Like many LGBTQIA+ allies, Tove Lo wasn’t about to let the month of June pass without honoring Pride in some way. So she decided to do what she does best: make the kind of music you can sweat to. Hence, the title of her new four-track EP: Heat (though some will always associate that with the 1995 Michael Mann movie of the same name). That moniker, too, can also bear an alternate political meaning in terms of referring to climate change. After all, we’ll all be sweating our tits off regardless of whether we’re dancing or not once the Earth heats up another two-ish degrees.
In any case, Tove wastes no time in getting asses on the dance floor as she and Lewis kick things off with the eponymous “Heat,” for which there is an accompanying music video directed by David Wilson. The video, like the rest of the album, is intended to be what Tove called “an ode to queer dance floors around the world.” As such, the concept centers on Tove Lo working late ‘cause she’s a singer, taking center stage at a bondage-friendly (as Tove exhibits with her very specific necklace) nightclub while the pulsing, 90s-inspired dance rhythm gets the crowd even hotter and sweatier than they already are. Things become sexual real quick (Tove is a Scorpio, after all) as bodies and mouths collide against each other, with Tove as their sex-positive satyr. With her confident lyrics, “I know you want me, obviously/I already know you can’t take the heat/You’re staring at me, staring is free/I already know you can’t take the heat [again, so global warming-coded],” she urges them to take chances they might not ordinarily dare to in the outside world. A world that can hardly be considered a “safe space.”
In this Tove Lo-anointed club, however, everyone is free—accented by the braggadocio of Tove also flexing, “Want my body, but my body’s much too much for your touch/Think you’re ready?/You’re not ready for the power of love/Want my body, but my body’s got too lush for your stuff/I already know you can’t take the heat.” And yet, patrons of the club seem to have no trouble “taking the heat” of each other as additional “performers” bum-rush the stage like it’s an impromptu vogue ball.
Tits and asses out, the party doesn’t seem likely to stop until well into the early hours of the morning. And when the video concludes with a new addition to the club (Tove Lo in a wig), it’s clear their “lost lamb” vibe is about to be jettisoned in favor of joining these lions of lasciviousness. Let’s just say it leaves things on a cliffhanger, opening up the potential for other videos that will arise out of this EP.
In the spirit of having the freedom to explore as many sexual avenues as possible, the sentiment of “Let Me Go Oh Oh” is one that insists on being allowed that kind of liberty if the person one is in a relationship (or even just an early flirtation) with isn’t truly committed. In Tove’s case, the stage of the relationship is merely in the flirtation “era.” So it is that she demands, “Oh, don’t treat me cold, I know that you’re sweet on me/Want you to be mine, but don’t waste my time.” It seems that this “boy,” however, is only comfortable expressing his feelings toward Tove within the safe confines of a dark dance floor (“Rush to my heart when we kiss in the dark all night”). This, too, speaks to the queer canon, with many LGBTQIA+ folks still conditioned to not feel safe enough to express physical signs of their love in a public, heteronormative space. But with the help of Lewis’ throbbing beat and Tove’s looming threat, “Give me your love or let me go, oh-oh,” it could very well be time for this scared little boy to come out into the light.
Because, if not, well, Tove has plenty of other options. This much is made clear as the pace ramps up even more on “Busy Girl.” With its stabbing, assaulting rhythm that matches the self-vaunting nature of the lyrics, Tove wastes no time in asserting, “Every second, minute, hour/I am good at what I do/Bitch, I’m better than you/I got brains, I got body/Both parts a little naughty.” Sure to be a drag anthem, Tove also channels equal parts sex worker and pre-fame Madonna in New York as she declares, “I push, I work, I’m such a busy girl/I’m lush [that word again]/I’m first/I get what I deserve.” And what Tove obviously feels she deserves, if this record is anything to go by, is an orgasm. But if she can’t quite achieve one, at least she can help others succeed in that area by making an album such as this. And when she says, “I’m good at what I do,” listeners know she’s referring not to giving head, but to making people come together on the dance floor. As she puts it, “Expert in my field, I can cut a deal/Experience is key, you wanna be like me.”
But for many, the desire to be like Tove will remain just that. So it’s fitting that she should conclude the all-too-brief record with a track called, what else, “Desire.” For, in many ways, that’s what being on the dance floor is all about. Moving one’s body to attract and allure the object of their desire, while themselves also becoming one. The longest of the four bops on Heat, it drips with yearning to a danceable beat (one that, at times, sounds like it’s in the same intonation as Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello’s “Señorita), with Tove Lo unabashedly admitting, “All I want, it is one night with you/You are my desire/Every time we kiss, I can’t deny it/Tell me do you feel the way I do?”
Even if they don’t, surely they can pretend for just one night. For that’s all anyone really has in this life, especially when they’re so often limited by the constraints of the day. Perhaps Tove Lo phrases that reality best when she pronounces on “Desire,” “I just need to let it out and dance till my body’s free.” Because, with the government constantly trying to put limitations on it, it’s no wonder people feel obliged to let it loose in the dark. With Heat, it becomes that much easier to do so.
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