Black folks don't play around about loving Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams. From the moment I first heard "Misery Business" blasting on Saints Row 2's 89.0 Ultor FM radio station, I knew I'd personally fix girlie a hot plate at the cookout. After months of fans manifesting collaborations between the pop punk songstress with Megan Thee Stallion and Doechii, she finally dipped into the R&B scene alongside model and singer Moses Sumney for their newly released single "I Like It I Like It."
My anticipation for the song's release had been boiling over for a grip since Sumney and WIlliams first teased their collab earlier this month through playful TikTok where Williams twinned with Sumney giving him a matching platinum dye job, showcasing her ability to crip walk in rhythm, and drip feeding brief, earworm-inducing snippets of their track. I love the song, both on its own, and as a companion to Gotye and Kimbra's 2011 bop "Somebody That I Used To Know.
Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" was a angsty teenage anthem at my high school lunch table. The four-minute song — equal parts alternative rock, indie pop, and bossa nova — is a bitter reminiscing of a romantic relationship's messy end. In it, Gotye's lyrics, taking on the role of a spurned male ex, highlight every wrong done to him, painting his former partner in the corner as the bad guy. This is a point conveyed starkly in its music video which sees him facing the camera butt ass naked, indignantly laying every hard feeling out on the table while facing an unseen audience like a breathing tapestry in the Louvre. At the same time, Kimbra stands with her back turned to an unseen audience.
For many of the guys in my friend group, myself included, Gotye's verse hit a little too close to home. We saw ourselves in his heartbreak, convinced we had no hand in how our week-to-month-long romantic relationships fell apart. We fashioned ourselves as Scott Pilgrim paragons, making the same mistake Scott Pilgrim does in the comic. Our exes were at fault for everything — end of story.
When Kimbra's verse came, it was as if we collectively plugged our fingers in our ears and went "lalalala," unwilling to hear her side. She might as well have been Charlie Brown's teacher trumpeting in the background of the song's chorus. Meanwhile, the girls in our friend group, desperate for us to have a come to Jesus moment, patiently remarked about the song's narrative shift beyond Gotye's self-righteous lament — usually in the middle of our roundtable lunchroom chats or when we passed the aux cord around en route to whatever fastfood spot won the day.
Thanks to their Buddha-like patience, we eventually recognized that the song’s timelessness lay in the beauty of its dialogue — lyrics depicting a breakup where Gotye clung to his manpain while avoiding reckoning with his shortcomings. It also didn't help Gotye's case when my friends pointed to the song's music video as proof of his narrative crumbling when Kimbra steps out of the confines of the tapestry he's painted them into, faces him head-on, and verbally lays out the receipts of their mutual break up from her perspective.
Now and then, I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know
His immediate, reflexive flinch and unwillingness to meet her gaze only pushes him further into his self-made illusions about how their relationship unraveled. With time, our debate over who was right subsided, overshadowed by the raw emotional divide. A divide made more prominent when Gotye cuts Kimbra off with the song's aggrieved chorus, ironically chastising her for cutting him off.
Williams and Sumney's "I Like It I Like It" echoes its angsty thematic core, acting as an emotional successor.
Despite the song's deceptively affectionate title, "I Like It I Like It" isn't a celebration of blossoming love. It's the red flags of its slow unraveling.
Unlike "Somebody That I Used To Know," this song's protagonists recognize their fading interests in real-time, realizing that their premature and performative displays of affection are more for the camera than for each other. This is visually reinforced through their matching hairstyles and restrictive leather outfits posing in a barren desert, manufacturing intimacy in glossy editorial style photographs. As camera flashes go off, they pose like Vogue models, yet their empty expressions reveal the truth behind their facade. The poetry behind their initially emphatic romantic declaration is a cry for help with how draining their connection has already become.
Its chorus—a simple, infectious refrain—repeats its declaration like a mantra: "I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it / I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it / I like it too much." But beneath its harmonic charm, there's a sharp contradiction. A harbinger lies in plain sight, signposting their affection as one so intense it becomes suffocating. The relationship in "I Like It I Like It" is one where every unspoken discomfort between its singers lingers unchecked, to the point of festering, transforming from fleeting icks into palpable resentment. Rather than mere red flags, these misgivings turn into evidence, pushing them toward the realization that maybe, just maybe, they fell too hard, too fast.
Its lyrics capture the emotional whiplash of a romance that burns too bright, too fast, where passion mutates into hesitation and attraction into suffocating doubt with individual lyrics where Sumney states "A kiss on the cheek every time that we meet / I turn cactus when we touch, touch" prompting WIlliams replying in kind, singing, "And no matter what you're doing to me, I keep it to me / 'Cause honesty is a boner killer." Unlike the argumentative prattling in "Somebody That I Used To Know", "I Like It I Like It" dovetails into a duet where both parties mutually agree that they're on the outs.
I don't wanna sing if it's all a dream
That means nothing to you
And my lips clutch when you open up
'Cause I don't know what to do
Much like André 3000 calling listeners out, saying "Y’all don’t want to hear me, you just want to dance" in OutKast’s "Hey Ya," both "Somebody That I Used to Know" and "I Like It I Like It" mask the emotional baggage of their uncomfy lyrics beneath an irresistibly catchy song. Like a pop song Trojan horse, the volatile lyrics of "I Like It I Like It" wave the same red flags from an obsessive, emotionally charged relationship, charting the course for the same indignant falling out of Gotye’s 2011 breakup song. “I Like it I Like It” could be a pre-breakup song, even. In between musing over how angelic Williams and Sumney's voices are, I hope the youngins will wise up to the telltale signs of their angsty romances being too similar to these songs quicker than I was when I was a lad.
