In one of the most tragic live music casualties of a cancelled year of concerts was Tove Lo’s Sunshine Kitty Tour (in promotion of the album of the same name), specifically for European dates that didn’t quite make the cutoff for when countries such as France shut it all down. While the U.S. of pre-March 2020 got to enjoy some of what the record had to offer live, any audience member brave enough to risk the even tighter security checks that will be enforced in the age of post-corona concert-going will at least get a sampling of some of the new music featured on the deluxe edition of the record, called Sunshine Kitty: Paw Prints Edition. Which opens with a new single called “Sadder Badder Cooler.”
All qualities that Tove Lo has displayed with each new album. As her fourth, Sunshine Kitty combines all the elements of vulnerability and brash flippancy that were present on Queen of the Clouds, Lady Wood and Blue Lips to bring her style and message to an apex. One that comes together with “sword-sharp” precision in the animated video for the aforementioned track, coordinated by Venturia Animation Studios and dreambear. Opening with the eponymous Sunshine Kitty (also a metaphor for her pussy) comforting a despairing Tove Lo and the broken heart with a Band-Aid sitting next to her, her sidekick/id has a eureka moment, offering a Hattori Hanzō-type samurai sword that will help her claim revenge on the exes that have wronged her. After all, this is a Kill Bill-inspired plotline. At first “scandalized” by what Sunshine Kitty–all misleadingly cute with her pink bow and a labia emblazoned on her stomach–is suggesting, Tove Lo knows that, of course, she’s going to take this advice. Therefore, she sets out toward the suburban neighborhood where her Disney prince look-alike exes reside. Starting with a blonde beefcake who practically chokes on his sandwich at the sight of her, Tove Lo pulls him back inside to briefly feign seducing him on his couch before completely eviscerating him with the sword.
From there, she heads toward the next victim, a purplish-haired Eric from The Little Mermaid sort, whose head she immediately decapitates the second he opens the door. Only trouble is, it turns out to be his twin. Oh well, Tove Lo seems to shrug, he looked similar enough for the catharsis to work. She has to save her strength for the most worthy opponent, after all–the “Bill” of the scenario, if you will. That turns out to be a woman, obviously, for what other gender could be as formidable? Naturally, the door is answered by yet another Eric-aesthetic’d dude with a chiseled chin. The girl inside looks like a brown-haired iteration of Ariel, ready to pounce on Tove Lo as she wields her cereal bowl like a shooting star (the weapon, not the hydrogen and helium-based ones).
The two enter a sexually fraught tussle that briefly interludes with a kiss. One which will turn out to be Fake Ariel’s kiss of death as Tove Lo manages to cut her in half, walking down the suburban street with her Sunshine Kitty afterward. Filled with cheekiness, Tove Lo not only reminds those of us enduring yet another breakup that with the “sadder” it makes you also comes the badder and cooler. Plus, as Tove Lo points out, “Love a good cry in the night/Oh, this sad girl life, just do it for me/Come to my pity party/Done with my pride, I don’t mind I just wanna be dramatic tonight/And make this song about me/Heartbreak pays bills/You lose, I win.” In other words, she’s recognizing what Ariana Grande has over the past few years: listeners love a breakup album. Because you might as well monetize pain if you want the “badder” aspect of yourself to shine through. For those who are not internationally famous pop stars, however, dancing or driving around to the music of those who sing your pain will have to suffice.
With “Sadder Badder Cooler” kicking off the deluxe edition, the irreverent vibe continues with the upbeat, sexually sweltering “Bikini Porn,” released back in January at a time when we thought it was torturous enough as it was to be taunted with warm weather imagery in the winter only to be faced with a far worse cruelty: pretty much every beach closed for the summer thanks to coronavirus. The double entendre-laden (it’s Tove Lo, after all) “I’m Coming” follows, bringing out the “sweeter” side of Tove Lo as opposed to the imp on “Bikini Porn.” The lovelorn one we find on “Mistaken” and “Anywhere U Go” later on in the album. Then again, being that the song is a cover of Veronica Maggio’s 2011 hit, “Jag Kommer,” it’s possible the orgasm reference isn’t as “there” as one assumes, with Maggio having stated that the track is about two people vying for the affections of the same person, with both essentially urging, “Yeah, I know she’s cute, but please, baby, hold out/ ‘Cause I’ve fallen hard, fell so hard that I woke up/Yeah, I know she’s cute, but please, baby, hold out/’Cause I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming/I am almost there.” Tove Lo makes the song even more her own by adding a lyrical reference to her first album, Queen of the Clouds, and interpolating some of the melody of “Habits (Stay High)” into it.
“Passion and Pain Taste the Same When I’m Weak” further slows things down before leading into “Gritty Pretty,” the original intro that commenced the non-bonus track version of the record. As the second song produced by Billie Eilish’s brother, FINNEAS, after “Bikini Porn,” traces of the signature Eilish moodiness are present on lyrics like, “Stuff me full off lies that I swallow down/You’re gonna get what you’re givin’ to me” and “Spiking all my right brain senses I’m naive, impulsive even/Falling too fast I’m forgetful, when it’s hurtful/Why let it last?” Certainly not a question to be asked about expanding Sunshine Kitty, which now includes a fitting bookend: remixes of both “Are U Gonna Tell Her?” and “Sweettalk My Heart,” in addition to live versions of the latter and the dramatic “Mistaken.” A word Tove Lo was not in reinvigorating this treasure of an album to get us all through a decidedly drab summer.
