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Sometimes, the person you’re arguing with is someone who used to know you better than almost anyone.
Sometimes, the trouble is a smiling face you trusted, a story that keeps changing, or the growing suspicion that you’re being cast as the villain for finally saying how you feel about something.
Sometimes, the most compelling antagonist isn’t the person who openly opposes you. It’s the person whose influence you don’t realize you should be questioning.
Sometimes, manipulation doesn’t feel like hostility. Sometimes, it feels like someone patiently explaining why you shouldn’t trust your own judgment.
And sometimes, after you’ve made a convincing case against everyone else, a song asks an inconvenient question about you.
After putting together We Are Ever Helpless: Songs That Haunt Us on Halloween and Beyond, I kept thinking about all those scary creatures. That got me thinking about bad guys, enemies and villains, and thinking that could make a compelling soundtrack playlist, I started looking for songs that fit. But then I saw an advertisement for Dexter: Resurrection, and the question began to change.
Dexter gives us the peculiar experience of rooting for someone we know is a serial killer. Harry’s Code gives him rules for choosing his victims, and those rules give the audience something to hold on to. I mean, who wouldn’t want despicable people to just disappear? We understand Dexter’s reasoning. But how far does that understanding carry us before we start making excuses for him?
I’m drawn to that uncertainty in other stories, too: Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul, or Walter White becoming more invested in his own importance as Breaking Bad unfolds. Charm, intelligence, and understandable motives can keep us watching long after we’ve begun questioning the choices.
That’s also what interests me about Carol Sturka, the Joined, and the Collective in Pluribus (where the Joined represent the individuals and the Collective is the hive mind they become). The Collective’s version of benevolence can be unsettling: if everyone insists they want you to be happy, how do you explain that the way they’re helping feels like control? Carol recognized the Collective’s, and it ticked her off! So she challenged them, even when maybe it wasn’t in her best interest. Similarly, I’m reminded of Lumon in Severance, where reassurance and a carefully managed sense of purpose can make control look like care.
I loved Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul, and Carol is a very different character. But both performances make it difficult to settle into a comfortable judgment. Looking at Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Pluribus, and even my affection for The X-Files, I began to wonder whether Vince Gilligan was a bigger part of the connection than I’d realized. All of those shows gave me reasons to question whose account I believe. Although they aren’t Gilligan shows, Dexter and Severance belong in this conversation for similar reasons.
The songs in this playlist move through those different perspectives, from broken trust to the stories we tell to justify ourselves. By the end, the attention turns toward the narrator. After all that time identifying the enemy, there’s the uncomfortable possibility that we’ve left ourselves out of the account.
We Used to Be Friends — The Dandy Warhols (2003)
If you recognize this as the theme from Veronica Mars, there’s already another television connection in our opening song. But the story behind it is a good reminder to question what we think we’re hearing.
In a Best New Bands interview, Courtney Taylor-Taylor explained that the song grew out of a misunderstanding with his childhood friend Mark. Taylor-Taylor had declined an opportunity to speak to him on the phone while occupied with a serious conversation. Mark took that as a sign Taylor-Taylor was angry with him and stopped getting in touch. Years later, over dinner, they discovered what had happened.
That changes how I hear the song’s breezy confidence. What sounds like a dismissive account of a former friendship has a much sadder misunderstanding behind it. Nobody needed to declare the other person an enemy. An assumption went uncorrected, and the silence did the rest.
It gives us a useful place to begin: before deciding who was wrong, we might ask whether both people even know the same story.
Smiling Faces Sometimes — The Undisputed Truth (1971)
Once trust breaks, even familiar gestures can become difficult to read. Was that kindness sincere? Was the encouragement real? How much of what you believed depended on taking someone at face value?
The Undisputed Truth brings suspicion into the room without needing to shout. The groove draws you in while the warning makes you watch your step. That combination matters: something can feel welcoming and still carry a threat.
Placed after “We Used to Be Friends,” this becomes the moment of looking backward and wondering what you missed. The danger is believing every smile. The other danger is reaching the point where you can’t believe any of them.
Not Love — Margo Mann (2026)
Someone who seems to have the answers can be remarkably persuasive, especially when they’re explaining what you haven’t yet learned about yourself.
Mann has described writing “Not Love” after a relationship with someone who considered himself more spiritually enlightened than she was. His claim prompted her to question how supposed enlightenment could conceal a less admirable attitude toward women.
That’s a much more interesting kind of friction than open hostility. The appeal is part of the problem: an attractive explanation can make someone’s sense of superiority harder to recognize. Here, “Not Love” becomes the moment of questioning the person who seems so certain they understand you.
It takes us back to the question underneath Pluribus and Severance: what happens when someone’s confidence that they know best leaves little room for your own judgment?
What the Hell — Asha Jefferies (2026)
Now the questions become less polite.
Jefferies has described this song as occupying the space between forgiveness and resentment, with a desire for someone’s actions and words to agree. That tension gives it a useful place here. You can want to forgive someone and still be bewildered by what they’re doing. Saying you forgive them doesn’t make the contradictory behavior easier to understand.
There’s room for exasperation in this soundtrack. We don’t always greet a damaged relationship with hard-won wisdom. Sometimes, we’re still trying to get a straight answer, and the question comes out exactly this bluntly.
Good Person — Dillon Jo (2026)
This is where the argument starts happening inside someone, too.
On Dillon Jo’s own account, the song concerns growing apart, leaving with good intentions, and carrying guilt when there’s no closure. You wonder whether the other person thinks badly of you, then begin questioning yourself. The melodic guitar and heavier distortion give that uncertainty a musical shape.
What struck me was the duality in the sound. I hear a battle in it — the kind of internal conflict that can happen when you love someone whose behavior is hurting themselves or other people. You can care about them and be angry with them. You can recognize something good in a person and still be unable to live with what they’re doing.
That’s my interpretation, rather than the artist’s stated subject. And for me, it’s why this song belongs here. The changing sound lets those competing feelings occupy the same space without making either one disappear.
Calm Down — Eilis Frawley (2026)
Our private arguments don’t happen in a quiet world. There’s always another opinion, another notification, another account of events that seems designed to confirm what we already think.
Frawley’s explanation of “Calm Down” concerns that crowded information landscape: who gets our attention, who shapes what we see, and whether we’re choosing our beliefs or absorbing what we’re given. Its spoken delivery and intricate percussion bring a different texture to the playlist, with unease beneath the apparent composure.
Here, I hear it as a pause in the rush to certainty. Before choosing another enemy, it might be worth asking who supplied the story. Before answering every provocation, we might let one pass without a response.
Does She Know — Bekka Dowland (2026)
Dowland brings us back to a specific, personal betrayal: realizing you’ve become the other person in someone else’s relationship. In discussing the song, she emphasizes recognizing your worth and having enough self-respect to leave a messy situation.
That perspective complicates the easy version of an enemy song. The woman in the title isn’t necessarily the adversary. She may be another person missing an important part of the truth.
After so much uncertainty about who to trust, this song makes the withheld information matter. Someone gets to maintain an appealing version of themselves while other people live with the consequences. Walking away begins with seeing the arrangement clearly.
The Pretender — Jackson Browne (1976)
“The Pretender” changes the scale again. Browne’s song concerns ordinary life, compromised dreams, work, money, and the promises we make ourselves about what will finally be enough. Its character isn’t a secret criminal waiting to be exposed.
That’s part of its value here. An article about anti-heroes can become very comfortable if all its examples are people most of us will never resemble. This song brings the question closer: what happens when the life we’re performing drifts away from what we once believed?
The fuller, longer song also gives the sequence room to breathe before the next song. We leave the particular betrayal and spend some time with self-deception — the kind that doesn’t require a dramatic confrontation to take hold.
bad guy — Billie Eilish (2019)
After all that pretending, here comes someone trying on the role with a grin.
Eilish’s low-key delivery makes the bravado feel playful, even ridiculous. The song has fun with toughness and the business of convincing somebody you’re more dangerous than they are. Then the change into its slower, heavier ending alters the atmosphere. The performance takes on a different weight.
For this soundtrack, that makes “bad guy” a useful hinge. We’ve heard people defending their goodness; now someone enjoys claiming the opposite. But enjoying the costume and understanding the consequences are different things.
Duh.
MONSTER — BABY B (2026)
The playful bravado of “bad guy” gives way to something more unsettling here: having someone else decide who you are. Being called the monster can eventually make you doubt your own understanding of what happened.
In an interview about the song, BABY B describes being repeatedly characterized as unreasonable, reacting in anger, and then having that reaction used against her. Her account centers on reclaiming her perspective after emotional abuse, including being condemned for defending herself, and setting boundaries.
BABY B also names Helen Lewis’s Difficult Women as an inspiration in that interview. The connection fits here: Who gets called difficult for refusing to accept the role someone else has assigned them?
That distinction matters. This isn’t a confession of becoming the destructive person someone says you are. It’s an examination of what happens when another person controls the narrative long enough for you to start believing it.
This is where Carol Sturka comes back to mind. Her refusal to welcome the Collective’s help can make her seem like the difficult — and even frustrating — one. As a viewer, I’m interested in that imbalance: the people defining the situation also get to decide whose response is reasonable.
Seehorn puts part of that ambiguity into words in a GamesRadar interview. Discussing the Others’ recreation of a diner meaningful to Carol, she says, “It is both manipulative and kind at the same time.” Her point complicates the choice Carol is trying to make: perhaps identifying one quality doesn’t mean the other is absent.
Both things can be true.
BABY B names Helen Lewis’s Difficult Women as an inspiration for “MONSTER.” Follow that connection into a history of women whose refusal to accept their assigned roles helped change what came next.
Villain — Stella Jang (2020)
Stella Jang widens the question. We’re good at understanding our own reasons. Other people’s motives can look much simpler from a distance.
“Villain” challenges that tidy division between the good people and the bad ones. Its lightness makes the challenge easier to welcome, even as the song unsettles the listener’s certainty. You can enjoy its wit before noticing that you’re included in the question.
Following “MONSTER,” it opens another perspective without erasing the harm described there. Recognizing that people are complicated doesn’t make everyone equally responsible. It does ask us to look carefully before treating our preferred version of the story as the complete one.
That’s an important turn toward the ending: we can question the labels without giving up the ability to recognize damage.
Don’t Be My Enemy — Wang Chung (1983)
There’s a difference between no longer having a place in someone’s life and becoming someone they need to tear down. The narrator once had a part in this person’s plans. Now, being left behind has become something more punishing.
I hear the chorus as a plea for recognition: can you see what your behavior is doing to me? It doesn’t demand that everything return to the way it was. It asks whether the relationship has to become this cruel.
After all the questions about who gets called the villain, this song brings us back to the person living with the consequences. Whatever story you’re telling about me, I’m still here, and this hurts.
Keep listening with Wang Chung’s Points on the Curve, the album behind “Don’t Be My Enemy.” This vinyl edition brings that plea for recognition back to the turntable.
Anti-Hero — Taylor Swift (2022)
Our final song turns the attention toward the person telling the story. The greeting sounds casual, almost cheerful. By the time we reach it, though, it carries a more uncomfortable recognition: I’m in this story, too.
There’s humor in “Anti-Hero,” but recognizing yourself in the joke can make it sting. Its bright pop surface gives us something easy to sing while the self-examination is considerably less comfortable. After a playlist full of questions about other people, that change in direction feels earned.
Swift has described “Anti-Hero” as an unusually detailed exploration of her insecurities. There’s vulnerability in questioning yourself, especially when it’s difficult to separate an honest assessment from your own harshest judgments.
Walter White has spent much of his story protecting himself from that kind of scrutiny. His certainty and self-justification make his eventual honesty striking. These are very different stories, but both bring me back to the difficulty of seeing yourself clearly.
*A spoiler for the ending of Breaking Bad follows.*
I remember Walter White dying somewhat nobly — and “somewhat” matters. He doesn’t undo the damage he’s caused, but there’s a little honesty at the end, a little humanity beneath all that arrogance. Maybe an anti-hero’s final turn doesn’t have to be redemption. Maybe it begins with finally admitting who he’s been.
That’s the distinction I want to leave with. Admitting your part doesn’t repair everything. It doesn’t make someone else’s harmful behavior your fault, either. But it can interrupt the certainty that has kept you from seeing yourself clearly.
The question we asked about the Joined comes back around. Have I been so sure I knew what was best that I stopped listening? Have I called it kindness when I wanted control, or principle when I couldn’t bear to lose? Somewhere in the story about what everyone else has done, there has to be room for an honest account of me.
Return to Walter White’s story from its uneasy beginning to its devastating end. The complete series on Blu-ray gives you time to reconsider his choices—and the reasons you kept rooting for him.
We began with someone who used to be a friend. Along the way, the enemy became harder to define: a deceiver, a performance, a story we were fed, a label somebody attached to us, or a part of ourselves we’d rather leave out.
You don’t have to forgive every hurt to recognize how much of your attention it still claims. You don’t have to become the villain someone describes. And you can examine your own choices while holding other people responsible for theirs.
Maybe that’s what these songs offer together: enough distance to hear another perspective, and enough honesty to recognize when it might be your own.
