Iona Zajac confronts toxic masculinity in powerful new single ‘Anton’
The Glasgow artist channels rage and healing into her most personal track yet.
Glasgow’s Iona Zajac has released her third single of 2025, the emotionally charged ‘Anton,’ marking a stark departure from her previous work with a brutal examination of toxic masculinity and formative trauma. The track represents the artist’s most vulnerable and confrontational material to date, tackling experiences that shaped her adolescence with unflinching honesty.
The song opens with haunting vocals over clean, bittersweet guitar chords before escalating through subtle harmonies and mounting vocal intensity. Lyrically, Zajac guides listeners through these difficult chapters with lines like “Anton I can’t remember the time you said I saved your life / Babes and bitches keep you warm until there’s something they don’t like.”
Zajac explains it best in her own words:
“‘Anton’ is all the men who assumed they had the upper hand. The men that haunted my teens with their egos and their hands. It’s for the girls who said ok or didn’t. Who were expected to be ok or pretended to be. Anton is the power and the rage I’ve found since. I’m facing these bad times and giving them a terrifying scream, a wink, a handshake, a headbutt.”
Following a solo show at Belladrum Festival in Inverness on August 1st, Zajac will join The Pogues for an extensive North American tour running from September 5th through 19th, with stops in Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto, Montreal, and Chicago, concluding at Riot Fest.
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