Ryan Woods is on a mission to prove that pop music can still hit you right in the chest while making you dance in your bedroom mirror. The Nashville-via-LA singer/songwriter has been steadily building a name for himself as one of Gen Z’s most intriguing voices — a wide-eyed, heart-on-sleeve troubadour with the swagger of a ‘70s rock idol and the candor of your brutally honest best friend.
Today, Woods dropped his latest single “too many ways to live” along with a lyric video, and it’s an easy-breezy earworm that goes down smoother than your favorite iced latte.
On the track, Woods slides between dreamy falsetto and a half-lazy, half-hypnotic drawl, floating over playful beats that shimmer and bounce with effortless charm. It’s pop, but not the kind you’ve heard a million times — this is Woods at his most self-aware, anxious, funny, and totally relatable. Think Harry Styles for the TikTok generation, with a bit more existential dread sprinkled in.
“Too Many Ways to Live is a song about the beautiful, chaotic pressure of possibility,” Woods explains. “I wrote it during a time when everything felt wide open and uncertain. You grow up being told ‘you can be anything you want,’ but no one tells you what to do when you don’t know what you want. That question haunted me — so I wrote it out.”
The result is a track that feels like a 2AM spiral in your bedroom — half-dream, half-panic, but ultimately cathartic. And if Woods’ words don’t hit you in the gut, his delivery will.
In Case You Missed It:
Ryan Woods has been quietly stacking bangers over the past few years:
- “Full Speed Ahead”
- “Good Swim”
- “Gun in the Glovebox”
- “Debbie”
Who is Ryan Woods, Anyway?
Woods is the kind of artist who doesn’t just play with genres — he melts them down and reshapes them. One minute he’s giving you sky-high falsetto and psych-tinged pop, the next he’s baring his soul with lyrics that sound like diary entries you wish you’d written.
He first turned heads with viral covers (even Shawn Mendes couldn’t resist a retweet), before breaking through with “Bad Texter” in 2021 — a streaming juggernaut with 28M+ plays on Spotify. His debut King of the Basement EP cemented him as one to watch, drawing praise from critics for his witty, poetic, and raw approach to songwriting.
Now signed to Fearless Records, Woods is gearing up for a new era — one where bedroom pop blossoms into something bigger, bolder, and infinitely more relatable. “too many ways to live” feels like the opening salvo of that chapter.
So yeah, add this one to your “late-night existential crisis” playlist — you’re gonna need it.
I’m Drew, the founder and editor of Front of the Stage. I have a strong love for music and photography, which started at a very young age. There’s just something I love about experiencing live music and capturing memories that will last a lifetime, and that’s how Front of the Stage came to be.
