LOS ANGELES, CA- When Rhett Miller lands in my inbox, there is one Blurred Culture contributor I immediately think of: Vivian Wang. Vivian is a longtime fan of Miller and the Old 97’s, and whenever she writes about their music, she has a knack for getting past the obvious and finding the emotional center of a song. So when Miller’s new solo single, “Wasted Time,” arrived, I knew I was wandering onto somewhat familiar territory. Hers.
But “Wasted Time” made me want to stay there for a while.
Released September 18 through Miller’s revived Maximum Sunshine Records, “Wasted Time” is a collaboration between Miller and Nashville songwriter and producer Johnny Black. According to Miller, Black arrived at their writing session with the idea that wasted time might not actually be wasted time. It was a simple thought that resonated with where Miller found himself at that moment, and the song apparently came together remarkably quickly.
The resulting five-minute track feels appropriately unhurried.
What immediately struck me about “Wasted Time” is just how little Miller seems interested in filling that space with words. Compared with the detail-rich, character-driven storytelling I tend to associate with Miller and the Old 97’s, the lyrics here feel almost conspicuously spare. There are relatively few of them, and Miller keeps circling back to the same thoughts/themes, sometimes repeating them and sometimes subtly changing their meaning.
But that sparseness is precisely what makes the song work.
“Wasted Time” feels less like Miller telling us a story than listening to himself think.
The questions begin almost immediately. Where is he this morning? Where was he last night? Why does his head hurt? In his dreams, things can somehow be right. Later, he turns that thought around and finds himself always wrong in those same dreams.
Those contradictions never really get resolved.
Instead, Miller returns again and again to the realization at the center of the song: the time he wasted was not necessarily wasted after all. There is little purpose in looking backward because the mistakes have already been made. More importantly, they belong to him.
“I made all these mistakes but I made ’em mine.”
It is a deceptively simple line, but within the context of the song, it begins to feel almost like a mantra.
There is no grand attempt at absolution here. Miller does not seem particularly interested in convincing us that the mistakes were secretly good decisions, nor does he wallow in regret over them. He simply claims them. The wrong turns, lost nights and squandered tomorrows are part of the same life that brought him to wherever he is standing now.
And perhaps that is why the repetition becomes so important.
Over the course of five minutes, these relatively few words cycle through the song until listening begins to feel almost meditative. Right and wrong become less important than acceptance. The past cannot be corrected, but it can be contemplated, understood and ultimately incorporated into the person who survived it.
Gentle acoustic guitar strums establish the song’s foundation while a steady bass line keeps it moving forward. Subtle strings drift through the background without demanding attention, giving the recording an almost ethereal quality. There is space everywhere. Even the reverb surrounding Miller’s voice seems to leave his thoughts hanging in the air for an extra moment before they disappear.
His falsetto during the song’s bridges only deepens that atmosphere. Rather than reaching for some enormous emotional declaration, his voice seems to float through the arrangement.
Then, around the three-minute mark, “Wasted Time” changes its posture.
The percussion suddenly punches through with considerably more aggression, introducing the kind of dynamic shift that could easily have turned the song toward a conventional crescendo. But Miller does something more interesting.
He stays calm.
The instrumentation grows louder around him, but Miller does not attempt to overpower it. His vocal remains remarkably steady, almost detached from the commotion erupting underneath it. For a moment, it feels as though the music is expressing the turmoil that the narrator no longer needs to express himself.
And then it passes.
The percussion retreats, the arrangement opens back up and “Wasted Time” returns to that meandering, ethereal place from which it began.
That choice may be my favorite thing about the song.
There is no enormous cathartic payoff because perhaps catharsis is not what Miller is after. The song is not about defeating the past. It is about reaching some kind of peace with it.
Miller himself has described the recording as beginning as a lament and ending as a triumph, but the triumph here feels unusually quiet. It is not the sound of someone declaring that everything worked out exactly as it should have. It is the sound of someone recognizing that everything that did not work out is his, too.
That distinction becomes increasingly meaningful when considering where Miller is in his career. For more than three decades, he has balanced his solo work with his role as frontman of the Old 97’s. “Wasted Time” arrives as another chapter in that solo catalog while also marking the return of Maximum Sunshine Records, Miller’s own imprint. The song was also recently featured during Season 8 of ABC’s The Rookie.
Meanwhile, the Old 97’s are expected to release another album in 2027, and Miller continues his solo touring schedule through the fall.
Yet “Wasted Time” does not sound particularly concerned with what comes next.
It is content to sit with what has already happened.
Maybe that is the subtle wisdom buried inside the song. We spend an enormous amount of our lives sorting experiences into neat categories: productive or wasted, success or failure, right or wrong. Miller seems to be asking whether those distinctions matter quite as much once enough time has passed.
Maybe wasted time is still part of the time that made us.
Maybe mistakes do not have to be erased before we can move forward.
Sometimes it is enough simply to say: I made them. They are mine.
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