I had a situationship last spring where I had him completely wrapped but then I got impatient and sent the one text that handed him back every bit of leverage I’d spent two months building. The power was there, fully loaded, and I fumbled it in real time. That’s a very specific 20s experience, knowing you have game and still not quite knowing when to be quiet and let it work. Shara Strand’s ‘I Know Who I Got In Bed With’ is what that power looks like on the other side of the learning curve, the version where she already knows the man or the situation and how it ends before she even walks in, and the only thing she has to do is show up and let it all unfold the way she planned. She is done performing confidence for the room, and watching it is genuinely one of the sexiest things I’ve ever heard on a pop track this year. This is where we 20-something baddies are headed and it’s going to be filthy and fabulous when we get there. Shara already figured out what we’re still working on and the view from up there must look incredible.
The production here is all disco shimmer and 80s shoulder-pad confidence that sounds like it was engineered specifically to play while you’re deciding which power move to make next. Shara Strand has always operated in that delicious gray space where you’re never quite sure if she’s talking about the boardroom or the bedroom and she clearly loves you for assuming you know which one it is. The song’s whole premise is that she walks into any situation, personal or professional, with her eyes wide open while everyone around her is still figuring out the game. Call her naive, call her blind, write her off entirely. She is counting on you to do that.
Advertisement
What makes this track so satisfying is that Shara never tips her hand far enough to collapse the double meaning, and she keeps the whole thing feeling playful and charged rather than threatening. She’s not the one scrambling. She’s the one who mapped the exit before she walked through the door. Whether she’s got a man completely figured out between the sheets or a business partner she sized up before the ink was dry, the energy is identical: total control wrapped in something that looks effortless from the outside. There is something outrageously satisfying about a woman who lets everyone around her misread the situation, smiles while they do it, and then collects everything on the table. She lets the losers think they’ve won, she lets them have their fun, and the whole time she’s the one running the show from a position they never even saw coming. That’s the whole shit.
She wastes no time declaring her position. “Oh Yes I Know / I Know Who I Got In Bed With / I Won’t Be Shy / I Play Him Right” is the whole premise in four lines. She walked in already knowing. Whether she’s talking about the man underneath her or the partner across the table, the energy is identical: full awareness and a playing style she has already mastered. “I Play Him Right” is doing a lot of work in a very small space and she is absolutely aware of that.
The next verse is where she turns other people’s stupidity into her biggest asset. “You Call Me Stupid, Call Me Blind / But That’s OK, Watch I’ll Blow Your Mind / My Purpose Is Not Undermined / You Can Laugh In My Face, That’s Just Fine / I Know The Way, I Make The Signs / Listen, My Genius Is Pure Divine” She is not arguing with anyone who underestimates her. She is banking on them continuing to do it. The laugh in her face is fine because she’s already three moves ahead. “My Genius Is Pure Divine” is so goddamn confident it should be fucking illegal. No qualifiers, no hedging. Pure divine. Full stop.
This is where Shara stops being patient and starts collecting. “When Your Delusion Fades Away / And You Know I Don’t Play / That’s When I Claim My Prey / I Can See Right Through Your Game / Win After Win, Checkmate / Forever I’m Here To Stay” The word “prey” in a pop song about bedroom power plays is one of the sexiest things she could have written. She waited for the delusion to clear, let him think he had a game worth playing, and then claimed him. Checkmate is delivered completely cold. It’s just inevitable. That’s the whole damn move.
Advertisement
She closes it out with the most dangerous energy on the entire track. “I Don’t Chase, I Just Attract / When I’m Aligned In Life, There Are No Strings Attached / You Will Wish Me And You Hadn’t Met / What You Should Know Is I Don’t Ever Regret” “I Don’t Chase, I Just Attract” is the kind of line that lives rent free in your head because it’s a fact about how she operates, and you know it the second she sings it. No strings attached carries both readings at once and she knows damn well what she’s doing with that. The closer lands without an apology in sight. She collected, she won, she moved on. That’s the whole point of the song.
If you’ve spent any time on Laurelanne you already know Shara Strand, and if you don’t, her name is a good place to start because it literally translates to “Of Song,” which is either a coincidence or the universe being extremely on the nose about somebody’s destiny. She came up through professional theater and film, trained at NYU Tisch, hit Billboard twice, and has shared stages that most artists spend their whole careers chasing. She built an entire beauty empire on the side because sitting still was never really an option for her. She stepped away from music for a few years to raise her kids, came back to it after losing her father to cancer in 2023, the man who spent his final months listening to everything she’d ever recorded, and she has been making music with that kind of fire behind her ever since. We got deep into all of it with her, and you can read the full conversation here.
I thought about that text I sent to that guy for a long time after. The one that handed back everything I’d spent two months building. And I’m not going to pretend I learned some big lesson from it because honestly I’d probably do it again in a different situation with a different man who made me feel like moving fast was the right call. What I will say is that Shara Strand’s version of this is the one I’m studying. She’s not suppressing the impulse, she’s just smarter about when she lets it run. She knows the man, she knows the situation, and she never once reaches for her phone before she’s already won. That’s the whole energy of ‘I Know Who I Got In Bed With’ and it is absolutely where I’m headed.
