Donna Missal – sex is good (but have you tried)

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Building your song around a Twitter meme probably isn’t one of the tenets of Songwriting 101, nor is starting your song with an Imogen Heap vocoder hook (if it were in the bridge, the requisites for “Mmm, what’cha say?” 2.0 would all be checked). And yet, Donna Missal throws out the rulebook anyways in sex is good (but have you tried), her voice refracting into digitised isolation before synths start to ebb and flow, a beat thumping from underwater. The melody goes in circles, a blurred loop of quarantine days with no chorus, no climax, but Missal prevents boredom from seeping in with pillowtalk invitations (“Maybe you could find….paradise”) and teasing winks (“I could tell you what it’s like / But better you find out”). It’s desire deconstructed to its barest parts and suspended in late-night stillness, the moment when the hook-up is finished and you’re both lying there in bed, so close and quiet you can hear each inhale and exhale of the other person, waiting for them to reach out, break the silence. Donna Missal does so you don’t have to: “Maybe you could try…staying a while.”


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