In the final moments of “Dead Friends,” the penultimate track of the new Lighten Up, Bad Cop Bad Cop guitarist-vocalist Stacey Dee sings, “So try to love your life, while you can.”
These words serve as a powerful thesis for Lighten Up (Fat Wreck Chords/Hopeless Records, September 19, 2025), the SoCal punk group’s fourth full-length. The album paints a striking portrait of life’s hard-won victories and hard-fought losses.
“I think that’s what I write my songs about,” Dee says. “Life is hard, but it's still beautiful. Stop picking the hard shit to look at—look at the beautiful stuff too. Lighten up.”