Bukowski
Song Meaning

“Bukowski” is Isaac Brock’s rejection of Charles Bukowski as a role model, written after Brock read the poet’s books and concluded he was “a fucking asshole” whose work read like “confessions of a fucking monster” rather than something to admire 2. Brock has said he specifically objected to Bukowski “glamorizing alcoholism and misogyny” 1, worrying that romanticizing drinking would push his own friends toward it 1, a stance rooted in the value he placed on women’s issues growing up 2. The song uses that personal disgust as a springboard into a parallel complaint about a God who behaves like a “control freak” 1, so the asshole in verse one and the control freak in verses two and three are really two versions of the same target: a figure whose power is used carelessly or cruelly.

The meaning

The opening lines, “every night turns out to be a little bit more like Bukowski,” set up the song’s central move: Brock admits Bukowski “is a pretty good read” 3 before immediately undercutting the admiration by asking, “who’d wanna be such an asshole?” Brock has explained the sentiment plainly, saying he was given Bukowski’s books by an uncle who loved them, expecting to feel the same reverence, but instead thought “this guy’s a fucking asshole,” describing the writing as “almost just like the confessions of a fucking monster” 2.

That reaction wasn’t just literary taste. Brock has pointed to two specific things he found repellent in Bukowski’s persona: the glamorization of alcoholism and misogyny 1. On the drinking, he’s said his objection wasn’t abstract, he didn’t “like alcoholism being put in a way that makes my friends wanna be alcoholics,” treating Bukowski’s boozy-writer mythology as something with real consequences for people around him 1. On the misogyny, an interviewer later credited the song with being ahead of its time in calling out the “misogynist, asshole male artist archetype” that Bukowski has come to represent 2, and Brock has connected that instinct to his upbringing, saying women’s rights were “a big thing on my brain from the time I was a teenager,” a value he attributes to being raised by his mother 2.

The song then pivots from Bukowski specifically to a broader target: God. Verses two and three trade the word “asshole” for “control freak,” asking “who would wanna be such a control freak?” over lines about a God who “controls the land and disease” and “keeps a watchful eye” yet remains invisible and unaccountable. One writeup describes the track as a “sonic fist-shaking at God” 3, and Brock’s own phrasing, questioning why anyone would want that kind of unchecked control, mirrors his critique of Bukowski almost exactly 1.

Read together, the two halves of the song aren’t separate complaints so much as the same complaint aimed at two different figures who are excused or even celebrated for bad behavior because of the power or mystique they hold, whether that’s a revered author whose vices get romanticized 1 2 or a deity whose control goes unquestioned 1 3. The lyric bridges, with their talk of hearts “dissolved” and wanting “a better way to fall,” read as the emotional fallout of living under both kinds of indifferent authority.

So “Bukowski” isn’t a tribute in the conventional sense, despite naming its subject affectionately in the chorus 3. It’s Brock working through his discomfort with idolizing a flawed man, using that discomfort as a way into a larger, more theological frustration with unaccountable power.

Last updated 2026-09-15