Apocalypse

Greg Gonzalez wrote and produced "Apocalypse", track four of the debut at 4:50. It was released as a single on March 21, 2017 (the album page says March 20), the day the album was announced, and Paste's Jared McNett covered it that day. The album was recorded in December 2015 and May 2016, but which session produced this song and where is not stated. Gonzalez told Cosmopolitan India in 2023 that it concerns two friends from his hometown, beautiful losers stuck there with big ambitions, whom he thought of again after moving to New York; it is about being there for people, when you're all alone, he said, and its surreal imagery is not based on a specific memory.

It did not chart internationally until 2022, after a TikTok trend of inner-child photos. Wikipedia lists a peak of 18 on the US Hot Rock and Alternative Songs chart, 83 in Canada, 129 on the Billboard Global 200, 39 in Switzerland and 25 on the UK Indie chart; it is diamond in France, double platinum in the US and New Zealand, platinum in the UK, and had more than 2.3 billion Spotify streams as of March 2026. There is no official music video; Russh reported in 2024 that the band has never made one.

On the X's World Tour it closed the main set before the encore "Opera House", the 17th and last main-set song at the O2 in London on November 13, 2024. At the Armory in Minneapolis on August 31, 2023 it was near the end of the main set. We found no covers, and could not tell which recording our upload is.