I don’t know how to DJ, but in college, when my friends threw parties, I used to ask, hours beforehand, to be in charge of the night’s music. Only rarely would I default to an old playlist— each unique gathering prompted a fresh, carefully curated set of songs in a predetermined order, based on my assessment of the guest list, ambiance, and projected timeline for the evening. My old laptop, now dead, had hundreds of playlists in its iTunes library (I didn’t back them up, and mainly use Tidal now anyway), with titles like ACID 4.28.12 or CASEY 24. Embarrassingly, I’d often make two playlist for any given social gathering: one for the mingling of the strained, amorphous pre-party, full of shimmering indie pop and meandering rap, and one playlist for the vodka-logged swerve into a full-blown drunk dance party. Like I said, no two event playlists were alike, but there was one song that always showed up on the drunk dance playlist, when I thought the night might devolve into chaos or at least unadulterated feeling. Some know it as Gecko, but I call it Overdrive.
I could’ve sworn this song was introduced to me in high school, but Gecko (Overdrive) by Oliver Helden and Becky Hill came out in 2014, which means S. and I weren’t sleeping together the afternoon I sat on her bed and, as I had a thousand times before, watched her scroll through her music library, with that familiar half-focus and the nagging sense I should leave. Then she asked me, “Have I ever shown you Overdrive?” That was our relationship, S. showing me things, my first cool friend-turned-girlfriend who, in 9th grade, was listening to Gorillaz and reading Lorca, while I was still stuck on old Broadway musicals and Catcher In The Rye. When I told her no, she hadn’t showed me the song before, S. snorted with disbelief, like, no wonder your problems aren’t solved, you haven’t heard Overdrive. “Oh,” S. said, “this is your new favorite song.” In came the drums. She was right.
The song was just Gecko, first, a UK club track by then-teenager Oliver Helden. S. was half-British, which may or may not have contributed to Gecko appearing on her radar (she also showed me Dizzee Rascal, AlunaGeorge, Disclosure before they were big, etc). A remix with vocals by Hill was put out the next year, named Gecko (Overdrive), in reference to the chorus and the outro, but also to better describe the way the song works. It’s too fast, too intense, and far too short, the radio edit clocking in at a cruel 2 minutes and 45 seconds. The bass is relentless; too elastic and loud for a house party, too feminine and struck with longing for the rave. Overdrive was the soundtrack of two or more blacked-out queers throwing ourselves into the air or against each other with ugly, sloshing force, desperate to get into our bodies and shut everything else out. Of course, this is how I wanted every house party in college to end, so Overdrive was always in the queue, always scheduled to play at the part of the night I hoped would be its climax.
A good dance song is catchy from the get-go. After the drums come the bass and its friendly, rich bouncing, the sound of walking into a club and bobbing your head to the distant music blasting from the opposite corner of the room, adjusting your rhythms to the masses of people around you, plugging yourself in. Take a moment for yourself, Becky Hill starts, and you wonder why you don’t always do this before surrendering yourself to a great dance song. Then it’s all about the object of your desire, but then there was that first line, maybe you’re singing about yourself? The lyrics are delightfully vague, and only describe the sensation of wanting: you know Hill’s addressing a ‘boy,’ but that’s it. As science has told us, boys can be anyone, and are rarely the point. Hill’s voice sounds like it belongs to a much older woman (b. 1994), and it collides with the squeaky clean future house beat with matched, unselfconscious force. It’s raspy, gravelly, aggressive; when she arrives at the first lines of the chorus, I can’t stop this feeling baby, it gives new meaning to the word ‘full-throated,’ a scream of ecstasy in C major. It’s the sound of losing yourself on purpose, of finally giving up. The reason, or the boy, doesn’t matter.
I still say Overdrive is my favorite dance song, but I’m now hesitant to show it to people. Despite making it to #1 on the UK Dance Chart and UK Singles Chart in 2014, Overdrive didn’t catch on in America, so I’m often facilitating an introduction rather than reminiscing. My wife thinks the song is fine, and it’s generally well tolerated by my friends, but no one’s latched onto it the way I did five years ago. Now when I listen to Overdrive, I question my own attachment to it, if I actually took S. saying “this is your new favorite song” as a command rather than a prophecy, back when my personality was more of a rough sketch. I still put it on when I’m euphoric-drunk, when I want to feel sexy, when I want to dance like the party’s half empty and the only people left are the only people worth talking to anyway. But I don’t build my playlists around it.
S. and I don’t talk anymore, either, but I remember what I loved about her, and what she gave me. We were on-and-off for years, but Overdrive remains one of her greatest gifts: how she knew me well enough to predict a favorite song with such confidence, that whatever she recognized there was not just enduring but essential, a perfect iteration of what I wanted from my body and from the bodies of others. She usually couldn’t give me those things directly, but she knew what those things were and cared enough to point me in their direction, which is more than I can say for most people I’ve loved. Now, I don’t think of S. when I listen to Overdrive; I’ve made it entirely, specifically mine. I’ve danced to this song so many times, with so many different people in so many different living rooms, that I don’t think to associate it with any one person at all. Overdrive is my perfect container, a place for anyone to meet me— or, I guess, the rare place I can meet you.