“I Feel Bad For You, Dave” from dodie's Eagerly Anticipated 2nd Album
Dodie announces her eagerly anticipated second album, Not For Lack of Trying, due for release on October 3 via Decca Records. The album is heralded by a new single, “I Feel Bad For You, Dave.”
“I Feel Bad For You, Dave” is the second song to be lifted from the record, following “I’M FINE,” released last month to considerable acclaim. The bossa nova-inflected “I Feel Bad For You, Dave” is, says dodie, “a song about the ego of people who feel as though they lack power, so try to gain it in ways that ironically have the opposite effect. We all know a Dave!”
It is also partly a fiery riposte to keyboard warriors after she watched her close friend endure racist abuse online. “I did not know what to do — I wanted to just drag them down, I wanted to reply to them and make videos about them,” she remembers. “And I was like, ‘OK, I can't do any of that, so I'll write a song.’”
Written mostly between London and Los Angeles and produced alongside Joe Rubel (Maisie Peters, Griff, Sigrid), Not For Lack Of Trying is the product of a lengthy gestation. dodie spent three years turning inwards to pen what would become the “sibling’” to her acclaimed 2021 debut Build A Problem, packaging her reflections on everything from falling in love and breaking up to comparison culture and struggles with depression. But she couldn’t quite find the thread that tied all of these intimate portraits of her life together, until she finally landed on a title that gave her the clarity she was seeking. “Not For Lack Of Trying is so simple, so sad and it really painted this picture of all these songs, of me trying to figure it out,” she explains.
After that breakthrough, dodie wrote the pensive title track as a natural coda to a record which finds the North London-born singer-songwriter striving for meaning in a challenging chapter of her life. “Lend me joy I can’t see mine / But not for lack of trying,” she declares in the grounding final moments. “It was one of those songs that feels like it's already written, so you're trying to find it,” she says.
dodie - Not For Lack of Trying tracklisting
1. I’M FINE
2. Smart Girl
3. Darling, Angel, Baby
4. Hold Fire
5. Tall Kids
6. I Feel Bad For You, Dave
7. Now
8. The List
9. Different
10. The End
11. The Answer
12. Not For Lack of Trying
For over a decade now dodie has been the fiercely honest voice of a generation growing up in a hyper-digital world seeking to understand their own journeys with mental health, relationships, sexuality and all the imperfect in-betweens. With the early years of her career unfolding on camera with a ukulele in tow for masses of devoted fans online, her first three independently released EPs — Intertwined, You and Human — all entered the UK top 40, with the latter two breaking the top 10.
She went on to sell out London’s Roundhouse before her first record had even come out and has since sold out over 100 consecutive shows globally with tours across the UK, US, Europe and Australia. With Build A Problem landing at number three on the UK charts, dodie’s quietly affecting vocals and exquisite orchestral arrangements reintroduced an artist with musical ambitions even grander than her most loyal fans could have anticipated. Following that up with 2022 EP Hot Mess, her music has now amassed over one billion streams to date — leading to more than seven million followers across all platforms — and in 2023 her rise was recognized with a place on the prestigious Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ list.
That year, she switched modes from her solo work to form the band FIZZ with her close friends Orla Gartland, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown. FIZZ released their feted - and so far sole - album The Secret To Life in 2023, and toured the project through to summer 2024 culminating in an appearance at Glastonbury Festival and an emotional, intimate final show at London’s MOTH Club. Most recently, dodie contributed the lead song ‘Someone Was Listening’ to the award-winning hit game Life Is Strange - Double Exposure, and a reworking of ‘Old Devil Moon’ to the album Chet Baker Re:imagined.
dodie embarks on a major UK and European tour in October and November, and today announces North American dates for February-March 2026.
