Need 2

"Need 2" is a song recorded by the American rock band Pinegrove. The song was first released on May 29, 2014, and later re-released as a single on June 15, 2023.

Background
"Need 2" was performed, recorded, and co-mixed by Evan Stephens Hall, the chief force behind Pinegrove. In 2014, the band had released one album and several extended plays, including &, which caught the ear of a listener in Canada. This fan contacted Hall to suggest releasing a cassette of the EP, with a brand-new EP encompassing side two. Hall challenged himself to write another series of songs with the same runtime, leading to the development of "Need 2". The song opens with a field recording of birds before segueing into a droning, despondent guitar riff. In a Reddit r/IAmA, Hall mentions his satisfaction with the original recording, which was made in his bedroom, noting that while other songs in their catalogue have been re-interpreted over time, "Need 2" gets it right. In the same thread, he reveals the song is a mediation on songwriting itself; he expanded on the song's influences in a Rolling Stone piece some time later: "I was just sort of bummed out, spaced out, bored, those classic early-Green Day tropes. And then, too, this is really a song about songwriting, ultimately, and just trying to spur myself on. [...] I was also reading a lot of Lydia Davis at the time, who’s known for flash fiction, I guess you could say, or prose poetry. So I was interested in writing songs that just had a single idea in them. And there are few lyrics in this song. It's pretty much just like, 'OK, and here I am, a human on this Earth; everything's a little bit fucked right now, and yet I am compelled to make things. Why is that? Isn't that strange? Why do I seem to need to?'" "Need 2" debuted as a part of that digital EP, Mixtape Two, first self-released on Bandcamp on May 29, 2014. At the time, Hall aimed to be conversational in his lyricism, more direct and to-the-point than concerned with interlocking themes, as in his past work. With Mixtape Two, he said: "That was a real turning point. It allowed me to move towards simplicity. Because complexity is a little bit of a defense mechanism." "Need 2" was later included as a part of the band's early-career compilation, Everything So Far, first self-released on CD-R and cassette in 2014 and later widely released through Run for Cover in 2015.

Release and reception
Jeff Ihaza from Rolling Stone viewed the song as "palpably moody".

The song was the subject of a viral TikTok dance in 2023 dubbed the "Pinegrove Shuffle". In the aftermath of the song's exposure, the band uploaded a lyric video of the song to YouTube, edited by Rena Johnson; they also released a digital single of the song with three different versions of the song (a slow version, a sped-up version, and a "hyperspeed" version), owing to a larger TikTok trend of uptempo remixes of popular songs.

Personnel
Credits adapted from Mixtape Two on Bandcamp.

Pinegrove
 * Evan Stephens Hall – guitar, vocals, songwriting, production, mixing

Production
 * Nick Levine – mixing
 * Zack Levine – mixing
 * Sam Skinner – mixing, mastering