“Living life on my own, I’m stuck here on my couch / See the world through my phone, when will I ever get out?”
Pure Shores: not just a legendary All Saints song, but also the name of one of my favorite Swedish singer-songwriter duos.
If you’ve been lurking ’round these parts for a certain amount of time, you’ll already be well aware of my love for Indian Summer crooner Marlene, a tried-and-true supplier of genuinely perfect dance-pop. Pure Shores is her newly formed duo with constant collaborator Ji Nilsson, whom you’ll already know as a fellow Marqueen stan for their 2018 tag-team, “Ear Candy.”
“Fantasy” is the duo’s latest drop, penned mid-quarantine. Not only is it another solid offering of unstoppable, early ’90s House-leaning dance-pop excellence – fans of Lady Gaga‘s Chromatica and cuts like “Lucid” from Rina Sawayama‘s Sawayama should find this tickles their fancy – but it just so happens to eloquently convey the all-too-relatable mood of being relentlessly horny in quarantine.
The yearning proclamations throughout the club-ready bop all hit home, literally (“Running low on endorphins, might go insane..“), as the ladies navigate the various intrusive thoughts (“Such a waste of my beauty, it doesn’t last forever“) that come and go while responsibly hanging around at home.
”We tend to write Pure Shores songs when we need something to cheer us up, and we needed it more than ever this year,” Ji and Marlene explained to MuuMuse of the tune.
“We met in our studio one dark November day and decided that we have to do something to make us and hopefully other people feel better, and since we’re all in this pandemic togehter we thought it would be fun to write about something that many people can relate to. Dating is very hard when you’re not supposted to meet anyone new. I mean, we can’t even hug our friends, so our need for intimacy is brutal these days. Just the simple pleasures of dressing up for a party and feeling sexy for a minute, we can’t do that and we really miss it. It’s driving us crazy!”
Lucky for us, there’s always the hot action in our heads: “We can do anything in my fantasy,” the girls declare as they dive into a paradise of forbidden desire and throbbing beats.
“Picture you next to me wearing nothing in my bed / Escaping reality, it’s so vivid in my head…”
To further visually illustrate their fantasy, the girls crafted a “7 Minute Fantasy Workout,” a brief at-home set of moves for breaking a sweat the tune of their own music.
“To cheer us all up we made a 7 Minute Fantasy Workout video for you to watch and hopefully get sweaty to while at home. Put on your sexiest workout fit, pump up the volume, exercise with us and boost your endorphins! 💜,” they explained. Generous fitness Queens.
All this horny dancing and cardio at home is absolute heaven during a particularly hard time in our history. But please, remember, let’s not get reckless (and/or do something that’ll get you cancelled on Gay Twitter): Be safe. Wear a mask. Socially distance. And meet me in the fantasy.
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Photo credit: Lingmerth Photography