Eleanor Coughlin (she/her)
Editorial Team Member

This July, Dominic Fike, one of my favorite musical artists, dropped his new album, Sunburn. I listened to this album religiously all summer, and it led me to get really into his other music. I was only a slight fan of his before, but now I’m obsessed.

I think every song on Sunburn is a masterpiece, but I’m going to be ranking the songs on this album from my most to least favorite. 

  1. How Much Is Weed?

The first song on this album is my absolute favorite song, from this album and his entire discography.It’s also one of my favorite songs of all time. I’ve been SO obsessed with it from the moment I heard it and I listen to it pretty much every day. Something about it scratches a musical itch in my head. He switches from singing to rapping so smoothly, and all the instruments and lyrics go so well together. Throughout, the song goes from fast to calm, which usually I’m not a super big fan of, but he pulls it off incredibly well with the lyrics and music. It blends into the next song of the album, Ant Pile, seamlessly. Sometimes if I’m just listening to the song on my own and Ant Pile isn’t the song that comes next I get confused. 

  1. 4×4

This is one of his slower songs, and while I’m usually a big fan of the more cluttered, fast songs, this song is bittersweetly peaceful and I love it. His singing in this is beautiful, and when he gets to the chorus, he sings it in almost a whisper. You can really feel the soul in this song, and I’ve found a lot of meaning in it for my personal life. There are two lines, repeated at the start and end of the song, but in slightly different wording. At the start: “If you could stay, would you go?” and at the end: “If you could stay, we should go”.  I think that this slight difference on how the song chances from start to finish reflects on how people’s opinions and decisions change as they go through life. To me, this song, as well as the album, is a lot about accepting change. 

  1. Mama’s Boy

This song is really unique to the other songs on this album. While all the other songs only have parts where Dominic distorts his voice, in this song his voice has distortion all throughout it, and the way he sings the lyrics is in a choppy, broken-up style. The premise of this song is about his relationship with his mother and how it’s been really chaotic in the past, and the rest of this song really puts that chaoticness into the music. At the end of the song, it goes into repeating “M-A-M-A-B-O-Y, mama’s boy, mama’s boy”, and the repetition is so strong, along with the crunchy guitar in the background, making you feel all the emotion. 

  1. Think Fast (ft. Weezer)

Think Fast is one of those songs that really builds up the anticipation. It starts off slightly slow, with acoustic guitar and a calm melody. It then builds into Dominic rapping, but it isn’t anything too upbeat or crazy. Then, as it transfers into the bridge, Dominic’s singing slowly gets louder, as well as the guitar in the background, turning from acoustic to electric. It turns into an explosive final chorus with loud electric guitar. After this last chorus, it goes back into acoustic guitar playing the final riff. The buildup to the explosion at the end of the song really makes me go crazy in the best way. 

  1. Sunburn

THIS SONG IS SOOO GOOD!!! This is the song that the album is named after, and it talks a lot about Dominic’s life growing up in Southern Florida, “raised in the sun”. It talks about his experiences with him and his friends growing up with a troubled childhood, once again in an upbeat, funky vibe that makes you want to just have fun. 

  1. Dancing In The Courthouse

This is a song that’s been stuck in my head ever since the album came out. The lyrics are catchy, danceable, and meaningful. Dominic Fike is open about his past and how he’s been sent to jail in the past, and while it was clearly a large life event, in this song he makes his hardships into something that people can have fun with, with a vibey, vibrant song. 

  1. Bodies

This song is SO FUN. Despite the first lines being “I couldn’t be all alone in this world/I’d be hanging from my neck, if she didn’t come check for me,” this song makes me incredibly happy whenever I hear it. To me, this song is about reinventing yourself, and leaving behind the things that weigh you down. Many of Dominic’s songs are about heavy topics put in an upbeat song, which can be hard to do sometimes, but he does it incredibly well.

  1. Ant Pile

I absolutely love everything about this song. The intro guitar riff is one of those riffs where you hear it and immediately get super excited because you know how good the rest of the song is gonna be. His lyrics tell a story about young love that could easily be made corny, but he does it flawlessly and makes it interesting and so fun to listen to. It’s the second song on the album and it really makes you excited to listen to the rest. 

  1. Mona Lisa

In my opinion, Dominic Fike has a talent for making bouncy songs that make me always want to tap my foot along to the beat at the very least. Dominic’s lyrics and beat and instrumentals in his songs, especially this one, work together so well. The lyrics are catchy but also have a lot of interesting storytelling and meaning to them, and the beat and melody of the song is also so catchy and fun. 

  1. Sick

In an interview I watched once, Dominic talked about wanting to make music that people could dance to. This is definitely a song where he achieved that goal. It’s a chill song with a bouncy melody, and the bridge is SO FUN to listen to. It makes me want to just jump around and scream out the lyrics. 

  1. Frisky

Once again, this is a song that is super danceable. It’s really just a lighthearted song that has such a fun beat and Dominic’s vocals are so fun to listen to. 

  1. Dark

This song is a really beautiful song to me. There’s a lot of imagery in the lyrics, my favorite being “When you’re gone like sunburn or you’re here like rain/far beyond my expertise where I’ma be that day/There was a movement in the sky this morning/The clouds tore open and it started storming on me.” It ends with a clip of Dominic and presumably his mother talking about his life as a child. 

  1. Pasture Child

This song is in more of a clear storytelling format, telling the story of a girl, “half-Dakota, half-Louisiana pastor child/All of her skirts went past her ankles/Pitch-black, no TV on after nine”. Dominic’s lyrics are usually story related, but I love how he can create a song that has a set story but also make songs that aren’t specifically about one thing, but you can still tell that there’s a backstory behind it. 

  1. 7 Hours

This is another song that always gets stuck in my head when I listen to it. It’s very chill and a great song that I put on in the background when I’m doing things. 

  1. What Kinda Woman 

Funnily enough, the last song on this album is my least favorite. I still like it and think it’s a good song, but I honestly think that Dark, the song before this, should have been the last song and would have been a better ending, because this song doesn’t really interest me that much. 

Overall, Sunburn is one of my favorite albums of all time. I’d rank it a 9.5/10 album, and I highly encourage everyone to listen to it.