We begin our customary New Year’s BBC Sound Of… coverage with a nod to the festive season…
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: A Christmas single from Girl in Red? A cute idea, maybe (is she singing of her Girl in Green?) but she forgoes all her strengths: where’s the slapdash energy, the gauzy nostalgia, the sloppy warbles that sang, “I don’t wanna be your friend, I wanna kiss your lips”? The sweetness and sensuality of this sapphic love song are neutered by the decorum, by the need to capture the particulars of Christmas spirit. It doesn’t even feel distinctly her; it’s a wasted opportunity.
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Madi Ballista: Wow, this is the queer wintry lullaby I didn’t know I needed. Marie’s soft vocals are rich and soothing, and the dreamy soundscape with its muted drums feels like a soft bed with warm, fluffy blankets while lamplit snow drifts down outside. The lyrics are naked in their sincerity, the sort of things you whisper to your partner in the hour just before dawn, that “we’re the only two people in the world right now” feeling. Excuse me but that’s it for this blurb, I gotta go cuddle my girlfriend right now.
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Andrew Karpan: I have an uncritical fondness for someone who bothers to write their own holiday tunes instead of safely covering “Santa Baby” with heavy breathing and a wink. Here, Girl in Red continues her project of authoring “protagonists who are just, like, living their best life and gay.” Over the warm chords of a piano lullaby and complemented by the occasional sleigh bell rattle, she celebrates just this kind of life, kissing on Christmas day on a bed that, for at least a moment, seems to stretch out into forever. It’s true that her best songs so far have been balls of peppy earworm angst (“Bad Idea” is a personal favorite) but the pop sincerity of this tune makes it sound like a carol, meant to be sung again and again.
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Hannah Jocelyn: I decided on Hannah years before Girl in Red first warbled my name, and I can never decide whether I’m flattered or uncomfortable. Or whether I just envy those who had their queer adolescence during their actual adolescence. What always brought me back on the song’s terms was Marie Ulven’s gifts with melody and arrangement — those oohs during the post-chorus are so sunny that I can overlook the weird aggression of “I don’t wanna be your friend/I wanna be your bitch.” The newer singles, made with Norwegian producer Matias Tellez, trade acoustic guitars and stock Logic drums for abrasive sound design and unnecessary drum machine garnishess. “Two Queens” is as sweet and gay as her music has ever been: “Your freckled cheeks/our tangled feet” sounds like a callback to the fantasy of “Girlfriend”‘s “The look in your eyes/My hand between your thighs” only the yearning is reciprocated. But Tellez’s production overworks the song until it loses the endearing quality of even Ulven’s other polished music. This is so close to feeling like a modern Christmas classic, but the booming 808s and the distortion on “Let me wrap you in with my skin” are too gritty for Christmas; hell, they’re too slick for Halloween kitsch. Even the piano-and-vocal outro has a giant synthetic reverb tail, one more flex of the budget Ulven now possesses. I root for Ulven, but I’m concerned that the charm, while never missing, feels obscured. Oh Marie, I can’t look at you the same.
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Austin Nguyen: Initial impression: Wow, I’m glad Ashe didn’t soundtrack the epilogue to Happiest Season. Then: The reverb comes in halfway through the phrase “Christmas Day,” blurring everything into closed-eyes warmth except Girl in Red’s voice, left to wrap itself around the last word like lips that yearn not to part from another’s; if I squint, I think I finally start to see why she’s been the most viral Resident Gay since King Princess. As far as holiday songs go, the classic festivities are present: holiday kisses (made more romantic by the absence of Bieber-certified mistletoe), sleigh bells (which, surprisingly, aren’t piled on like powdered sugar), church choir ahhh’s (in the form of synths?). The problem lies where they become subverted — if tender/pure/innocent and in-bed, why jarring guitar rumbles and overbearing string flourishes? — but Girl in Red’s post-time romance gazes and blushes nonetheless: “Your freckled cheeks, our tangled feet/The closer, the better it gets/So let’s stay right here/Until forever disappears.”
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Jackie Powell: The first 16 bars of “Two Queens in a King Sized Bed” sound familiar and whimsical. While it doesn’t stay whimsical, unfortunately, it’s a Christmas song and so undeniably queer. It was a bit insulting that in an interview with NME, Marie Ulven — Girl in Red — referenced “A Christmas Carol” rather than the film her song was made for; “Two Queens in a King Sized Bed” in its entire three minutes and 10 seconds could have been the theme for Hulu’s Happiest Season. While Tegan and Sara will always remain an important force in queer music and culture, this song illustrates the core of “Happiest Season” a bit more than the cheery and catchy “Make You Mine This Season.” The exact moment that Ulven described is precisely what Mackenzie Davis’s Harper desires after the opening scene: waking up on Christmas in the arms of Kristen Stewart’s Abby. I’ve seen this rom-com two and a half times and I’m still jealous of Davis. Who wouldn’t want to kiss Stewart??!! Anyway, the mistletoe motif that Ulven mentions throughout represents some sort of acceptance and its absence could allude to the lack thereof. The story described here is almost as if Mary Steenburgen and Victor Garber in “Happiest Season” didn’t end up accepting their fictional daughter Mackenzie Davis by the time the credits rolled. When I think of the chorus where Ulven croons “I don’t have a lot to give, but I would give you everything/All my time is yours to spend/Let me wrap you in with my skin,” I envision that could have been a sung soliloquy for both Harper and Abby at different times throughout the film’s plot. But maybe this track is a bit too dramatic for Happiest Season. The dynamics and production are ironic. What’s initially a whimsical and simple love song becomes grand and dramatic. I didn’t expect the histrionic strings to be plucked and slurred. I didn’t expect a timpani. So I take it back. Tegan and Sara can have the film. “Two Queens in a King Sized Bed” is more well suited in whatever future “Happiest Season” stage adaptation that may or may not one day exist on Reddit.
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Jonathan Bradley: The title contains more story than the song itself, which is muted and hazy and comfortable and lazy. Oh, to have such a nice Christmas. Alas; it is January.
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Katherine St Asaph: If this came out in the mp3-blog era, it’d fit perfectly on one of the Indiecater Christmas comps. I never got into those, though; the jingles and bells and other mandatory Christmas sounds only mildly tinseled up some otherwise bland arrangements. “Two Queens in a King-Sized Bed” is mostly the same besides that one dissonant metallic clang, the timing of which really brings out the horror-flick connotations of “let me wrap you in with my skin.” That’s got to be on purpose — why else would it be there — but why?
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Tobi Tella: An act of war by the twee gods, assaulting us with something so saccharine. Unfortunately, I have two ears and a heart.
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Thomas Inskeep: The instrumentation here — something sounding very toy piano-ish, along with strings — does the song no favors. Neither does the tweeness of Marie Ulven’s vocal nor her words; this is some bedroom pop that could’ve gladly stayed there.
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Alfred Soto: Getting past the melody and the breathy manner in which Girl in Red sings it proves impossible, even if the sentiments didn’t prove hokey.
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Jeffrey Brister: More than good enough, just below great. Everything about it — its whimsical melancholy, the gently lilting musical theatre melody, the way the arrangement bursts in at just the right moments, its simple and earnest teenage yearning — suggests something tantalizing in the future. It’s a song that feels like a prelude to transcendence.
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Samson Savill de Jong: This is the second music video where people have been in a isolated object on the ocean I’ve seen this year. Guess being isolated from the rest of the world is a fairly common idea at the moment. Not that Girl in Red is completely alone; she’s got the love of her life with her. This is a Christmas song, and it hits all the usual Christmas tropes — mistletoe, snow angels, giving the gift of love, wrapping presents in human skin, jingling bells in the background — but is sweet without becoming saccharine. It’s basically “All I Want for Christmas is You” thematically, but its understated nature means that it feels a lot more genuine, which elevates it above the potential genericness that the song could’ve fallen into. You’d still get good odds on this being in a supermarket Christmas ad next year though.
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