With ‘Newspaper Smell’, London-via-Greece artist Olina delivers a song that dances through existential dread with eyeliner smudged and boots scuffed. It’s scrappy, smart, and self-aware- the sonic equivalent of screaming into a pillow, then laughing because the pillow’s covered in glitter.
From the first line- “Nothing’s familiar here but the newspaper smell and cigarettes, coffee”- Olina plants us firmly in the grey area between nostalgia and numbness. The song captures what it feels like to fall short of the life you were promised, while trying to laugh your way through the detour. Whether she’s referencing wiping down rich-guy vomit or dissociating in a street full of hungover gentrifiers, the details sting because they’re so plainly put. This isn’t metaphor- it’s the reality of reinvention, captured mid-spin.
Musically, ‘Newspaper Smell’ hits with a jagged, infectious charm. Think Phoebe Bridgers with sharper teeth, or Courtney Barnett with a cracked synth pedal. The arrangement teeters between post-punk brightness and indie-rock fatigue, full of crunching guitars and dry-witted delivery. It’s the kind of song that would fit just as well in a festival tent as it would blaring from laptop speakers in a bedroom-turned-airbnb.
And while the instrumentation builds with determined energy, the lyrics never pretend everything’s fine. “I’m not a nihilist, but I see the appeal in it,” Olina admits, encapsulating the track’s emotional core. Yet, somehow, she makes the mess feel like momentum. There’s something triumphant in her insistence: “I can’t see it yet, but I’m winning.”
With ‘Newspaper Smell’, Olina has written an anthem for anyone who’s ever handed in a CV and immediately regretted it, for those who feel like a glitch in the algorithm of adulthood. It’s raw, it’s witty, it’s brutally current- and it makes being lost sound oddly empowering.