Continuing his 2017 10 singles campaign with a collaboration straight out of my Top 40 radio fanfic, summer song autobot Calvin Harris just released some fire-sign jubilee for the New Year. I need a glass of lemonade. Ice melts.
Maybe it’s because I heard “Heatstroke” in the witching hours of insomniac sobriety, but when you hear a song like this with back-to-back suite-life refrains, “How can anyone get tired?” I put it on repeat, inspired and smiling big like my mind wasn’t shipwrecking on the shores of depression. What if 808s “Paranoid” wasn’t so paranoid? What if you could find a way to dance outside in the sun just a week after hearing A Crow Looked At Me? Would you do it?
As the Frank Ocean feature on “Slide” was creamy, Young Thug’s feature on “Heatstroke” is crunchy AND organic, his “Harambe” soul intro transitioning into 4/4 pop(-funk) style with supernatural ease, the perfect offset for Ariana Grande (MOM!) & Pharrell’s #1 angelic falsetto. Jeffery’s repeated “Let’s have a good time” recalls that special 2015 jam, “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times).” Good times.
Fuck Spring & rebirth, it’s officially Summer. The verses are as good as the pre-chorus is as good as the chorus! “Won’t you please slow down?”
More about: Ariana Grande, Calvin Harris, Pharrell, Young Thug
