Single Saturdays: April 26, 2025
“Hearts a Mess” by Gotye
By Anastasia Petridis
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the memes that poke fun at Gotye for falling off the face of the earth after his success with “Somebody I Used to Know,” but Gotye is not a one-hit wonder! “Hearts a Mess” is the third track on Gotye’s second studio album, Like Drawing Blood (2006), and was used in the 2013 film, The Great Gatsby. From the start, the song has an ethereal and Eastern-sounding quality. The harp strings and chiming bells layer perfectly with the looped bassline, which pounds steadily like a heartbeat throughout the song. Gotye’s unique yet ever-so-familiar voice begins to detail his desires to understand someone he is interested in, pointing out that this person is emotionally unavailable. His voice is compassionate towards them, but progressively gets more desperate and pained, especially in the chorus:
Your heart's a mess
You won't admit to it
It makes no sense
But I'm desperate to connect
And you, you can't live like this
He is agonized. As his voice reaches the peak, a choir joins him in the background, a manifestation of the feeling of inner turmoil. The complex instrumentation of slide guitars and violins layered with Gotye’s incredible voice makes this 6-minute song an atmospheric exploration of heartbreak. This song is certain to hit you right where it hurts. Ouch.
FOLLOWING 3 ALL BY OLIVIA LINDQUIST
“All I’ve Ever Known” — Eva Noblezada & Reeve Carney, Hadestown (Original Broadway Cast Recording)
I’m a theatre kid at heart. I fell in love with performing as a little girl who got applause from joining school teams and giving speeches. In middle school, I was in every stage show, in the choir, on the cheer team and in a competitive acting troupe. High school was a lot of the same as I devoted every waking moment not studying to my theatre department — even through the pandemic. I have strong memories of waiting for my mom to pick me up after Charlotte’s Web rehearsal (my freshman fall play) in 2019 and listening to this musical all the upperclassmen raved about.
The diagram of theater kids who love Hadestown and hopeless romantics is a circle.
“All I’ve Ever Known” has been my favorite song from the Tony award winner for five years and recently I got to see the show live in the Walter Kerr theatre on West 48th Street. Seeing this song live has sent me into an obsessive spiral of listening to this song, deciding I need to stop being so chronically single, remembering I hate meeting new people and then repeating.
Of all the musical theatre ballads to talk about, this one is the one I recommend to non-theatre people. It holds the power of an early 2000s r&b duet and Eva and Reeve channel so much love and adoration through their vocals for the entire four minute ballad. Though not quite in the jazzy style the rest of the musical is in, it fits so perfectly in the narrative to give the audience a true feeling of how much love Euridyce and Orpheus shared — a song that gets tainted, in my opinion, whenever someone says Orpheus was stupid for turning back.
This song also gets bonus points on my list because Eva and Reeve literally just got engaged after meeting through this musical. It is the definition of magic.
“Sushi Glory Hole” — The Lonely Island
Season 50 of Saturday Night Live started out RIGHT with The Lonely Island giving us this masterpiece. From the video to the lyrics it captures the true essence of what made us fall in love with The Lonely Island from “Lazy Sunday” in the first place. Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer rap together on this single about a hole in a bathroom stall that delivers high grade sushi as they try to pitch it to a board of investors.
For the first month of this release, I had Samberg and Schaffer repeating “Hear us out” in the back of my mind and I’m not even that mad about it. I could temporarily change it if I played another Lonely Island song, but “Sushi Glory Hole” always made its way back into my rotation.
I remember how long the internet was thirsting over Andy and Akiva’s costumes as they were dressed in pressed suits, Urkel glasses, and their hair blown out in a way every woman dreams she gets with a $120 trip to the salon. It gave the world a new way to love Jake Peralta and Rod Kimball and Connor 4Real. It also gave us a much appreciated look at Akiva Schaffer who usually is in the background.
For an honorable exit stage left, my favorite verse is as follows:
“That’s two stalls over
So you're gonna wanna make sure you come in sober
‘Cause none of them are labeled, and full disclosure
There’s a chance you’re gonna get a dick (dick)
But it's worth it ‘cause the quality of fish
Yeah, the flavor that you gain outweighs the risk”
It’s my favorite way to start a particularly lively morning.
“3–Way (The Golden Rule)” [feat. Justin Timberlake and Lady GaGa]” — The Lonely Island
Is it really me if I haven’t mentioned my love with a capital L for The Lonely Island in a while?
Having been introduced to the SNL trio through their song “Jack Sparrow” with Michael Bolton, I have scoured through their discography and have to agree with the masses that the Timberlake trilogy is one of the greatest narratives of all time.
Starting with “Dick in a Box” Timberlake and Samberg, dressed in matching colorful jumpsuits, plan to give their girlfriends a peek at their genitals hidden in Christmas boxes sung in a Seal-esque tune around Manhattan. At the end of the video, they get arrested — presumably for public indecency — and the sequel starts with them getting out of jail. “Motherlover,” a song that makes fun of a song by R. Kelly and Usher, is about Timberlake and Samberg deciding to gift their moms the best thing ever for Mother’s Day: sex with their son’s best friend. The two proceed to wine, dine, and bed the other’s mothers and come out pleasurable and ready for the next adventure. The finale in this epic is just as hilarious as Timberlake and Samberg sing about a girl they were each taking on a date only to realize she — Lady GaGa — was dating them both. The two essentially say “to hell with it” and have a (consenting) three way with her, singing about how “it’s not gay if it’s in a three way.”
I listen to some weird music at times — especially when it goes hard — but there’s nothing like blasting “3-Way” with the sunroof open after an eight hour retail shift. It has the same vibes of summer 2016 and even though it came out three years earlier, it really catapults you back to when summer radio bops were about partying and living free. The opening and the chorus of “yeah”s that follow creates a vibe that is unmatched by anything else in my repertoire.
I don’t think I would be me if it weren’t for the hours I’ve listened to The Lonely Island and it’s this trilogy that made them my top artist last year.