WHEN LUCY DACUS sings “I don’t wanna be funny anymore” on the opening track of her debut full-length, No Burden, she delivers it with a little lilt on the final syllable. “I hurt my friends saying things I don’t mean out loud,” she sings. Dacus, at 21 years old, is barely removed from the rigors of the adolescent roll call. This song, she explains, decries yet scrambles for the comfort of social roles.
“Everybody tends to feel really weird at that age,” Dacus says of the teenaged daze. “Some people are wanting the titles they’re given or are trying to be a certain trope, and some people don’t want to be the trope they’re assigned.”
Later in “I Don’t Want to Be Funny Anymore,” Dacus explores the other identities she’d like to claim, voicing a desire to be someone else at all times: “I’ve got a too-short skirt, maybe I can be the cute one/Is there room in the band? I don’t need to be the front man/If not, then I’ll be the biggest fan.”