Crucial Track for February 19, 2026

"Lewis Takes Off His Shirt" by Owen Pallett

#365songs (50 / 365)

OK, Owen Pallett gets the first twofer, because it kind of feels like "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt" has to be back-to-back with "The Butcher." Lewis is the protagonist of Heartland, an album about a sort of swords-and-sorcery fantasy realm with a god named Owen, as in Owen Pallett, the singer on the album Heartland. In "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt," after leaving his family to pursue a life of devotion to Owen and suffering a wound at sea fleeing a proselytizing mission gone wrong, causing him to have a crisis of faith, Lewis is picturesquely riding his horse across a plain or some shit, on his way to Owen, to kill him.

The fantasy trappings here might make all this seem unbearably corny but Pallett is alternately classy and cheeky with it, giving Lewis some genuinely poetic lines, using the framing as a way to muse on the role of creator-as-Creator and what the created might feel about it, never really letting the listener forget that every line out of Lewis's mouth was put there by Owen Pallett. And Pallett also portrays themself as a petty, vainglorious, indifferent and rather horny deity. We saw this in "The Butcher" with "Every morning I listen to confessional / I don't give a shit 'bout the bulk of it," we see it in "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt" as, well, Lewis is charging Owen-ward with deicide on his mind and all Owen cares about is that he's doing it shirtless.

Great song though. Heartland brought some electronics to Pallett's oeuvre and the bed of synths here combines nicely with the tone-blocky orchestral swells that are kind of their signature sound. The verse melody is bold and catchy and Pallett's voice sounds as good as it ever had at this point in their career, but it's kind of all about that "I'm never gonna give it to you" hook and especially the last repetition of it. If you're not convinced, perhaps try watching this performance of it?