Tag: ATC

It seems that, when it comes to expressing like versus dislike, Tove Lo has a much easier time conveying the latter emotion for women. That is, if her 2019 single with Kylie Minogue, “Really Don’t Like U” (from Sunshine Kitty) is anything to go by. With “I Like U,” a song that Tove Lo has been performing of late on her Dirt Femme Tour, her sentiments for a “special man” (her husband, one assumes) are instead warm and fuzzy. As Tove Lo puts it, “I’m telling the story of my thoughts the first time I saw the love of my life. They’re not clean but at least I never said any of them out loud.” Well, she is now—and she’s decided to do so in yet another 00s-inspired fashion after already paying homage to the decade with the song and Anna Himma-directed video, “2 Die 4.”

The video for “I Like U” is more minimalistic (especially compared to the one she did before this for “Borderline,” the sequel to “No One Dies From Love”), but still has plenty of “gritty 00s” flavor…mainly because there’s absolutely no use of phones, and it’s difficult to imagine someone being in a karaoke bar in the present day without using one to film their “performance.” As for the sound of the song itself, Tove remarked, “I wanted to make another dance song that sonically felt like a nod to 90s and Y2K dance music.” With this in mind, the song builds slowly to its rhythmic house-y backing beat, courtesy of TimFromTheHouse, who Tove Lo called out as her co-writer/producer by noting, “…we worked on it for months in between tours to figure the perfect arrangement. It’s not the usual pop structure but it’s perfect for this song, I think.”

And it really is, particularly as Tove sets the tone for her burning desire with the opening verse, “I’ma tell you the truth now/‘Cause I’m too high to lie/I wish I was your girlfriend/Is she with you tonight?/You say, ‘Sorry, I’m taken’/Walk away with a smile/I know I’m not mistaken/You’re the love of my life.” Similar to fellow Dirt Femme single “True Romance” in sentiment and timbre, Tove wants the rest of the world to melt away—including his current girlfriend—so that she can be with this person in blissful, sex-drenched peace. As the backbeat builds to its crescendo and Tove offers the simple admission, “La-la-like you, I la-la-la-like you/La-la-like you,” it sounds reminiscent of ATC singing, “Just la la la la la, it’s all around the world/La la la la la, la la la la la la la.” And yes, Tove is obviously a proponent of bringing back this exact form of early 00s Eurodance.

Reteaming with Moni Haworth (who also directed Tove’s videos for “Sweettalk My Heart” and “Bikini Porn”) for the video, the Swedish songstress finds herself roaming through the halls of an empty Koreatown karaoke bar (L.A.’s Koreatown, to be clear). Namely, Pharaoh. Wearing a trippy eye mask that makes her look like an anime character come to life, Tove wanders the halls and dances seductively for no one in the elevator before finding herself in one of the karaoke rooms singing along to the lyrics of her own song. That she’s alone throughout the video feels like a pointed choice in terms of highlighting that this love is not necessarily immediately reciprocated. In fact, maybe it’s not reciprocated at all and this is actually all just coming from the perspective of an erotomaniac. A sign urging her to “Have a fabulous time!” seems to be taken to heart as she goes apeshit on the mic, does shots by herself, briefly slumps over in the booth, dances around manically and generally looks like she’s loosely recreating that first episode of The Twilight Zone, “Where Is Everybody?,” with a greater sense of chill than the character who started to lose his shit over the realization that no one was around (granted, there are signs of some errant Pharaoh employees at one moment in the video). He was totally alone.

Perhaps Tove doesn’t really care about being alone because the only person she wants to be with is the one she can’t (yet) have. Ergo her later lyrics, “I run into you everywhere/But you push me away/Does it mean you’re still with her?/She convinced you to stay?” If she did, cue the lyrics to “Really Don’t Like U” during which Tove says to the “other woman,” “Thought I was done feeling sorry/Knew he’d be here with somebody/Why did it have to be you?/I know I’ve got no right to, I know I’ve got no right to/Really, I just don’t like you,” adding, “None of it is your fault/And when I hate on you, I’m breaking the code/But you got him, I don’t, I don’t/Hard to be fair to you when I got my heart broke.” And yet, in “I Like U,” Tove is coming from the vantage point of becoming the “other woman” herself, lying in wait for this love of hers to realize that she’s the one. Tove’s overt comedown-from-euphoria periods in the karaoke bar, however, indicate that maybe she’s not entirely sure things are going to work out just because she wants them to.

Her longing is captured, at various moments, through the CCTV cameras of Pharaoh. Back in front of the screen that’s parading her lyrics, she sits in the booth and bounces around frenetically as though wanting to jump out of her skin while singing, “I cannot take it.” And it really seems like she can’t—she needs this person to be with her now. As she warns him, “You make it hard/I guess I respect that/Don’t take too long/I’ve been waitin’ all night.” And she clearly has, as we see her exit Pharaoh in the hours of dawn when the moon starts to fade out.

Soon, she’s wandering the unruly hills of L.A., where she happens upon an ostensibly wild dog (a.k.a. her own, Peggy) who regards like she’s a bit loca (though is still kind enough to sit down next to her) while she concludes the song with the outro, “I don’t know, but/Sometimes, when you find love/The wrong thing is right/It might be hard/But worth the fight/Real love.” Lately, Taylor Swift seems to be in agreement…about Matty Healy.