Did you wonder what Charli XCX was thinking when she relegated ‘Guess’ to the bonus tracks of the deluxe edition of ‘BRAT’? Did you celebrate the announcement of the remix with Billie Eilish and the hit that it ended up being? Then keep reading. Because part of the responsibility for making ‘Guess’ the hit that it is falls on Harrison Patrick Smith, also known as The Dare, the song’s producer. The best part? That she has some great songs of her own, and that her debut full-length is about to drop.
Although he had previously released less uptempo songs under the name Turtlenecked, it was his change to The Dare and the declaration of intent with ‘Girls’ that made others take notice. Among them, Charli XCX, who, after hearing the song, looked him up on Instagram and asked him to produce a track on ‘BRAT’. “He’s encyclopedic about music in a way that I’m not even remotely (…) give him five years, he’s going to leave his mark on great records by pop stars,” he assured The NY Times for an article.
Amidst comparisons to The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, The Ting Tings, !!! and Frost Children, The Dare define their music as “an electroclash revival with a supersized attitude”, citing influences such as Kim Gordon, Verraco, Daft Punk and Third Eye Blind. In the same report, Harrison explains that his musical heroes have always wanted to give their all in terms of image and concept: “If David Bowie wore a T-shirt and jeans, would he still be David Bowie and would you like his music in the same way?”
But while both ‘Girls’ and last year’s ‘The Sex’ EP were great, it’s ‘Perfume’ that has really won us over. It’s today’s Song Of The Day.
The cover letter of ‘What’s Wrong With New York?’, The Dare’s debut, which comes out in a few days, tells us about a cologne that seems to be The Dare’s own natural smell, a smell that, when it enters a room, “everyone agrees that something has been added to the air” and that can make “a prostitute want to get married”. We already saw in ‘Girls’ that The Dare did not mince his words, and in ‘Perfume’ he ends up embracing his dirty reading with “spray it in my grave so the worms can get a whiff / I wanna smell real good while I’m burning in hell / cause the fire makes you sweat, other people can tell”.
The video for ‘Perfume’ is more restrained: imitating cologne ads, the presence of shirtless models seems more secondary, with The Dare carrying all the seductive load with his attitude, singing and dancing. As for the debate about whether it says “it’s only for the girls… but let dudes get a try” or “it’s only for the girls… but they’re too scared to try”, until we see the official lyrics we will obviously stick with the former. Gay rights!, as her friend Charli would say.
