Song Recommendation: “Waiting Room” by Jake Nicoll (2025)

“Please hold, your life is very important to us.” 

Mixing Vaporwave sounds and liminal space imagery is nothing new (indeed, I’d argue they’re entirely intermixed aesthetics) but with Jake Nicoll’s “Waiting Room,” he both literalizes and humanizes the colder edges of both. Drawing the line under the ambiguity of the word “patient,” he sings as melancholy synths burble around his soft voice:

In the waiting room, bright white lights
Oh, so many sleepless nights

Polished floors, cold steel doors
Just a few more days
In the waiting room

And then, in what can only be described as the most mournful on-hold message ever put to tape, a voice pleads in digital staccato: “please…please hold.”

The song has a forward momentum that belies the ennui of its narrator and all to its benefit. Ultimately, it seems to also try to remind us that there will be a time when this endless wait will be over. Just, maybe not quite yet.

I’m a patient boy, I can wait
It’s not yet too late, good will come

Walk, don’t run
Just a few more days

In the Waiting Room