How many perfect pop songs can we get in a single year? DANCE, I Believe In Ghosts, She Did It Again, Need for Speed, and the list goes on...
But this one is special. This marks a turning point on my indifference towards O-Rod and the start of me becoming a fan.
This is perfect from start to finish. So let's start from the top...
Olivia starts off the song describing a fond memory of seeing her partner's old school pictures. In this opening verse, the atmosphere and the way she's delivering words almost feel haunting, like you're uncertain of what's to come. But tonally, the lyrics mark the start of a fond relationship.
And just look at what she does with the turn of phrase here:
And it's crazy (It's crazy)
How I used to visit your town like a tourist
A local grocery store and a favorite florist
She's saying they used to be apart, but she moved into town and made it her own.
The hook is a perfect metaphor of the assimilation of identity when you get into a relationship:
Made our paths intersect 'til the two lines formed a circle
And I melt with you, your red and my blue
Now I see the world in purple, purple
You join forces, the mixing of identity, habits, taste and routines turn your own individual colors into something that is a new color entirely.
Now, the uncertainty, the unease and the pausing that she employs during the vocal delivery turns into something more sinister in the second half, that is only hinted at in the first half. She baits you into thinking it's a sweet love song. But now they're arguing and getting jealous, now they're getting codependent.
Someone smarter than me broke down this next line perfectly:
It's a small world (It's a small world)
When it only can revolve around us two
The key word here is "CAN". The initial reaction may be to picture a couple in love, where the rest of the world vanishes and they're left with just them. But what she is REALLY saying is something to the effect of "Must the world really only be us two? Can't we have our own lives, our own friends?" It implies that the attachment has grown unhealthy.
While this is going on, the song that started off slow has now picked up the pace, becoming more busy with added musical elements, the intensity is rising, there's more background vocals added - from a pure sound engineering perspective it's amazing too.
And how about reprising the earlier sentiment of "It's crazy" about how she moved into town with essentially "it's crazy that I lost myself":
I had big dreams ’til I tied myself to you
By the way, I forgot to mention earlier, and this is important too, the "melt with you" reference that comes from the seminal 80s song by Modern English. Again, in the beginning it's sweet, it's about bringing red to blue until you turn purple. But what happens when the heat is applied for too long? By the end of the song they've been "melting" for so long that the purple has gotten burnt and turned to black.
I might have just posted this song and said "10/10, no notes" but I really wanted to get my notes out on this one. This song is fucking phenomenal.
