Today’s song rec: “The Ick” x Panic Shack
I’m always down so bad, a serial obsessive crushing on fourteen people (strangers?) at once. My only hope for freedom is the possibility that I might catch The Ick™ fourteen times over. For those who don’t know what The Ick™ is, you can either watch Love Island or listen to Panic Shack’s aptly named song, “The Ick.”
As vocalist Sarah Harvey describes in a rage, The Ick™ is when even just the thought of someone you were once enamoured with makes you squirm in disgust because they did (or constantly do) something cringe. Lucky for me, my cringe radar is sensitive.
I won’t put anyone on blast for things they’ve done to cringe me out, but I’ll share my own humiliating life experiences as an example:
In college, I fell off a roof and clipped my rib on a windowsill, basically slamming against the side of the building and then falling back on a pile of similarily fallen tree branches. I can only imagine what my flailing body looked like in the short moment I was suspended in mid-air, and, perhaps worse, what I looked like getting up pretending none of it hurt.
I instantly caught The Ick™ for myself and I would bet my life on the fact that everyone around me did too. I think about it all the time, and if you’re now also catching The Ick™ for me, I understand but please reconsider.
Catching The Ick™ doesn’t have to only result from major physical humiliation, however. In “The Ick,” Sarah Harvey absolutely tears into an ex-lover — who she describes as having been “confident but not arrogant, the perfect ratio of sensitive to tough” — for things as insignificant as pouring milk into her “cuppa” before the tea, and, later, telling her to shush during a movie.
“I can't even look you in the eye anymore,” she spits with pure, punk disgust. “I cross the road when I see you coming. I've got the ick.”
The repulsion in this song, backed by a storm of seething guitars, is inspiring. I look forward to the day I rage myself to freedom from my overwhelming addiction to infatuation, but please – IF YOU SEE ME DO SOMETHING CRINGE, DO NOT CATCH THE ICK.
Photo by Siân Adler!