"Sometimes I stare in space, tears all over my face…" As we stare back at the other side of the summer of 2012, this is the song that will define it for me. I mean, really, I liked Carly Rae's "Call Me Maybe" but it
1. It ain't seasonal
and
2. It is exothermic, I want something a touch more exclusive.
I think I've listened to Girl In The Coma's "Heatwave" every day since I got it! The trio is all about Phanie Diaz's way cool triplets and rolls on the transitions, it moves really pretty smooth from one to the other, and her sister Nina is almost distracted by desire. She exudes a heatness that is all cool sweat. Her voice, and this is always true of Nina's s fabulous singing, sinks into you and she manages to never pronounce a syllable without slurring.
The chorus is such a huge thing, everybody knows it, everybody sings, but the verses save the song from being just another 60s classic. And Nina gets the verses better than anyone I've heard since Martha Reeve's take on (to give it its full name) "(Love Is Like A) Heatwave". I guess so it's not mistaken for the Irving Berlin classic.
What nags at the song, what Linda Ronstadt did, is pull up instead of down here. Nona's plaintiveness is powerful in a subdued emotional declaration of desire. Linda's reading was too smart. Too perfect. It gussied it up too much. Just about everybody else has no idea what to do with the song.
Perhaps because they miss that, although written by Holland-Dozier-Holland, it is a song of female and not male sexuality. It is wet not sweat, a liquidy sexiness, all tears, and drippiness.
And the song that will define the summer of 2012 for me.