Joji’s 2026 Comeback: Piss In The Wind
REVIEW
By Krista Orejudos
2/18/26
Courtesy of Spotify
Counting Down The Days For Piss In The Wind
George Kusunoki Miller, exclusive as ever, has given himself many personas and identities such as Pink Guy, Filthy Frank, Harlem Shake Trendsetter, and the infamous title he goes by today: Joji.
Whether you’re a fan, stan, or hater of his content and music, you cannot deny how much influence this man has on the internet. It would be downright wrong to call Miller a nobody when he is the ancient text for Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s unhinged sense of humor as well as our fascination with brooding sadboi music mixed with lofi girl beats.
He may never be able to peak as high as his pre-internet days, but the announcement he made in Fall 2025 to release another album immediately cut through everyone’s noisy algorithm. I personally felt the axes in my world shift below and above my feet as soon as Piss In The Wind was given a release date for February 6, 2026.
My ears were starving to hear something new from Joji himself. Not from record label 88rising who felt entitled enough to demand the SMITHEREENS album out of him because his contract was expiring in 2022, no.
We (as in religious followers of Joji like me) wanted to devour whatever plate he was willing to serve us on his own terms.
A Call Back To 2018’s In Tongues
I knew since the day lead single “PIXALATED KISSES” dropped on October 14, 2025 that Piss In The Wind was going to sound like 2018’s In Tongues.
He wasn’t going to make Piss In The Wind sound pretty. He was going for painful distortion: Dark, heavy hitting instrumental beats, aggressive baselines, volatile EDM, screeching garage band waves, and listless monotone rap.
The 2018 tracklist featuring “Will He,” “Demons,” “I Don’t Want To Waste My Time,” “Bitterfuck,” “Plastic Taste,” and “Worldstar Money” walked so Piss In The Wind could run. He later confirmed my suspicions with his “formal” Instagram post addressing the album release, writing in the caption, “it felt good going back to my roots with sound.”
Piss In The Wind Song Analyses
Joji’s experimental taste is not for weak ears; some sounds are so painfully distorted to varying degrees of frequencies that it can be difficult to listen to at times. For example, his frustrated electronica in “PIXALATED KISSES,” “Sojourn,” and “Rose Colored,” can easily make you go deaf even when it’s played at the lowest volume.
With less emphasis on his poetic lyricism, Joji opts for vocalizing a vibe out, especially on tracks like “Last of a Dying Breed,” “Love Me Better,” “Dior,” “Fade to Black,” and “If It Only Gets Better.” To add on, the songs with little to no lyrics can be interpreted as Joji trying to bury his feelings sonically. This acts as a shield to cover up the tender heartbreak beneath the misplaced nonchalancesness. In comparison, songs where Joji tries to vocally address the pain in him like “Hotel California,” “Past Won’t Leave my Bed,” or “Fragments,” depicts a clash between vulnerability and confusion. He is confused about how to be vulnerable with himself and with somebody who is just as emotionally constipated as he is.
Take “DYKILY,” as another example. Rather than asking, he punctuates, “Don’t / You / Know / I / Love / You?” switching between melodic hums, breathy whines, and gurgling moans in the 2017 demo version. Another thing to note is the instrumental reverbs clanking against each other to fill in the negative spaces. But the version that made it onto Piss in the Wind first is reconstructed with a consistently fast sci-fi bounce, like he’s trying to outrun his desire for emotional intimacy. Then in true Joji fashion, he reverts back to using a nonchalant, “it’s whatever,” voice when singing the 2026 version.
It’s a simple question he repeatedly asks the other person out of desperation; he wants to prove his love to them without forcing the idea of commitment. He wants to hear an answer he knows he won’t get. He overwhelms the other person while simultaneously overwhelming himself with his lyrical repetition.
The song no doubt smells like a routine argument they’ve had a thousand times before. To further drive this narrative home, his repetitive tone indicates how he doesn’t care enough to salvage the remains of whatever relationship they had or could’ve had despite how he’s also trying to prolong their foreseeable end.
It once again illustrates the overarching circular tension within Piss in the Wind: Joji's false sense of clarity with his feelings standing alongside his inability to escape his self-sabotaging patterns.
Who Broke This Man’s Heart?
Known to be a yearner, Joji’s yearning in Piss in the Wind isn’t as contained as it usually is. The production quality of the songs are lacking a polished depth to them; there is no comfort in his angst. Instead of pacifying us with sounds we’re used to hearing, Joji chooses to be selfish and hurt the listeners in the same way someone hurt him.
Everyone is quick to say “21 songs that are 2 minutes each is lazy,” and they expect a hit as profound as “Slow Dancing in the Dark” or as dreamlike as “Die for You.” They don’t consider how Piss in the Wind was meant to be a messy album filled with imperfect samples and rough drafts that he’s finally ready to share with us now.
Much like "DYKILY," there is a high possibility of him recycling songs for future projects, and it shouldn’t mean one version takes away the other’s value. Both versions, 7 years apart, currently coexist in the same listening timeline for us.
All this to say, we expected his formulaic style and his distracting sounds mimicking his need to emotionally escape, but whoever put him in the ringer left him so heartbroken it broke his artistic perfectionism.
I just know something about his process changed for Piss in the Wind, *insert I can’t prove it meme here* and I wonder if that's the real reason why fans feel like something is inherently missing. Whether he wrote and produced this album in the heat of his spirals or if he took the time to reflect in between his personal downfalls and then decided to work on Piss in the Wind, it doesn’t change the fact that some sort of sticky disruption was present with Joji.
Whatever happened in his 4 year hiatus, it reset his mentality towards making music, and this selfish Joji is here to stay.
Joji’s Adaptability + Defying Fans’ Expectations
Most, if not all the time, Joji likes to create songs that can be hard for us to enjoy. For those who still have their gripes about the album being too short and left unfinished because “he doesn’t know how to properly end a project,” I’d like to remind them the importance of adaptability within Joji’s career.
You forget this man was able to successfully transition from being a Youtuber to a singer. He had an earlier foresight as to which career would give him longevity and he chose right. This man is always strategically intentional with the psychomarketing of his music. He knows the length of his songs have to be adaptable enough to be used on TikTok or any fast consuming platform. In return, he also knows he’s left us wanting more from songs that are emotionally and lyrically incomplete.
However short-lived his songs are, whenever you do hit the replay button, there’s almost this hypnotic trance in the background. Akin to something like a two way consumption, Joji wants us to be just as trapped in his circle of angst as he is. Piss in the Wind lulls you to keep replaying the album until it sounds complete in your ears.
But sonically, I know there’s a much larger conversation at hand discussing his need to “evolve as a producer,” to which I believe these fans are misplacing expectations on Joji to do something that sounds familiar again. They expect the same brooding image he first gave us in 2018 with Ballads 1, the same cinematic type of production with 2020’s Nectar, and something “bigger and better” than 2022’s SMITHEREENS.
At the same time, Joji has every right to go against what the fans expect from him because for so long, it felt like creating music became unjoyable to him.
That’s why this 2026 comeback is personal. Raw. Distorted, in ways that we can’t compare to his previous works.
Joji didn’t create Piss in the Wind for it to be your next favorite album; he created it to finally show us how he has no shame in putting his artistic needs first.
Piss In The Wind Is Not The End
It is safe to say Joji will be releasing more music now that he has gone independent with his own record label, Palace Creek. He might go on tour towards the second half of 2026 or go on another long-term
hiatus. Before we beg for a concert or to stop him from leaving again, I hope we don’t move on too quickly from Piss in the Wind.
I hope you’re consuming the ongoing promo for Piss in the Wind just as much as the album. The Jijo/Joe G doppelganger genius segment, the 3 official music videos, the easter eggs within this project’s multiverse, the vinyl and CDs at record shops, all of it.
Piss in the Wind is just now coming to life, and I hope we can learn to sit with this album just like how Joji sat with it for the past 4 years.
Listen to Piss in the Wind
