After years of turning heartbreak, rage and frustration into songs, CHINCHILLA found herself facing a very different creative challenge: happiness. Or, more accurately, the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing what to do once the chaos disappears. That contradiction sits at the heart of Dog Eat Dog, her explosive new single and the first step into a bold new chapter.
Out now via Chinchilla Music, Dog Eat Dog was written with Sara Boe and Mike Wise. “I walked into the studio feeling so rough,” the artist recalls. After weeks of creative frustration, everything shifted when Wise played an old-school rock-and-roll country banjo idea. “It was like an explosion of ideas,” she says. The song came together almost instantly, breaking through the writer's block that had been building for weeks. The track also introduces the sound of a new era, shaped by the extensive touring she completed last year. “I'm using all the parts of my voice,” she explains, adding that influences such as Alabama Shakes, Prince and early Beyoncé have naturally worked their way back into her songwriting. “All the songs have this oxymoron vibe to them... they have a bit of sparkle in them and you don't quite know where they're going.”
That tension fuels every second of the track. While its production races forward with infectious energy, the lyrics reveal a much darker conversation. “Summer don't come round, keep making it rain,” she sings before admitting, “I swear I don't wanna be sad.” Speaking about the song, the artist describes it as “feeling uncomfortable in a healthy stability,” adding, “I love how the song is so upbeat but underneath it all pretty depressing. It's kind of a metaphor for life, like oh well, we carry on.”
Looking back at the writing process, she explains that Dog Eat Dog was born from an unfamiliar emotional place. “I wrote it when I felt ok, just ok, and I was struggling with that,” she says. “I'd been livid and in turmoil for a few years... and suddenly I felt kind of stable and ok. And what do you do with that?” That unexpected emotional shift ultimately became the song's driving force.
She expanded on that idea when announcing the release, explaining that after spending years creating from heartbreak, anger and revenge, suddenly feeling emotionally stable left her strangely disconnected from her own creative process. Part of her even began craving those intense emotions again. That contradiction is exactly what gives Dog Eat Dog its edge, transforming a huge pop chorus into something far more vulnerable than it first appears.
The single also arrives at an important moment in CHINCHILLA's career as she prepares to release her debut album independently. “It feels good! It's really empowering to choose independence,” she says. After waiting years to reach this point, the artist decided the foundations had to feel right before taking the next step. “I need to do it myself and choose the team around me. I want to do it with people I personally love and who are perfect for my project.” While acknowledging that self-funding a record brings its own pressures, she also admits that “every win with the team feels so much more earned and euphoric. It's really special.”
The self-directed visualiser extends that emotional world with striking imagery that mirrors the song's restless energy without losing sight of its darker undercurrent. It also marks the beginning of what promises to be a major new era. Following the success of Ok As I Am and the global breakthrough of Little Girl Gone, CHINCHILLA continues to prove that her greatest strength lies in making complicated feelings sound impossible to forget.