XTINE Won’t Sugarcoat It: “Nobody Stays” Stings Like the Truth
XTINE doesn’t make music to be liked. She makes it to be felt.
On "Nobody Stays", the Devon-born alt-pop artist rips into the raw nerve of abandonment with surgical precision. There’s no metaphorical padding here, just clean, direct lyricism that lands like a sucker punch: “Will I keep you, or will I end up pushing you?” It’s a question that doesn’t want an answer—it wants blood.
First premiered on May 15, "Nobody Stays" builds itself on a foundation of beautiful contradiction: orchestral strings crash into glitchy electronics; XTINE’s voice floats but never flinches. It’s Björk in the therapy room. It’s Sia with her guard down. It’s the kind of track that doesn’t ask for your attention—it commands it.
More than just a song, "Nobody Stays" functions as a protest—against sanitized emotion, against the silence around mental health, and against the pop industry’s obsession with polish. It’s deeply personal, openly referencing XTINE’s own struggles with borderline personality disorder. But it never asks for pity. Instead, it leans into the chaos with intention and power.
Her decision to anchor the accompanying music video in a bare studio setting—just her, a mic, and her notebook—isn't some lo-fi aesthetic stunt. It's a reminder: production is her instrument, and this is her war room. You believe it when she says she never wants listeners to just hear her music—she wants them to live inside it.
There’s real weight to her ethos, too. Through her collaborations with mental health orgs like Under the Sisterhood and the DMAX Foundation, XTINE blurs the line between artist and advocate. She’s not using mental health as a marketing angle—she’s weaponizing her platform to connect, reflect, and, ultimately, to help.
XTINE’s journey from winning IndabaMusic contests to grabbing a cosign from Sia isn’t some indie fairy tale. It’s grit and vision sharpened into form. On "Nobody Stays", she doesn’t just prove she can hang with alt-pop’s best—she challenges them to be as brave.
