My boyfriend and I have a game we’ve never named. Around midnight I pick a stranger and dance on him close enough to feel him getting hard against me, and the whole time my eyes stay locked on my boyfriend across the room. The stranger gets three songs of my ass grinding on him and thinks it’s his lucky night. Fine by me, because all of it is a message to the man I came with, and watching me wind another man up is what gets him going and knowing he can’t do a fucking thing about it from that barstool has me pressing my thighs together mid-set. He knows what I sound like when I get off and he’s replaying it over his untouched drink, and by the time we hit the coat check I’m soaked, he’s straining behind his zipper, and we don’t waste one word on the walk to the car. The drive home is where the foreplay moves into my hands. Jingram wrote ‘Wild’ about that drive, and he understood the assignment so completely I’m a little suspicious he’s been in my backseat.
‘Wild’ is a sexy high-energy dance track about two people who caught the same appetite at the same time and quit pretending otherwise. He can feel it escalating as she looks at him with intent and rather than letting the moment breathe he moves on it, telling her to drop the guard and hand the night over to what they both want. Nobody here is choosing restraint. The song runs on the agreement to keep going until self-control is a rumor, and that’s the only way a Friday should ever end.
The song starts moving before anybody’s buckled in. “You’ve got the fire in the passenger side / So I’ll pour some gas on it while I drive” He can feel her burning from the next seat over and his instinct is to feed it, which is the correct instinct. I know that passenger seat intimately. That’s where I put my hand high on his thigh while he’s merging, feeling him get hard through his jeans and squeezing just enough to make the speedometer jump, whispering what I’m going to do to him the second we’re parked while he grips the wheel at ten and two out of pure survival. Getting a rise out of a man who can’t do anything about it for eleven more minutes is a sport, and I’ve medaled in that shit. Jingram gets that a car is the best foreplay venue in America, a locked room moving at highway speed where the only option is wanting each other louder.
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Then he describes the look she’s giving him. “Cause you’re looking at me like that / Like a hot savanna wildcat / That’s been eyeing me all night / That’s been hungry for a bite” A man who reads hunger correctly and says so out loud is rarer than he should be. Half of them can’t tell wanting from politeness, and this one clocked a predator riding shotgun and felt lucky about it. He should. A woman who has been sizing you up all evening without hiding what she wants has already decided how this ends, and being chosen as the meal is the highest honor available to men. I’ve delivered that stare myself. It works every fucking time.
His chorus is a promise with stamina attached. “Oooh baby I could drive you wild / You make me wanna go all night” Confidence looks good on a man when he can back it up, and marathon claims are the ones I always make them prove. What I love is the order of operations, her pleasure stated first and his wanting second, a man volunteering for the long shift because her coming apart is the entire point of his night. Men who treat a woman’s orgasm as the destination rather than a detour deserve their flowers, and this track is a bouquet.
Next comes the invitation that runs the back half of the song. “You gotta let go if you wanna be free / So just lose control and give it up to me” He frames it as him taking charge, and every woman listening knows surrender only counts when it comes from somebody who could have said no in six languages. Handing herself over is her power move wearing his name, and the smart ones can tell. I’ll let a man think he’s driving. We all know who decided where the car goes.
By the final verse the car might as well be a preheated oven. “Tension at every red light / You could cut it with a knife / Yeah we got all night / To explore your wildside” Every stop becomes a dare, two people three inches apart with nowhere to put all that want, and anybody who’s survived that ride knows the stops are the best part. That’s where hands wander and somebody exhales through their teeth and adjusts how they’re sitting. He’s in no hurry, promising however long it takes to find out what she’s like when the last polite layer comes off, and a man patient enough to take the scenic route is a man who gets the whole fucking show. She’s going to give it to him too. Girls like us always do.
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Jack Ingram performs as jingram, and the Kansas City-raised artist does damn near everything himself, producing and DJing on top of the songwriting, with more instruments under his fingers than most full bands can claim. He trained at USC’s Thornton School of Music and aimed all that education at the dancefloor, moving from indie-pop and hip-hop toward glossy house and disco built for late nights. He writes from the real shit, pulling from the friends and lovers who’ve left fingerprints on his life, family included, then gives those feelings a beat built for a packed room. After dropping his 2024 album 4OTF and building his name through Kansas City club sets and festival appearances, jingram has settled into an emotional electronic lane with enough heart to matter and enough pulse to keep your ass moving.
Our game got an update recently, for the record. Last Saturday I danced with a stranger for one song flat, watched my man watch me, and cut the night short by a full hour because ‘Wild’ had been living in my head since Tuesday and I wanted my drive. I put my hand where it belonged before we cleared the parking garage. We caught every light on Broadway and I have never been happier to sit in fucking traffic. Jingram built this one for the ride between wanting it and getting it, and he clearly knows that stretch is where the best part of the night lives. The coat check guy thinks we left early because we were tired. Bless him.
