Best of 2023: Genesis Owusu - STRUGGLER
By Oliver Gerharz
Back in 2021 my cousin showed me Smiling With No Teeth, Genesis Owusu’s debut album. I thought it was an absolute treat to listen to, and was really captured by how Owusu-Ansah managed to make each song unique while sticking to a cohesive theme of selfishness.
I immediately hopped on the train earlier this year when I saw that Owusu-Ansah had released a second album that, like its predecessor, had been nominated for the Australian Album of the Year. Owusu-Ansah’s sophomore release STRUGGLER has a focus on the concept of perseverance through extreme hardship that I feel is held together even stronger than the theme of selfishness was in his last album.
The opener and biggest hit of the album, “Leaving the Light,” introduces the audience to the sort of raw chaos that dominates the life of the protagonist of the album’s narrative. The song lays the groundwork for the story of the pest doing whatever it can to not be swatted by God.
“Leaving the Light” represents a sort of rejection of an offered enlightenment, as said in the chorus “Always thought I was living a lie” and “Wasn’t feeling it right” both speak to a sort of new perspective on a previously held belief — hindsight is 20-20. With God as the antagonist of the roach’s story and his presentation in the song “The Old Man” as the sort of guy who slashes the roach’s tires and squashes one of his six legs, the message of rejecting enlightenment comes across as somewhat against religion (although the abstract nature of the album softens this message).
The album follows a cockroach as it tries not to be destroyed by God, a concept referenced through the inclusion of the word “roach” as a central motif through most of the songs on the album. The song to most directly do this is the distant-sounding and aptly titled “The Roach,” which mentions the dangers of being overturned or sprayed with turpentine, and how the bug has overcome them all.
Owusu-Ansah’s choice of a roach as the star of this story is striking, as roaches are notorious for being the animal that can survive just about anything — even a nuclear blast. This choice to use a symbol of resilience for this character that survives repeated hardships is an excellent creative choice that really reinforces the central symbol of the album.
In an interview following the announcement of this album, Owusu-Ansah said that the album felt like a fictional short story, and not like a documentation of his own life. This comment offers a deeper perspective on the differences between STRUGGLER and Smiling With No Teeth, as it implies that unlike STRUGGLER, Owusu-Ansah’s debut album was based on real-world experiences rather than storytelling.
This message of perseverance is emphasized in one of the album’s later tracks, “Stay Blessed,” in lines like “When you’re going through hell, you just keep going”. The chorus of “Stay Blessed “features the lyric “I done been a damn pest”, showing that at this point the roach has experience with the sort of challenges he faces as he is swatted at. The bridge speaks to a feeling of being lost in a contrast with the song’s focus on just pushing forward, but is quickly followed with a return to the chorus, showing that when you’re struggling like the roach is, there isn’t much time for the contemplation that this album offers in between bursts of chaos and energy.
This review is part of EMMIE’s Best of 2023 series. Keep an eye out on our website throughout December, as we will regularly post full album reviews of this year’s greatest hits.