renforshort - moshpit (Official Video)

Interscope-signed breakthrough star renforshort tackles the scrum of toxic relationships on alt-pop anthem ‘moshpit’.

Having spent 2021 building a groundswell of early support from the likes of NME, DIY, Notion, Clash and more, 19-year-old Toronto breakthrough star renforshort today drops her first material for 2022: the deceptively sprightly, instant earworm of ‘moshpit’.

Written during a period of mental and physical exhaustion for the singer, she describes feeling “overwhelmed with the industry, with finding a place to live, making friends and my love life” at the time. “We wrote the song and I went home and called Jeff [Alexander, co-songwriter] to tell him how unhappy I was; basically I was so overwhelmed with life, I wanted it to end.”

However, returning to the song in a healthier frame of mind, and after several painstaking sessions of meticulous retweaking, renforshort - real name Lauren Isenberg - has hit upon a track that distils the frustration and difficulty of those days and releases them in a breath of pop-rock catharsis. Using the analogy of a chaotic moshpit for a tumultuous, destructive relationship, the knack for instantly relatable sentiments that’s propelled her from Ontario to a globally-acknowledged new talent is here for all to see: centred around a soaring chorus full of surprising analogies (“If I take an elbow to the face one more time, I think i’ll break…”), ‘moshpit’ is at once familiar and fresh.