Unlike the overly sample-happy Beyoncé (who recently made that predilection more blatant than ever on Renaissance), Tove Lo has never actually taken the plunge on interpolating someone else’s music into her own. As she herself noted, “I’ve never sampled anything before, and this feels like the perfect first moment. Lyrically I wanted it to be that ‘pick me up when I’m feeling down’ song. At first, it’s like a warm hug, then you shake it off, let out a scream and start dancing!”
Perhaps waiting all the way until now to sample is a testament to just how creative she is as a musician. But, this time around, she’s using that creativity to mélange someone else’s iconic track into her own work through her latest single, “2 Die 4″ (a title just differentiated enough from Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U”). From her upcoming fifth album, Dirt Femme, “2 Die 4” not only takes Tove Lo into new territory by way of wielding the old, but it also dares to do what some samples can’t always achieve: provide a memorable earworm of an effect all its own.
In the wake of the more dramatic sonic and lyrical motifs of “How Long,” “No One Dies From Love” and “True Romance,” “2 Die 4” is three minutes and four seconds of pure, unbridled fun. Matched perhaps only by its accompanying visual, which features Tove in a, let’s say, “futuristic” bodysuit with an attached dildo. It’s in keeping with her “garb” on Dirt Femme’s album artwork, wherein she sports a “robo-scorpion stinger” in honor of her zodiac sign (accordingly, the album will be released in time for Scorpio season in October).
Traipsing through the desert landscape (think: a more sexualized, chilled-out version of Mad Max), Tove Lo croons, “You tell me I’m so beautiful/But you seem really sad about something/You tell me it’s ’cause your heart hurts/But with me, you don’t feel bad.” And why would anyone feel bad being around someone with such a big dick? Directed by Kenny Laubbacher (who previously worked with Tove on 2014’s “Thousand Miles”), this wandering figure in the desert may very well be “Christ-like” indeed with all that “BDE”—beneficent dick energy. And, as Tove herself said of the track, “I wanted to make something nostalgic, sexy and iconic. The character for this scene is [like] Wonder Woman with big dick energy and I just love it. Now, if you know what’s good for you, go listen on repeat.” And it’s hard not to with that indelible music sample.
Produced by Oscar Görres (a.k.a. OzGo), the song incorporates the signature 1969 instrumental from Gershon Kingsley that would become even more well-known as Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” in 1972. And later, resuscitated again via Crazy Frog’s 2005 “edition,” which Lo seems to be taking most of her dance-oriented cues from.
And yet, there’s no dancing to be seen at any point in this particular “extended scene,” if you will—almost as though we’re being allowed to “peek in” on something we shouldn’t. A long take that shows us how, even in a sexual wasteland (called the twenty-first century), sooner or later, someone’s cock is sure to turn up. Regardless of what so-called gender it’s attached to.
Pulling at her long braid both suggestively and arbitrarily as she appears to walk in an aimless fashion, with no specific destination in mind other than someone else’s hole to potentially penetrate, the spirited tone of the song shifts back to the chorus, “Man, I hope you call me, call me/‘Cause I know I won’t let you down/And I hope you believe, believe I’ll be here for you, here for you.” Then again, one should probably never trust a Scorpio to uphold an assurance like that, lest they want to be stung.
Tove additionally gushes in the giddy chorus, “When I think about you, the world go less blue, let’s do it over again.” But maybe by the “world” going less blue with the person she’s referring to, what is truly meant is her balls. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
