Sophie Ellis-Bextor, "Down With Love" (2007)

(Something a bit more poptastic today, I think, partly in honor of the word's recent entrance into the OED.)

Perhaps it was considered a bit too simple and straightforward of a pop song to warrant being included on Sophie Ellis-Bextor's forthcoming album, but that's the only reason I can think of why "Down With Love" has been relegated to being the b-side for "Catch You." (Although the way Sophie overlaps her own vocals, and sqwauks "down down down" in the outro, already lifts it above the ordinary.) Backed by big, brash drums and a kind of new wavy synthline -- thereby making the song sound a bit like the lovechild of Pet Shop Boys' "Flamboyant" and The Killers (the "doo-woo-woot woo-woot-woot" sound effect after each chorus especially recalls "Somebody Told Me") -- Sophie sings about being afflicted with a nasty case of this thing called love.

Stupidly, I'd never really thought about the expression before this song, despite its use in a movie that several people suggested I would like but never actually saw. I'd always assumed that the phrase was being used in, like, the street slang way: hey dude, I'm down with that! But in Sophie's song at least, it's "down" as in "being down with the flu," except that "when you're down with love, there ain't no cure at all." Why have I never realized this other meaning -- and thus the possible ambiguity, whereby being down with something is either simpatico, or its exact opposite, extremely isolating? Tee sometimes calls his dog "Downy," both because she's soft and fluffy, but also because she can be gloriously dumb, and I hereby join her in one of those categories.