medium Build lands here: The song's smartest move is how completely it undercuts itself. You spend three minutes watching someone dismantle their ex's phoniness, then realize the narrator is just as trapped in performance.