From 'PIXELATED KISSES' to 'If It Only Gets Better': A First Peek into Joji’s Piss in the Wind

I’m taking a small break from writing about the usual chaos of the metal and rock scene to sit with something, let’s say, a little softer, something that breathes instead of breaks. Joji, an artist I had so longed to come back, has FINALLY returned. When "PIXELATED KISSES" dropped, it felt like hearing Joji down an alleyway: distant + beautiful in that fractured way he’s always mastered. The track was pure nostalgia drowning in static: love that once existed now replaying like a glitching memory, fading and restarting but never landing clean (or at least that’s what some of us have gotten from it). It was digital heartbreak, the kind that lives in texts you never delete, voice notes trapped inside your phone speaker. His vocals sounded super compressed, almost technical like himself, like he was disappearing inside the sound itself. And that’s what made it work. It wasn’t meant to comfort you; it was meant to make you miss something you couldn’t name. Let’s dig into both "PIXELATED KISSES" and his latest release from today, "If It Only Gets Better"...

For anyone who hasn’t been following his journey, Joji is a musician, producer, and artist who first appeared on the internet under the absurd, chaotic humor of his Filthy Frank persona. But over the years, he’s shed that outer layer of satire to reveal something deeply human — a voice that lives in melancholy, intimacy, and quiet reflection. From his lo-fi SoundCloud beginnings to the cinematic heartbreak of Nectar and the introspective ache of Smithereens, he’s become a master at capturing the weight of longing and the beauty of imperfection. Joji doesn’t just write songs; he sketches emotions in sound, often with minimal instrumentation, leaving space for the listener to breathe into the silence with him.

After "PIXELATED KISSES" came "If It Only Gets Better." Just weeks later, and the tone totally shifts. Remember that fog I mentioned earlier? Well, it’s like the fog clears, and you finally see the outline of the person behind all that pixelated static. Where "PIXELATED KISSES" floats in disconnection, "If It Only Gets Better" feels like a return to human again. The difference between them is like night and morning after: one trapped in a screen, the other sitting in the aftermath, blinking through the light. It’s track five on his upcoming 21-track album Piss in the Wind, set to drop February 6, 2026, and together, these two songs feel like the first chapters of whatever emotional reckoning he’s about to give us. Some people are in awe of the short-in-length release, only a little over a minute long, but still hitting just as hard as the first release. It being track five makes me so curious what all the rest will sound like and if we’re getting a full-on story-like album, somewhat like how The Weeknd did with Dawn FM, or if it’ll just have stand-alone songs that ping-pong in sound and techniques.

It’s been almost three years since Smithereens, three long a** years! And you can hear the weight of that silence in both songs. Joji’s always been fluent in loneliness, but now it sounds like he’s finally stopped trying to outrun it and putting it to work. "PIXELATED KISSES" is him hiding behind the distortion: voice bleeding quietly through layers of production. "If It Only Gets Better" tears that veil down. The acoustic guitar hums soft and steady, his voice fragile and super real, every breath left in. He sings, “If it only gets better, then why am I still the same?” and it’s one of those lines that feels like it existed waaay before he wrote it, like it’s been waiting for him to become brave enough to say it out loud.

The lyric “Guess the weather don’t change inside my brain” carries that classic Joji melancholy, who we know can be poetic without reaching for poetry, sad without self-pity. And then there’s the quiet knife twist: “I’ve been holding on to nothing, but it feels like you.” That one line sums up years of his work... the way he finds beauty in detachment, in the spaces between people, in the ghosts that refuse to leave. I... fall... for this theme over and over again, which is what makes me love his music so damn much.

The "If It Only Gets Better" music video adds another layer of ache to the song. Set in a wild party at a strip club, Joji drifts through neon chaos with that familiar lost stare. It’s like he’s there, but not really there (dissociation king). Everyone else moves in slow, reckless loops while he just exists inside it, half detached. Something a lot of us do on the daily. It echoes the melancholy of his 2018 "YEAH RIGHT" video... that same emptiness disguised as excess; beauty wrapped in a blanket of burnout. It’s not the glamour of the scene that matters here, but the hollow ache underneath it, the way he captures isolation even when he’s surrounded by people.

Beyond the music and visuals, this album marks a major shift behind the scenes for Joji. Piss in the Wind is his first release under his new label, Palace Creek, distributed by Virgin Music Group. That means more space to experiment, more freedom to take risks, and less pressure to play it safe. You can hear it in "If It Only Gets Better": the track bridges his early lo-fi SoundCloud roots with the polished melancholy of Nectar and Smithereens.

Listening to these two songs back-to-back, you can feel the evolution. "PIXELATED KISSES" was the numb phase, watching love replay like an old VHS you can’t stop rewinding. "If It Only Gets Better" is what happens when the tape finally snaps and all that’s left is silence. It’s stripped of gloss, but it’s full of breath. Releasing these two is exciting, because they both hold their own magic in a separate way.

So with that being said, there is definitely something special about how these songs set the stage for Piss in the Wind. Twenty-one tracks lowkey sounds massive, but if these two are any indication, it won’t be about scale, it’ll be about the unload of honesty. He’s not chasing another Glimpse of Us moment or trying to craft viral heartbreak; he’s crafting space for himself, for stillness, for truth. Joji’s humor and heaviness have always intertwined, so the title of Piss in the Wind almost feels like a sigh after too much seriousness.

Together, "PIXELATED KISSES" and "If It Only Gets Better" sound like two sides of the same realization: one resisting change and theeen one accepting it. You can hear him growing up in real time, not by getting louder or bolder, but by getting quieter, more deliberate maybe? He’s writing like someone who’s been through it and came out with less to prove but more to feel. Maybe that’s why such the long break.

It’s strange, stepping away from the noise of breakdowns and mosh pits to sit with something this still. I forgot how heavy quiet music can feel, how it rests on your skin instead of slamming into it. Writing about Joji again reminds me that emotion doesn’t always need distortion or rage to be real. Sometimes it’s just one tired voice, half-breaking over a line like “If it only gets better…” and somehow, although my usual music selection is healing with unclean vocals and solid breakdowns, this can hit harder when the time calls for it.

These songs don’t really reach aggressively for listeners attention; they just exist, soft and unhurried. And as much as I love the chaos of the scene I usually live in, this quiet, this little ache, feels like home for now.