Joshua Burnside has shared The Last Armchair, a new single from his forthcoming album, It’s Not Going to Be Okay (March 20th on Nettwerk). The Belfast-based songwriter delivers a quietly devastating meditation on grief, loss, and the illusion of adulthood, built around a single piece of IKEA furniture that carries unbearable weight.
The Last Armchair opens with a brutal intimacy: “Oh, The last armchair you ever sat on / Before you overdosed / Is the one I sit in every morning / To eat my egg and toast.” It’s the same chair Burnside once carried across an IKEA car park, feeling grown up for the first time after making his first furniture purchase. Now it’s a relic of loss, a daily reminder of someone gone. The contrast between that initial pride and present devastation anchors the entire song.
Stripped back to its most vulnerable core, the track finds Burnside clinging to a painful truth: grief doesn’t make you stronger or more mature—it reveals how fragile the performance of adulthood really is. “I feel just like a child / Lost and alone in the homeware aisle,” he sings, transforming the mundane geography of IKEA into a metaphor for existential unmooring. The second verse traces how adult responsibilities—DIY projects, dinner plans, baby scans, the Saturday big shop—created distance from the person he lost. “I guess I saw you less and less then,” Burnside admits, his voice carrying the weight of hindsight.
“This one’s about feeling like a child deep down, especially in times of great pain,” Burnside explains. “I don’t think I feel any different inside as when I was 10 years old, or younger even.” That sentiment runs through every line of The Last Armchair, particularly in its central metaphor: “We’re all just playing house / Firemen and nurses / Waiting for someone to pick us and say / Ah you’re okay.” It’s a devastating acknowledgement that adulthood is performance, that beneath mortgages and responsibilities we’re all still waiting for reassurance.
Where much of modern folk music reaches for catharsis or uplift, Burnside’s work dwells in the uncomfortable in-between. The Last Armchair offers no resolution, no closure—just the raw acknowledgement that grief strips away our carefully constructed adult facades. The song ends with a gentle repetition: “Ah you’re okay / You’re okay now,” words that feel more like desperate hope than certainty.
Stream the single here: https://joshuaburnside.ffm.to/thelastarmchair
The single arrives during a landmark period for the songwriter. Burnside recently received a Folk Album of the Year nomination and a Choice Music Prize nod, recognition that confirms his place among the most affecting voices in contemporary folk. An upcoming headline tour includes dates supporting Ye Vagabonds and Foy Vance, further cementing his reputation as an artist unafraid to sit with discomfort and transform it into something quietly beautiful.
It’s Not Going to Be Okay promises more of this unflinching honesty, and if The Last Armchair is any indication, Burnside is entering a new phase of his already singular career. This is an artist coming into his own power by admitting he still feels powerless, turning a flat-pack piece of furniture into one of the year’s most affecting meditations on loss.
Burnside shared this about the record:
“I wrote and recorded this album after the death of my best friend Dean Jendoubi. He was an incredible person, and I miss him every day. He drifted unawares into the deepest sleep and died of a drug overdose on August 17th last year.
“Grief has always been a big part of my music; it’s the reason I started writing songs when I was 13. And so, as I did all those years ago, I reach for the guitar, try a few chords and sing a few words and for a brief moment I feel like it’s going to be okay.”
It’s Not Going to be Okay Tour Dates
Mar 21 – Manchester – Hallé St Peter’s
May 1 – Cork – Cyprus Avenue
May 2 – Dublin – Button Factory
May 6 – Glasgow – Oran Mor
May 7 – Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
May 9 – Stroud – Prince Albert (2 shows 14:00 & 21:00)
May 10 – London – EartH Theatre
May 11 – Bristol – Beacon
June 17 – Falmouth – Cornish Bank
June 18 – Totnes – Barrel House
June 19 – Frome – The Tree House
June 20 – Milton Keynes – Craufurd Arms
June 21 – Beverley – Beverley Folk Festival
August 15 – Belfast – Custom House Square (Foy Vance show)