Courtney Barnett is framed as calm while everything else spins: in the video for her newly shared song “One Thing At A Time, ” hijinks erupt around her as she keeps playing, steady and unbothered, as if composure itself is the point. The scene builds toward movement—up into the Hollywood Hills, into a sunset over the Los Angeles skyline—without ever letting go of the feeling that the mind is still racing.
What is “One Thing At A Time, ” and why does it feel so familiar?
“One Thing At A Time” centers on being hopelessly overwhelmed. It begins with a pleasantly ambling groove and then pushes into crescendos designed to feel satisfying rather than chaotic—an arc that mirrors the song’s core tension: the desire to take life in manageable pieces while pressure keeps stacking up anyway. Flea plays bass on the track, and the video is directed by Lance Bangs, placing Barnett at the center of a controlled spectacle where the world is loud but her guitar work stays purposeful.
The visual details underline that push and pull. Barnett is shown calmly shredding as commotion breaks out around her. At a key moment, she drives her truck into the Hollywood Hills. Then the camera swoops as she delivers a triumphant guitar solo while the sun sets over the LA skyline—an image of forward motion that still carries the strange weight of someone trying to keep it together by concentrating on the next bar, the next note, the next small step.
How does Creature of Habit turn Los Angeles into an interior landscape?
Creature of Habit is described as a record that can feel like a long drive on a desert highway, where the listener hears the bumps and groans of the car, the rhythms of the pavement, and their own thoughts. Barnett wrote much of it from a Joshua Tree sublet while considering whether she wanted to keep making music, grounding the album’s atmosphere in a kind of isolated reflection even as her life shifted from Melbourne to Los Angeles.
That sense of searching is tied to Barnett’s songwriting approach: circular, clean progressions that can stretch simple harmonic ideas into something emotionally dense. The album leans into first-person narratives about feeling rudderless and looking for direction, tracing a preoccupation with self-paralysis and indecision. Within that frame, tracks like “Mantis” capture frustration with living on autopilot and wanting to get organized, while “Sugar Plum” mixes apology with humor on a restless tune. On “Site Unseen, ” scenic harmonies support a moment of taking responsibility for overthinking, with breezy acoustic guitars and pedal steel creating a sunny surface that contrasts with the discomfort underneath.
In that light, the Los Angeles imagery in “One Thing At A Time” lands as more than backdrop. The apartment-complex hijinks, the drive into the hills, the swooping camera over the skyline—these become a way of staging what the record repeatedly returns to: movement without certainty, a persistent attempt to locate meaning while the mind keeps circling.
Who is shaping the sound, and what does it reveal about Barnett’s mood?
Creature of Habit continues Barnett’s long interest in making repetition speak. But the album’s production choices also matter to its emotional texture. For this record, she teamed with producer John Congleton, and the arrangements are described as using flat, clanging percussion and blown-out guitars to fill out compositions that can be deliberately hesitant. The lead single “Stay in Your Lane” is driven by a blown-raspberry bassline and chalky drums—an awkward foundation that fits a song about taking one step forward and two steps back. Elsewhere, “Same” moves from a flat-footed shuffle into ominous new wave synths, and “Great Advice” piles on garish claps and cowbell hits until the groove turns claustrophobic.
Lyrically, “Great Advice” holds one of the record’s sharper flashes of certainty: Barnett addresses critics, saying she needs “your opinion like a needle in the eye, ” then returns to a refrain of “I like it this way. ” Even that confidence, though, is framed as rare—an exception in an album that “makes a meal out of hesitation. ” The result is an atmosphere where the listener can feel the push between wanting to be decisive and getting stuck inside the loop of reconsideration.
What comes next for Courtney Barnett—and what does the new single add to the story?
Courtney Barnett’s new single arrives just ahead of the full release of Creature of Habit, following earlier tracks that include “Stay In Your Lane, ” “Site Unseen, ” and the pairing of “Mantis” and “Sugar Plum. ” “One Thing At A Time” functions like a final deep breath before the album lands: it takes the theme of overwhelm and gives it shape through a groove that expands into crescendos, and a video that turns everyday chaos into a staged test of composure.
In the end, the most striking detail isn’t the spectacle around her; it’s how still she appears inside it. The camera may swoop, the scene may escalate, and the skyline may glow at sunset—but Barnett keeps playing. That steadiness turns the song’s title into something like instruction, or a wish: one thing at a time, even when everything arrives at once.
