Dua Lipa proved disco makes the heart go round on Future Nostalgia — the starry-eyed moment of first glances (“Levitating”), the sharp inhale of piercing doubt (“Break My Heart”), the cleansing ritual of a GNO (“Don’t Start Now”) — and on “I Hate Feeling in Love,” Kaya Stewart continues the cycle: disco as the cautious tread towards new love.
Romance is a trap in Stewart’s eyes, and she tries her best to drive around it on the FasTrak to disillusionment. “I’m not easy to please,” she opens, trying to deter her lover with standards of high-maintenance before admitting her lack of reciprocity. It’s believable at first, the apathy when she clips and throws away the last syllable of “changes,” the hesitance of those distorted vocoder echoes.
Eventually, though, she gives in: “Tell me that you really want me, hold me when I’m feeling lonely.” The feeling is there, that much she can’t deny, in the electric guitar riffs that strike like a lightning bolt of love, in the dazed synths that ascend to some neon heaven. For now, she has kept her cool, averting her eyes from a future of possible heartbreak — “I don’t, I don’t like the feeling” — but a warmer song seems waiting to come along.
SIMILAR SONGS
