Songfacts®:

• I should be
  Dead in a gutter by now
  Should be six feet under
  Don't know how I swerved the corner
  
  The phrase "dead in the gutter" typically refers to a tragic situation where someone has died in a public place, often due to poverty, homelessness, or other circumstances that leave them vulnerable and without support. The "gutter" refers to the street gutter, which is often associated with poverty and homelessness.
  
  In this song, Venbee can't believe she's still kicking it, let alone fit and healthy and feeling great.
• Throughout "Gutter," Venbee describes her rocky road. At 15, she fell in with a bad crowd and did dumb things to impress them. By 16, she'd nearly died, scaring her mom half to death. At 17, she relapsed multiple times, and by 18, she was using alcohol to numb her thoughts. Lockdown at 19 made everything worse, and now at 22, she's lost track of time and doesn't know what to do. She's got a chip on her shoulder, but she thinks it's part of her charm.
  
  "It's literally a timeline of my life," she told BBC Radio 1's Clara Amfo. "And it's to the point of like, I don't know how I'm still here, but I'm still here and I'm thriving and I'm feeling good. And I think for me like being honest in my songs is like the best therapy for me. But what I did relapse when I was 17 and that was difficult and it was just a pure an emotional attachment detachment with me and when I'm ready to, to speak about it. I think I will. But it's a topic that you got to tread carefully with."
• Venbee wrote "Gutter" with Litek and Whyjay. The two Manchester-based producers are the go-to collaborators for rappers Aitch and ArrDee. She released it as her follow-up single to "Messy In Heaven" on March 16, 2023. "I was really scared about dropping that song. I thought it would flop and like soon as it came out. It was took like, a couple of weeks and then it took off," said Venbee. "However, people take it so for like, from my perspective, it's about people. The greatest people can fall down a difficult path. And that's what the song is but people take it in their own perspective and it did have controversy behind it. But it was a journey. It was a ride and I'm absolutely so grateful that they went down, well."