Poppy’s “Time Will Tell” does not just sound threatening. It is.

From the glitchy art pop experiments that first introduced her, to the harsh edge of I Disagree and into the tighter, more aggressive punch of Negative Spaces, her catalogue has always felt like a constant act of self-dissection. But “Time Will Tell” doesn’t feel like a point of reflection, it feels like that pinnacle moment where you just stop giving a damn about the thoughts of others.

The opening line, “It’s never gonna leave you now ’cause time will tell,” works so well within the song because it doesn’t rush things. Poppy opts to hold back, say nothing loud or sharp, let’s things unfold slowly and waits for the inevitable moment when the truth becomes impossible to hide.

Rejection Of Gatekeeping

On Negative Spaces, she refined her sound with producer Jordan Fish, trading pure chaos for precision, but on “Time Will Tell” that precision goes deeper with lines like “I’ve become elastic, forced to change” reading like a biography of someone who’s been through all the cogs of the industry machine and now refuses to be a cog herself.

This then gets followed up with; “Why do all the crooks keep calling me home?” painting a picture of industry fatigue in an evolving scene, this was well explained in her 2026 interview with Dork, where she addressed ideas around gatekeeping directly:

Who made them (Her Doubters) the barometer for authenticity? Wait until they find out what I think about them. I have no interest in proving how metal I am. What Metallica songs do I like? I don’t even listen to Metallica.

This display’s an ever growing sense of frustration around the culture in the modern metal scene, lines such as “Why were all my heroes forced to stop?” showcase that disillusionment and by the time we hear “Ignorance is a plague”, any restraint is dropped entirely.

Poppy – Time Will Tell Lyrics In Full

Pulling Back The Veil

The repeated lines of “Pulling the veil of who you are,” act as the song’s thesis that time itself will expose, and reveal the rot beneath the surface.

Ultimately, Poppy’s “Time Will Tell” is about a scene in flux and an artist who refuses to conform to the inherited rules of what it means to be a metal artist. As the culture is shifting, Poppy moves with it; and when the dust settles, as the title suggests, time will tell who is prepared to embrace change or do everything in their power to try and stop it.

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