MJ Lenderman’s Top 10 Songs

MJ Lenderman couldn’t have had a more explosive year in 2024. Along with the release of his fourth studio album Manning Fireworks, the Wednesday guitarist notched his first set of charting singles and breezed through the album’s promo tour with his backing band The Wind.

Before catching the Asheville, North Carolina multi-instrumentalist live on tour in 2025, you’ve all got work to do, so dig into the top MJ Lenderman songs below.

10. “Right Back to It”

Although MJ only appears as a featured artist, the lead single from Waxahatchee’s Grammy-nominated 2024 album Tigers Blood marks a major turning point in his career. On top of playing guitar on the entire album, Lenderman earns his sole feature credit on “Right Back to It” thanks to his honeyed harmonies with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. “Right Back to It” also stands as Lenderman’s first Billboard appearance as a solo artist, on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart. In March 2024, Lenderman performed the song alongside Crutchfield in his late-night television debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

9. “Hangover Game”

One MJ salutes another on “Hangover Game,” the Michael Jordan-centric album opener from 2022’s Boat Songs. Pulling from Lenderman’s personal sports lore playbook (a common theme in his lyrics), the lead single focuses on the elder MJ’s heroic performance through illness in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, otherwise known as the “Flu Game.” On “Hangover Game,” Lenderman puts himself in Jordan’s shoes to speculate beyond the flu and food poisoning theories, pointing to “three thousand dollars” on a hotel bill and implying that Jordan was simply hungover after partying. Sure, but that MJ scored 38 points the next day.

8. “Knockin’”

A fan favorite that first debuted live in 2021, “Knockin” was formally released to streaming in 2023, while its live version was included on the Live and Loose! album with his band, MJ and The Wind, later that year. According to Setlist.fm, “Knockin’” remains one of his most-performed songs and one spin of the recorded live version reveals its raw, staying power. But of course, no song could overstay its welcome on stage when it builds into an all-out shout of a singalong to Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

7. “You Are Every Girl to Me”

“Jackass is funny, like the Earth is round.” At first blush, maybe not the most romantic line ever put to wax, but amidst the stray, intimate details that comprise “You Are Every Girl to Me,” it means so much more to MJ. Over the Boat Songs standout’s shoegazey production, he sifts through memories of a relationship, everyday life and visiting family without his typical irreverence. The rare earnest approach culminates in the song’s namesake lyric, said to his partner while gifting an airport T-shirt. Sometimes, it’s the little things.

6. “Rudolph”

No childhood icon is spared on “Rudolph,” from 2024’s Manning Fireworks. The song finds the titular red-nosed reindeer as roadkill, Lightning McQueen from Pixar’s Cars series “blacked out at full speed” and another side of Bob Dylan when Lenderman reworks a “Blowin’ in the Wind” verse. But hey, at least there’s plenty of cowbell.

5. “TLC Cage Match”

Step into the ring with MJ Lenderman for this cage match we call life. Borrowing the WWE term for wrestling matches involving “tables, ladders and chairs,” the second single from Boat Songs steers as close to conventional country music as Lenderman has ever gone. With ample acoustic guitar and elaborate pedal steel accompaniment, MJ angles the wear-and-tear of wrestlers and the no-holds-barred attacks in TLC matches as a knock-out metaphor for time, and particularly death, when “all things go.”

4. “Joker Lips”

Why so serious? After donning a rubber mask resembling the Batman villain in the first line, Lenderman makes it clear that he’s not kidding around. Despite noting “only half of what I said was a joke,” the punchlines keep coming, from the self-contained, four-word storyline of “Kahlúa shooter/ DUI scooter” to revelations like “every Catholic knows he could’ve been Pope.” However, the disguise’s true purpose is revealed with a final gut-punch confession: “All I really wanna see/ is see you need me.”

3. “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat”

It’s not quite yacht rock, but the only Boat Songs track to mention an actual boat does include a sunny melody and bouncy, funky beat. It’s not all smooth sailing though, as Lenderman contrasts the perspectives of the singer and a seemingly well-off acquaintance. While the boat owner deals with waiting for clean laundry and water damage to their beach house, Lenderman contends with bug bites, bickering neighbors and bygone minor league dreams.

2. “Wristwatch”

What good is a smartwatch with no one to share it with? On the third single from Manning Fireworks, MJ Lenderman counters loneliness with mystifying, materialistic brags like a “beach home up in Buffalo,” plus the much-discussed “houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome” — not a real venue as far as we know — and a wristwatch that can do just about everything. However, his bluster begins to fade as the backing band’s lumbering, distortion-heavy arrangement punctuates his isolation and Lenderman is simply left with a “wristwatch that tells me I’m on my own.” Weird flex, but OK.

1. “She’s Leaving You”

The lead single from Manning Fireworks is heartbreak manifested, yet it still makes for a great song to “go rent a Ferrari and sing the blues.” From the perspective of a man in the wake of a midlife-crisis breakup, Lenderman unleashes a grungy elegy spilling with catharsis, from its searing guitar solo to the haunting, heart-twisting harmonies with his Wednesday bandmate and former partner Karly Hartzman. On a lighter note, “She’s Leaving You” became Lenderman’s first solo song to hit both the Billboard Rock Airplay and Adult Alternative Airplay charts. It sure gets dark, but we’re not going anywhere.

Tickets for MJ Lenderman’s 2025 tour dates are available now on Ticketmaster.