Some songs start as tributes. Tortured Solitaire started that way. It became something larger.
I wrote it around 2000 in the wake of Princess Diana’s death. Not as a eulogy. As a challenge. The paparazzi that contributed to her death weren’t acting out of hatred. They were acting out of profit. Actions of obscene abuse carried out because someone was willing to pay for them. That distinction matters. I’ve seen the damage you do, for the mighty buck. That line wrote itself.
Twenty six years later the paparazzi have been replaced by anyone with a phone, a platform, and a financial incentive to destroy someone publicly. The machinery changed. The motivation didn’t.
Cyberbullying. Cancel culture. Public humiliation as content. People torn apart not because they did something genuinely wrong but because their destruction generates clicks, followers, advertising revenue. The mighty buck still drives the damage. It always has.
And it isn’t always individuals doing the destroying. Sometimes it’s institutions. Sometimes it’s systems with power and resources going after people who have neither. The song speaks to anyone who has been completely wronged by someone else in the name of profit or power. Anyone who has felt the weight of an accusation they couldn’t fight back against. Anyone who has watched something unjust happen and felt powerless to stop it.
Tortured Solitaire doesn’t stay in that powerless place. That’s the point.
The song has a sly dangerous feel. Mid tempo with a strong groove pocket and super crunchy guitars. Intimate in the mix but dirty underneath. Like something that knows exactly what it’s about to do and is taking its time getting there. When the chorus hits the vocal takes on a distortion grit that wasn’t there before. That’s the turn. That’s the moment the song stops describing the destruction and starts fighting back against it.
In the Dolby Atmos version there’s a moment where the word abuse stretches into a long suspended reverb tail. It hangs in the air longer than you expect. Smoother, wider, colder, bigger. It blooms the way it was always meant to. Every time it happens it lands somewhere specific.
That’s not an accident. That’s the song doing exactly what it was written to do.
If you’ve ever been wronged by someone who profited from it. If you’ve ever watched someone get publicly destroyed for someone else’s gain. If you’ve ever needed something to stand on while you figured out how to fight back, Tortured Solitaire was written for that moment.
This is week seven of E.nergy A.udio R.evolution. The mighty buck still drives the damage. At least now you have something to put in your ears while you find your footing.
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