Point blank: what I like about this remix (and the original track) is the way it fucks with your expectations about what a traditional pop song should be. Its bones wear the dress of a Jessie J track, and its arrangement dons the shawl of an Annie track, but quickly the song reveals its true, thoughts at 5am, dark character. The lyrics are subversive in that they lead you in with an eyeroll generic couplet, a lulling feeling that matches perfectly with the song narrator’s need to exist on a shallow plane, but quickly devolves into a swirly swim through synthy, anxious sadness.

Love on ‘5AM’ is not an exhilarating experience, its a fucking chemical lobotomy. Its valium: a temporary way to ‘close [your] eyes, numb [your pain]’; and the need for it comes out when you’re alone, after you lost your friends, after the intoxication of the drinks imbibed and the feeling of the night take over your brain. Love isn’t a healing elixir, it’s away to run away when no else can entertain your brain. It’s a way to stop thinking.

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