Caroline Polachek is many things. She’s studied opera and played in an indie rock band. The classically trained vocalist also manipulates her sound through synthesizers and vocoder-style effects. Still, while other singers use these tools to hide, Polachek uses them to expose the force of love.
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She’s carefully crafted her image like a pop star from another era. At the same time, she’s social media-friendly, with a vulnerability pop stars from the old days would have hidden away from view.
“So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” sounds like new-age emo. It’s a title My Chemical Romance might have generated and then sent to Irish singer Enya to record. The song opens with Polachek, fearlessly theatrical, dotting the track in dream reverb and Kate Bush’s “ahs.”
Polachek’s transformative pop is a collection of opposing energies. It’s also a cosmic release. She uniquely occupies the sonic spaces of both the future and the past with music that is intentionally present in the moment.
Lonesome Tears
“So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” fastens viscerally to the album title, Pang. It’s how your stomach feels, the pang that distance brings on. Transforming her powerful voice into a vocal synthesizer, she traces the moment a long-distance relationship becomes unbearable.
Not like I’m countin’ the days
But it’s been twenty-five
You’re out there killin’ the game
But damn, I miss you tonight
Lengthy separation can leave a partner wondering if what’s happening here is sincerely a relationship. Technology makes the world smaller, but sometimes photos and videos worsen loneliness.
And I’m out at a party, they’re playin’ our song
I cry on the dance floor. It’s so embarrassing
Don’t send me photos. You’re makin’ it worse
’Cause you’re so hot, it’s hurtin’ my feelings
Going out alone collides with lonesome reminders like a particular smell triggering a stitch of pain, or, as Polachek sings, waterworks when they’re playin’ our song.
I get a little lonely
Get a little more close to me
You’re the only one who knows me, babe
So hot, you’re hurtin’ my feelings (woo)
Can’t deal
Show Me the Banana
Co-written with Daniel Nigro and Teddy Geiger, Polachek had the title when she entered the studio to write “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings.” Nigro, the former singer and guitarist for indie rock band As Tall As Lions, produced Pang with Polachek and his emo DNA shows.
Nigro also produced and co-wrote Olivia Rodrigo’s lilting 2021 album Sour, earning a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album. The musical versatility of Rodrigo’s debut inhabits Polachek’s earlier Pang. It all makes for messy sincerity.
Her wit peaks on “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings’” horny X-rated dreamin’; Polachek playfully demands, Show me the banana. Goofing with her boyfriend scatters the tears she’s cried on the dancefloor.
She also shaped Pang under the guidance of British producer Danny L Harle. However, Polachek steers her pop art with painstaking attention to each detail. She can recondition her voice into multitudes of characters and tones. Nothing in her work is left unguided, from audio samples to album art.
Nigro and Polachek’s synth-heavy production hints at ’80s nostalgia, not unlike her former band, Chairlift. However, Pang’s synth-pop reaches a more sophisticated place, and this well-tooled faculty for high-level refinement began with Polachek’s childhood.
Opera and Perfection
She was born in Manhattan, and her father was a classical pianist and violinist, producing a disciplined exactness now audible in her music.
Her music is baroque and deftly strange, coalescing around an operatic voice. Not by chance, Polachek studied opera, and her teacher sometimes instructed her to sing while bent over, hands on knees, aiming for the floor.
Though meticulous and trained, Polachek sings unrestrained by the chains of perfection. Her production on “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” has the precision of technology while still reaching the soul.
Auteur
Polachek writes about herself as a hopeless romantic. Her desperation comes from want but also from a loss of control. Her songs create the paradox of losing control while she emerges as an artist in total command.
She lost her father during the pandemic, which also ended her tour for Pang just as things were heating up. She told the New Yorker, “I started thinking about how to re-harmonize myself, and my music, with the reality that there is a destructive side to everything.”
The pandemic turned life into a long-distance relationship, and the world—as the supply chains—broke. “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” is about desire, but it’s also the prelude pain to loss.
You want to get ahead of the pain, so you revisit the question: Is what we have real? Polachek knows it’s real; otherwise, it wouldn’t hurt so much. Like the rest of us, she’s afraid of losing it.
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Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Coachella
