Best Ex

New Jersey-based songwriter Mariel Loveland has built a career chronicling coming of age, one 
chapter at a time. First, writing poetry in the margins of her math homework, then touring the 
world in the scrappy Warped Tour-era punk band Candy Hearts, sharing stages with pop punk 
heavyweights like New Found Glory, Weezer, and Man Overboard. Now, with her solo endeavor 
Best Ex, she’s opening a whole new book.

'Good Girl' follows a string of critically acclaimed releases, including Best Ex's 2023 debut, ‘With 
a Smile’ — work that's earned Loveland positive headlines in Billboard, Kerrang, and Alternative 
Press, plus airplay on BBC Radio 1 and Idobi Radio. This time around, she trades the anxious 
optimism of her 20s for something more clear-eyed.

Steeped in the melodic hooks and glossy production of '90s alt-pop and college radio, the album 
surveys the road from girlhood to now with 20/20 hindsight. It’s about the particular vertigo of 
being a 30-something woman settling down, watching her friends become mothers and her old 
flames move on—all while clawing at the walls of the ever-shrinking box the world tries to put 
around her.

Across eleven tracks produced by Andy Tongren, Loveland picks apart the mythology of the 
good girl: the one who smiles through it, never asks for too much, and holds onto an eternal 
youth that turns out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. She asks: what's underneath 
once the curtains close and all that's left is you, in a world spinning faster than you can keep up 
with?

“When I wrote this album, I thought about being a kid in the backseat of my parent’s minivan, 
listening to all these strong women on 90s rock radio. I heard the words, but I didn’t really 
understand them. Now, I know it was like having a crystal ball into the future,” says Loveland. “I 
wanted to write a record that could be that for someone else. I wanted to let some little girl in the 
middle of nowhere—or someone who was once that little girl—know that it’s ok. Yes, it’s hard. 
Yes, the world can be really unnecessarily cruel. But you can build a beautiful life on your own 
terms.”

Good Girl is available for preorder via Iodine Records

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