Unlike that time when St. Vincent “stripped down” MASSEDUCTION to create 2018’s acoustic monstrosity, MassEducation, Lykke Li has approached her reworkings of select offerings from a seminal summer album of 2018, so sad so sexy with slightly more care, transforming it into a well-curated EP called still sad still sexy.
To set the playfully sardonic tone of an album called as such, Li opts to commence with a remix of “sex money feelings die” featuring Lil Baby and SNOWSA for an even more danceable effect. And as Li delineates another night spent out to stave off her feelings in the daylight (connoting a certain “Habits [Stay High]” by Tove Lo theme), she laments of the vicious cycle, “Oh I’m afraid of the sunlight/I don’t get to be alright/Two lines, one time/Every night, every weekend, weeknight/All my lights off when I wake up/Tears under my makeup.” It’s a cycle that, in so many ways, can be reduced simply to all of our eventual life paths: “sex, money, feelings, die.”
The more emotional (yet again, more danceable) reinvention of “two nights” turns into “two nights part ii.” Originally featuring Aminé, this iteration is breathed with new life by the more tropically-infused stylings of Skrillex and Ty Dolla $ign. And as Li seems determined to dance alone in her own room while her nonplussed significant other is likely to be “dancin’ on the streets with somebody,” she wants to imbue her own listener with that decadent defiance in the face of sadness.
Commencing the couplet of two new songs on the record is “Baby Doves,” which sustains the uptempo pacing of the others with a slightly more wistful lyrical tone to it. As Li ruminates on the past, specifically the outset of her good times with the one she thought would always be hers, she notes, “We’ll always be like baby doves/Too young to know no better/We were just down, d-down, whatever.” Alas, being down for whatever can waste a lot of time when the object of your affection suddenly decides to leave you in favor of delighting in good times with someone else. Hence Li remarking of the situation, “Bleeding me dry/Leave me lonely out here, no IV.” Even so, she foolishly can’t help but fall prey to the trick nostalgia plays on us all in making us believe “it’s only lonely without you/I’m about to free fall, oh, I/Get me back, get me back to you/Need to feel it again/Wanna feel you again, need to feel it, oh, man.” But, ultimately, it’s a lie we tell ourselves as recapturing the sentiments of a honeymoon period couldn’t even work for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
“Neon,” the type of song that would be played at the triumphant end of an 80s movie, perfectly pairs with “Baby Doves” in terms of offering a coda to the problem of a broken heart. For Li declares, “I never love half-hearted/I’m down to get bruised…/Yeah knock me out, knock me down, I don’t care.” Of course, it is always those who say they don’t care who do the most. Accordingly, Li likens her flickering out relationship to the phases of a night in a club, wishing that it could stay as bright as the neon at the outset of an evening, urgently chanting, “Don’t let the color dim, dim away (neon).”
Naturally, however, it must. So it is that we segue into an even sadder version of “so sad so sexy.” More slowed down and piano-laden than it is on the original version, the forlorn sound of Li’s voice offers just the faintest trace of hope as she says, “Now I’m lyin’ with you one last time,” for it means that though she finally has the courage to break her own heart and end things, she’s one step closer to getting on with the healing process.
An a capella-esque incarnation of “deep end” concludes the affecting EP, with Li taking it back once again to the beginning phase of a relationship, when everything is a whir of fear and excitement (especially when one’s new boo is a drug addict). And though she thought she would only lightly tap the surface, turns out, love is a k-hole that’s difficult to exit. Thus, “I’m in it, I’m in it I was only gonna touch ya, now I’m in it/I’m in it, swimming in it/I wasn’t gonna love you now I’m so fucking deep in it/I think I feel another wave, another wave/I’m diving in, I’m diving in it anyway.” Turns out, we’re doing the exact same thing with so sad so sexy via still sad still sexy.
