18th September 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
Every day is Halloween in the world of Margot Day. So the fact that she’s dropped ‘Witchfire’ mid-September is simply her doing her thing. The New Yorker’s been doing shimmery gothy stuff since the 80s with The Plague, and as Metamorph, she’s been prolific in conjuring witchy-themed electropop for a whole decade now, and ‘Witchfire’ is all treat, no trick.
It’s a succinct sliver of a song, which balances equally elements of quintessential post-punk and contemporary pop stylings. How this translates is a song driven by an uptempo, propulsive synth bass and pumping drum machine paired with a song-song vocal melody treated, in places, with some heavy autotune. The autotune thing has become a massive trend in recent years – not in using it to tidy things up, but that wildly overprocessed ‘feature’ that we first heard on Cher’s ‘Life After Love’. Why is it all the rage now? I don’t know, and I can’t say I’m a fan, but its application here shows how Margot Day continues to move with the times, and that she’s unashamedly a pop artist as much as she is as a purveyor of sultry, seductive, supernatural gothiness. And it would be difficult to deny that ‘Witchfire’ is catchy.
AA
The dance mix which provides the b-side emphasises the bangin’ beats and adds a minute and a half, some of which is given to a flute solo, which works considerably better on the ears than it does on paper.
AA
