Laptop’s new protest anthem ‘Confused’ explores a fractured America: the disco at the end of the world.
‘Confused’ is the emotional and ideological center of On This Planet and the most definitive song Laptop has ever released. Written in the immediate psychological aftermath of January 6, the track does not recount events so much as diagnose the mental fallout of living inside them. Certainty masquerades as truth, spectacle replaces substance, and fear is recycled as identity. The song captures the disorientation of watching democratic reality fracture in real time, filtered through the eyes of someone glued to the news and overwhelmed by noise. Rather than offering answers, “Confused” leans into the unease. Lyrics like “They claim that they’re abused” and “Not quite the Reichstag fire” anchor the song firmly in the present, while the recurring chant of “The Con” functions less as a slogan than a warning. There is a dry, unsettling irony threaded throughout, a recognition that when everyone sounds convinced, certainty itself becomes the least reliable narrator.
Musically, ‘Confused” is Laptop at their most hypnotic and rhythm-driven. Built on a circular, Afro-influenced groove recalling Fela Kuti’s forward momentum filtered ‘through the nervous minimalism of Talking Heads’ Remain in Light era, the song accumulates tension instead of releasing it. Recorded initially in Valencia and expanded in Nevis, a place the band came to call the inspiration island, the contrast between physical calm and distant chaos sharpens the song’s disquiet. Escape, the song suggests, may be part of the problem. The accompanying video pushes these themes into visual satire. Framed as a CNN-style broadcast, Charlie Hartman appears as an unnervingly composed news anchor delivering chaos with media normalcy, while fragmented correspondents report from vaguely defined locations. Jesse Hartman looms as an ambiguous figure, part tyrant, part media creation, part projection, never fully explained. The result is less parody than mirror, a world where information, performance, and power blur until belief itself feels optional.
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Formed in the late ’90s, Laptop released three albums with Island Records with praise from the NME, The Guardian and others for their stylized blend of synth-pop & irony. Now a multi-generational project with Jesse Hartman joined by his son Charlie Hartman, they are not observing the present from a distance. ‘Confused’ is the sound of living inside it — aware of history, aware of danger, and quietly aware that even the people telling us what’s happening may not know what to believe themselves. Yet for all its tension, ‘Confused’ is not humorless. Like much of Laptop’s work, the song is threaded with a dry, unsettling irony — the kind that emerges when reality itself starts to feel absurd.
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Aural Aggravation 