"Stuck" started as a guitar riff. Chirag Todi and Shriya Rao were jamming, something clicked, and the song essentially wrote itself from there. "We were both going through a similar feeling of being stuck when it came together quite spontaneously," Todi says. "I think that spontaneity really comes through."
It does, and it grooves too. "Stuck" is a piece of pop-funk that wears its subject matter lightly without diminishing it, built around Todi's characteristically melodic, song-first guitar playing and production by Pratham. The guitars are arguably the track's most distinctive element — never flashy, but rhythmic enough to carry the funk and melodic enough to keep the song anchored in feeling.
Shriya's vocals carry the emotional core, expressive, leaning fully into the weight of the lyric rather than holding back from it. The song sits with the specific texture of feeling alone inside a relationship - the kind of distance that doesn't announce itself dramatically but builds up in small things, an unanswered message, the particular silence of being in the same room as someone who isn't really there. The artwork by Gaurang Oza literalises that feeling, a figure caught mid-motion, reaching towards her phone, and the lyric it gestures at does the same: "why do I keep checking my phone." In a world of notification anxiety, it's a literal mirror.
k o k u m's rap verse is where the track opens up. It's a different energy and a different way into the same theme, and instead of disrupting the song's flow, it adds to it. On a track this groove-forward, her verse is what makes "Stuck" feel genuinely collaborative rather than just feature-heavy. "I met k o k u m later," Todi says, "and she brought a completely new energy and flow to the track. At its core, this was just a fun collaboration between friends."
Sonically, "Stuck" marks a departure from Bangers Only - more groove-led and electronic in its production, narrower in focus. Where that album moved freely across Todi's range of influences, this single settles into one specific feeling and one specific sound, and trusts both to carry the song on their own.
Mixed and mastered by Hersh Desai, "Stuck" is out now on all streaming platforms.
Tags:
Chirag Todi
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Shriya Rao
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k o k u m
