From the moment we hear the seemingly strange (at least to those who don’t speak Italian) intro to Sunshine Kitty, Tove Lo’s fourth album, it’s evident she’s setting the stage for telling of a man who likes to explore his sexual options. Eventually, that becomes okay. Because women, as we soon find out, can be just as bad as the boys in using people like tissue paper. Especially when they’re on a bisexual safari as Tove Lo so often is. But in this case we’re talking about “Mateo”–he’ll appear again later as his own song. Or rather, a man is describing the following on “Gritty Pretty”: “Bene, questo è Mateo. Sentito parlare di Uma? So come ci si sente. Ma ricorda, non vuoi mangiare lo stesso piatto ogni giorno. E con il piatto intendo…figa.” Translation: “This is Mateo. Hear him talking about Uma? I know how it feels. But remember, you don’t want to eat the same dish every day. And by dish, I mean…pussy.”
So it is that we have the manifesto for Sunshine Kitty, a title itself suggestive of everyone’s favorite genitalia and also inspired by Girls (unfortunately), specifically an episode in which the mention of an author who tans her vagina motivated Tove Lo to run with the pussy power theme of the record. As the intro segues into the triumphant anthem of female friendship, “Glad He’s Gone,” it’s obvious that Tove Lo is on the same page as Mateo with her “Never stay dry this whole summer/Only one dick, that’s a bummer” mantra. One that she wishes to impart to her heartbroken bestie. Yet on the following song, “Bad as the Boys” featuring ALMA, Tove Lo herself becomes a victim of the philandering wraith that she can barely hold onto for long enough to love, still managing to fall hard nonetheless. With this, too, being produced by The Struts (as the majority of the record is), the whimsical rhythm of the track oozes heartache you can dance to. Which, of course, has always been Tove Lo’s skill, starting with the remix for “Stay High (Habits)” that first appeared on the Truth Serum EP that would launch her into pop stardom. On Sunshine Kitty it is a knack that she has mastered in a way that allows her to take it to new avenues, “Sweettalk my Heart” being a prime example. With an opening that sounds like it might have been a demo from Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Tove Lo incorporates the girl of Queen of the Clouds’ earnestness and longing–even if it ends up being wasted–into lyrics like, “Sweeter than love is the taste of all those promises/That pulls you in for good/Can’t get enough/Put your top moves on and run with it/Sweet talk that shit, so good.” So basically, narcissists welcome. They’re usually the best at that initial sweet talk before everything goes to the dogs (not, alas, the kitties).
The initially cautious in beat “Stay Over” signals the pattern of the lover she speaks of in the song–a person who has been burned before in love, therefore wants to take it slow. But like equal parts “deep end” from Lykke Li and “Do You Wanna Come Over?” from Britney Spears, Tove Lo isn’t liable to be able to play along with this no sleepover rule for very long, urging, “Already deep in my bed, baby/Why don’t you stay over?/Know we’ve been bendin’ the rules lately/But why don’t you stay over?/Fall hard, I know it’s fast.” It’s as she gets less coy that the song’s rhythm picks up until reaching a crescendo that serves as an undeniable call to the dance floor. To that end, the Robyn-drenched synths on “Are U gonna tell her?” featuring Mc Zaac are sure to cause some infidelity. Indeed, like a naughtier, less wistful version of “Call Your Girlfriend,” Tove Lo sings, “Our bodies tangled tight in the purple light/We’re making love, passed out, we look so damn good tonight/And Sunday’s shining in, feel the shame coming/You don’t belong to me/Are you gonna tell her?” Of course Mc Zaac, Brazilian, probably won’t, accustomed to hiding indiscretions wrought from club-going from the person who thinks she’s his girlfriend.
Teaming with Jax Jones on the equally danceable “Jacques,” a song “about a one-night fling with a French dude”–what else? And as Tove describes her initial encounter with the presumably electric Jacques (then again, everyone’s electric when you’re fucked up), one gets the sense of being in the late 90s or early 00s when it was still easy to strike up a conversation with someone outside the club by asking for a cigarette. Though one supposes this is still possible in Tove Lo’s Europe, and also probably in Florida. Thus, she paints the portrait of their sexual tension with, “Ask me for my cigarette/Just so he can taste my lips and start to work me/Calculate his every step Feel his hands around my hips, here comes the head tilt/Kiss him in the French way (ooh la la la)/Professionally passionate, head to a private place/So I can reciprocate.” With both knowing that their torrid emotions for one another will wear off when the drugs do, Jacques’ lyrical perspective is, “Je m’appelle Jacques and I love you a lot/I’m with you tonight, but tomorrow I’m not.”
Continuing to put a stamp in her sexual passport, we switch to an Italian guy on “Mateo.” The one mentioned in the intro who seems to be adhering to not wanting the same “piatto” every day, thereby mixing it up with a variety of different women. Much to a yearning and burning Tove Lo’s chagrin. That the song is produced by fellow Swede and pop music maestro Max Martin adds to the sense of slow drama permeating the tale. But what else would one expect when an Italian lothario is involved? And as she bemoans, “Still not the one you choose to see I don’t ever wanna let you go, no/Mateo, Mateo, Mateo, my love/You always look for something new I hope I get my turn with you/I don’t ever wanna let you go, no Mateo, Mateo, Mateo, my love,” we can genuinely feel her sense of unrequited love. Not to mention hear shades of Madonna’s “Jimmy Jimmy,” about a slightly less ethnic wanderer that leaves Madonna in mourning over his departure.
The more rhythmically upbeat but thematically forlorn “Come Undone” (not to be confused with Duran Duran’s) explores Tove Lo’s addiction to a lover that constantly keeps her guessing about his (or her) true emotions. Wishing she could walk away Tove Lo asks, “What is it ‘bout you that makes me come undone?” further adding, “Do you love me? Do you love me?/I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, heart is beating too fast/Why I gotta love you like that?” It’s the same sort of all-consuming amour that plagued her on Queen of the Clouds, with Lady Wood and Blue Lips serving as her albums of ultimate pussy power in between that debut and now.
Well-timed to follow “Come Undone” is “Equally Lost” featuring Doja Cat (because an album called Sunshine Kitty needs some kind of artist with “Cat” in their name, and one supposes Cat Power wasn’t available). Telling another club narrative that seems to occur sometime after the heartbreaks of Mateo and whoever she was talking about on “Come Undone,” Tove Lo encounters a similarly lost soul looking to stub out the loneliness with her for the night. Because of their equally lost and “drunken hearts,” Tove Lo goes along for the ride, with Doja Cat underscoring, “Cause I’m a whole other bitch when I’m fucked up.”
A bitch who probably wouldn’t like this guy very much if she were sober. On that note, the infectious “Really Don’t Like U” featuring Kylie Minogue speaks to the fear everyone has: running into an ex with their new significant other at a party. As Tove Lo explained, “It’s about the feeling you have when you’re at a party and your ex walks in with their new girl or guy, and you put all your hate on this new person that has nothing to do with it.” But oh, it really feels like they do. It doesn’t help when they’ve got better looks and “curves in all the places that count” either. And so, standing there like a fool, Tove Lo rues, “Why, why, why/Why did I go to this party?/Thought I was done feeling sorry/Knew he’d be here with somebody/Why did it have to be you?” Girl code be damned, it’s impossible not to deem this ho a cunt for her mere existence. But Tove Lo and Kylie make the contempt come across as cute rather than petty.
Then again, staying with a person who made one put too much work into the relationship is never viable. Thus, we have “Shifted,” a song about the emotional shift that occurs when a girl finally has the revelation that the work she’s doing isn’t paying off proportionally. The intro beat mirroring that of a cat going creepy crawling at night (one pictures it prowling specifically atop a fence to this rhythm), Tove Lo explains that her mother always conditioned her to be prepared for a challenge, later remarking, “My mama was full of shit, why?/Or did I miss the whole point of it?/No I don’t need your validation/It’s just the physical pleasure I just can’t let it control my life, nah.” In short, the only reason she really felt compelled to stay was for the dick, but now, even that charm has worn off as she declares, once and for all, “I’m done, done, I’m done, done putting in work.”
The light at the end of the tunnel seems to appear on the dreamy “Mistaken.” But you’d be mistaken if you let the hopeful tone of the music distract from the paranoid in love lyrics, “I think you like the way she kissed you better/Maybe I’m mistaken/I think you love the way you looked together/Maybe I’m mistaken/I can tell myself it doesn’t matter/But it’s hitting my heart I think you’re sleeping with me, dreaming ’bout her/I hope I’m mistaken.”
Perhaps she was, as the record’s closer, “Anywhere U Go,” details Tove Lo’s aching to be where her true home is, with the one she loves. Indicating she finally got over the paranoia of “Mistaken” (or maybe “Anywhere U Go” is about just one of the many men who have orbited her bedroom throughout Sunshine Kitty), she sings, “This isn’t home for me, this isn’t home/This isn’t home for me, this isn’t home, no/Come whatever, now or never I’ll follow you anywhere you go.” It sounds a lot like every man’s worst nightmare of devotion a.k.a. “I Will Follow Him” by Little Peggy March.
So even if her bad girl persona is occasionally mitigated by a touch of the maudlin, all in all, Tove Lo stays true to her favorite themes on this album: drugging, clubbing, falling in love and then drugging and clubbing to cope with the fallout. It’s a tried and true formula for her that she doesn’t stray from so much as builds upon within the narrative of her complete discography.
