Joji’s long-awaited fourth studio album, “Piss In The Wind,” was a major let-down.

Released Friday under Joji’s new independent record label Palace Creek, “Piss In The Wind” is a far cry from the sound of creative independence I had expected.

Most of the album is exceedingly unremarkable.

Fans of Joji’s heartwrenching hit “SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK” or whimsical “CAN’T GET OVER YOU” won’t find comparable fare in “Piss In The Wind.”

At 21 tracks, the album is Joji’s longest project to date, but has the shortest average track length. With the exception of “LOVE YOU LESS,” no song exceeds three minutes and about half the songs are under two. 

Many of them sound underdeveloped, half-baked or like an AI-generated imitation of Joji’s past work. 

For example, “Last of a Dying Breed” feels eerily similar to “Gimme Love” (2020), if only a bit more depressing.

Similarly, “Forehead Touch the Ground” feels like a watered-down version of “Demons” from Joji’s first EP, “In Tongues” (2017).

All of which made me think – as Kevin Malone from “The Office” would put it – why waste time make new song if old song do trick?

The lyricism in the new album also feels lazy, with lines like “I’m obsessed, you’re not sure / If I love you less, will you love me more?” from “LOVE YOU LESS.” 

In another instance of Joji picking low-hanging fruit, “Rose Colored” uses the motif of – you guessed it – rose-colored lenses to depict the idealization of a past love.

“I must be looking through rose-colored lenses, I’m stressin’ … Don’t let the door hit you out when you exit, no blessings,” Joji sings.

It’s the type of lyric I’d expect from a washed-up boyband member long past his prime.

“Past Won’t Leave My Bed” sees Joji at his most vocally ambitious on the album, with his signature falsetto soaring through a lush instrumental backing. However, sometimes the auto-tune can make him sound like Kermit the Frog.

“If It Only Gets Better” is perhaps the album’s most listenable track – but also its shortest, at just one minute and eight seconds. This song feels like a rare moment of earnest contemplation amid his usual ironic detachment, delivering Joji’s signature melancholy without getting too heavy-handed on the simping.

“DYKILY” is a less successful attempt at mixing heartbreak with hyperpop, producing a neither-here-nor-there sound that lacks replay value.

Given the complete absence of innovation or creative risk-taking in “Piss In The Wind,” I can’t help but feel it’s a cynical cash grab aimed at die-hard Joji fans.

Most disheartening of all, though, is that Joji sounds bored of himself.

Joji, or George Miller, is a man notorious for his dramatic transformations. 

Perhaps unbeknownst to newer fans of Joji, Miller once made viral vlogs, rants and comedic skits under the pseudonym of Filthy Frank. Some of his earliest music was released under the persona of Pink Guy, a meme-rapper in a full-body pink spandex suit.

When Miller stepped away from his comedy projects in 2017, he explained that he had felt stuck and uninspired by the work he was making, according to a Dec. 7, 2017 article by Billboard.

“Naturally as I got older, I got tired of that humor,” Miller told Billboard at the time. “People’s taste change. People’s humor change.” 

Later, as Joji began releasing music under the 88rising label, fans began to speculate that he was growing dissatisfied with the lack of creative control he had over his work, according to a Nov. 14, 2025 article by Hypebeast.

And to be fair, he did release some lackluster music while he was there (“Head In The Clouds” comes to mind).

One might reasonably suspect that Miller is growing tired of Joji, too. 

Maybe he has finally exhausted the lo-fi sadboi genre and is ready to move on, as he did in 2017, to something better.