So I’m three drinks deep at my friend’s apartment on a Tuesday because my ex texted “thinking about you” and my coping mechanism is wine, and Loreen’s ‘Feels Like Heaven’ comes on. First line hits and I physically stop mid-sentence because “Everyone I’ve ever loved / I hurt, I hurt, I hurt” just called me out in front of everyone. I’ve torched more situationships than I’ve successfully completed and we all know it. I picked a fight with the guy I’m currently seeing last week because he said “I miss you” and that felt too vulnerable so I needed to create distance immediately. That’s the system. Someone gets too close, I detonate it before they can leave first. So when Loreen sings about surrender feeling like heaven, I get it. Because when your baseline is constant warfare, just putting the weapons down feels fucking transcendent.
The production is stripped and raw, just vocals and pain doing all the work. Jesse Shatkin produced this, the same genius who’s been turning emotional devastation into dance-pop gold with Sia and Kylie for years, and you can hear his signature all over it. He knows how to make heartbreak move your body while it’s breaking your brain. The track was co-written with Calum Landau (who’s worked with Alison Goldfrapp and Ellie Goulding) and GRAMMY-nominated Sia herself plus additional production from Myles Avery who’s been behind hits for Tate McRae and Megan Thee Stallion. That’s a fucking murderer’s row of people who know how to make you feel everything while you’re dancing.
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When Loreen says “ I was hurting, I was broken up / Now I’ve woken up, ” she’s just stating facts. No apology tour happening here. You don’t blow up good things because you’re evil, you blow them up because you learned early that everyone fucking leaves so why wait around for it. She’s explaining the defense mechanism.
“I was hurting like a little child / Was left alone in a haunted home, with no one home / To soothe her fears and catch her tears.” Yeah that’ll do it. You spend your childhood with no one showing up to comfort you, you learn real quick that crying is pointless and needing people is dangerous. So you grow up and become the scary thing instead of the scared thing. You bare your teeth before anyone can get close enough to bite first. That becomes your normal. That becomes your entire existence. So when someone finally stays? When you can finally stop being the scary thing? That contrast is why surrender feels like heaven. Sia’s fingerprints are all over the emotional architecture here, that specific brand of turning your most fucked-up defense mechanisms into something you can scream-sing at a club.
The chorus fucking wrecks me. “Fists raised to the sky / And I fell to my knees / When you came for me / I was seeing red.” Someone finally shows up for her and her first reaction is still rage. Fists up. Seeing red. Because when you’ve been in fight mode for a decade, you don’t know how to just accept someone caring. “Why has it taken me so long to see / So long to surrender.” She’s asking why she couldn’t let this person in sooner. She feels guilty for resisting healing this long. She’s been carrying armor so long she forgot it was optional. And that’s the whole fucking point of calling it heaven. Compared to seeing red constantly, compared to a lifetime of raised fists and bared teeth, just existing without your guard up feels like a different plane of existence entirely.
“I’ve been seeing red for so long / Surrendering in your arms / It feels like heaven.” This is it. This is the thesis. When rage has been your baseline for years and when constant vigilance is all you know the relief of not fighting anymore feels like salvation. Heaven here means the absence of something unbearable. She’s spent so long in hell (seeing red, hurting everyone, being the wounded animal) that safety feels divine by comparison. The dance-pop production here is crucial because it transforms the collapse into movement. The emotional breakthrough becomes something you can dance through.
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Second verse: “Like an animal lashing out / I hurt, I hurt, I hurt / I was hurt and I would bare my teeth / I’d hide beneath the hurt.” The lashing out wasn’t calculated, it was cornered-animal shit. Baring teeth is fear, not power. The anger was always just covering the pain and everyone knows it. “It was hard to heal the heart of steel / I fight to feel that your love is real.” A heart of steel doesn’t crack easy and she’s so used to deflecting affection that accepting it requires active fucking effort. You have to fight your own instincts. You have to override years of conditioning that says anyone claiming to love you is either lying or leaving. But when you finally do? When you finally let someone in after years of keeping everyone out? That’s why it feels like heaven. The struggle makes the relief that much more profound.
“You stay with me another day / I sink my teeth and then you say.” She’s still testing. Still biting. Still waiting for this person to finally have enough and walk. But they stay. Another day. The song doesn’t tell us what they say back. Doesn’t matter. What matters is they’re still there to say anything at all. Every day they stay, the surrender gets a little easier. Every day the heaven feeling gets a little more real.
The guy I’m seeing called during the second chorus. I let it go to voicemail because I was busy having a revelation about why I keep trying to push him away. Called him back an hour later and he just asked if I wanted to get breakfast tomorrow. That’s the thing. When you’ve spent your entire life seeing red and someone finally shows up who doesn’t flinch when you bite, surrender stops feeling like losing and starts feeling like the first safe thing you’ve ever known. That’s heaven. The absence of constant war.
