"So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings"-Caroline Polachek
Remember Chairlift? The alternative band out of
Boulder, Colorado produced several songs that are still in recurrent rotation
on my iTunes playlist including “Evident Utensil” and “Romeo.” But I’m pretty
sure you are familiar with their ballad “Bruises,” a song that got a big boost up
the charts in 2008 when it was used in an Apple iPod Nano television ad.
Well, Chairlift split-up two-years ago giving singer-songwriter
Caroline Palochek a chance to release an album of material under her own name
for the first time in her career (Pang, out last month). And boy, did
this girl come through! My pick of the pack was the track with the curious song
title.
Turns out, “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” has
nothing to do with lame pick-up lines. Instead, think sexual separation frustration
served-up in a very cute, playful way. Or as Caroline tweeted, “It’s about a
spicy long-distance crush.”
Polachek explained to MTV News, "'You're so hot
it's hurting my feelings’ is something I'd actually told someone a week prior,
and the phrase just kept playing on my mind. I had a session set up towards the
very end of writing this record with a couple friends of mine, and the first
melody that came was the melody that's now the beginning of the song. There's
something kind of classical about it, but it also reminded me of ‘Video Killed
the Radio Star’-era Eighties pop. Just something about the quality of the
jumpiness of it. And then I thought, wait a minute, this is kind of the perfect
vessel for that lyric.”
This breezy bop begins with stereo-panned angelic “ah”s
immediately merged with a bold bass-line that takes you to the opening stanza which
establishes her lusty longing.
“Not like I'm counting the days/But it's been twenty-five/You're out there killing the game/But damn, I miss you tonight…”
I sense a little bit Feist mixed with Haim and Imogene
Heap over a Japanese House vibe. Polachek’s voice is beautifully bright and
bubbly, but I'm also a fan of how she merges the analog and the digital with
subtle auto-tuned, vocoded vocals on the refrain.
“I get a little lonely/Get a little more close to me/You're the only one who knows me, babe/So hot you're hurting my feelings…”
She then sums up those frustrations with her
two-word acquiesce…
“Can’t deal.”
I also love the little extra touches that at first
went by unnoticed. For instance, listen how Caroline interjects gasps and sighs
with her vocal delivery -- each succeeding breath just a little deeper -- adding a
feel of sexual fluster to her story line. And aside from the alternating coquettish
“woo”s sprinkled through the production, there are also Caroline’s lascivious
lyrics; “With all the X-rated dreamin'…” “Don't send me photos, you're making
it worse…” and a middle-eight that just could be home to pop music’s very first dick-pic
reference.
Polachek confessed to PopCrush, “I will tell you a
secret, which is that in the bridge, underneath the vocal solo -- which by the
way is the first guitar solo I've ever done with my voice -- there is the lyric
‘Show me the banana,’ which you can interpret that one however you want.”
I’m positive Harry Belafonte, Gwen Stefani and Donovan
can dig it.
