“I Don't Wanna Be Me” by Type O Negative

Type O Negative normally deal in slow, gothic-tinged doom, so "I Don't Wanna Be Me", parked second on Life Is Killing Me, their sixth studio album from 2003, lands like a brick through the stained glass. Peter Steele wrote it alone, and it tears along as punk rock and thrash metal; Kerrang! caught a whiff of Carnivore, Steele's earlier band, and Loudwire filed it under goth-punk-power-pop. Roadrunner put it out as a promo single the same year.

The joke has teeth. Kerrang! heard a sarcastic hymn to self-loathing, and guitarist Kenny Hickey has said the words were autobiographical: Steele's health was slipping, he was sick of his addictions and of life itself, and the title meant exactly what it said. Steele produced with Josh Silver, and Michael Marciano engineered and mixed alongside Silver.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.