There are women I would happily stop speaking to forever. There are men I would block before dessert. I have deleted numbers, left group chats and ended relationships with the kind of efficiency usually reserved for canceling a subscription before the free trial expires. Then there’s the one bitch I have been trying to get some space from my entire life. She knows every insecurity. She remembers every humiliating thing I’ve ever done at 2 a.m. and occasionally brings one up while I’m trying to fall asleep. I’ve considered ending things with her repeatedly. Unfortunately, she has my face. Tove Styrke’s Me/You (always and forever) is about the longest, messiest fucking relationship any of us will ever have. The one with ourselves.
A very ’80s-inspired synth-pop track, Me/You (always and forever) wraps that relationship in dreamy new-wave textures and a pulse that belongs somewhere after midnight. Tove co-produced the track with Magnus Larsson, and there’s something beautifully appropriate about making this particular existential crisis danceable. The song belongs to the afterparty world of her upcoming album I thought this story wasn’t about me, and you can hear that setting in it. This is the point in the night when the room is still moving but you’ve wandered off and accidentally made eye contact with yourself in a mirror. Fuck. Her again.
Tove initially writes to herself as though she’s describing the romantic partner she cannot quite quit. “I got you / Every night and day / Now it seems / You’re a problem babe.” That “babe” is doing some hilarious work once you know who she’s talking to. Imagine knowing someone is a problem and realizing you cannot even complain about her to your friends without technically being the asshole in the story. She follows it with “No matter what you do / I still stay around.” Of course she does. Where the fuck is she going?
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Then comes the intimacy of knowing somebody this well. “I know you / Like the back of my hand,” Tove sings before calling the relationship her “Favorite romance.” That might be the sweetest idea in the song because loving yourself for decades is considerably messier than putting “self-love” over a sunset on Instagram. You know this woman’s worst shit. You were there. You know which apologies she meant and which men she should never have texted back. Somehow you still care about her. That feels closer to love than pretending you wake up every morning wanting to fuck your own reflection.
The chorus catches the relationship on one of its worse nights. “Always and forever / We go way back and / When the world is spinning / You pull me down again.” There’s the bitch I know. Nobody can ruin my mood with information specifically engineered for maximum damage quite as efficiently as my own brain. She has the complete archive and apparently no respect for office hours. Tove follows that with “Let me go / Take me back,” which might be the most accurate description of fighting with yourself I’ve heard in a while. Get away from me. Where are you going?
Her second verse gives the relationship another chance. “Hey you / Do you wanna dance? / I feel / We still got a chance.” I love that she asks herself to dance. There’s something wonderfully strange about deciding that after all the shit you have put each other through, maybe you still want this woman around. Tove has described the song as coming from that late-night moment of catching herself in a mirror and realizing, essentially, it’s still me and you. The whole thing suddenly feels less like self-help and more like two complicated bitches deciding to stay until closing.
Then Tove finally tells us where she has been looking. “Only you / It’s give and take / It’s a mirror / And a fractioned frame.” The reveal changes the language that came before it. “Problem babe” was her. The person pulling her down was her. So was the one she asked to take her back. I’ve had fights with my bathroom mirror that were more emotionally complicated than relationships I stayed in for months. At least a boyfriend eventually leaves the apartment. Your reflection waits patiently for you to come brush your fucking teeth.
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Her next question hurts because it sounds so small. “Things don’t always end bad / Why they always make me / So sad?” Tove has spent the song describing permanence, which means there really is no clean ending available here. You keep meeting yourself at different ages and discovering the relationship has changed again. Some versions of you are easier to forgive. Some still piss you off. Eventually you realize you’ve been carrying every one of those girls with you anyway.
Tove Styrke has been making smart Swedish pop for well over a decade, with Kiddo, Sway and HARD establishing the restless pop instincts that lead into this next chapter. Me/You (always and forever) arrives ahead of I thought this story wasn’t about me, a concept album unfolding across a dusk-to-dawn afterparty. She has described the larger project through isolation and the desire to belong, which makes this song’s mirror encounter feel especially well placed. Put enough people around you and eventually the party still leaves you alone with yourself. Tove has built a career out of pop that can carry complicated feelings without making them behave, and this one gives her most permanent relationship the fucking love song.
So yes, I can block him. I can leave the group chat. I can even avoid the bathroom mirror at the club if the lighting is particularly hostile. Eventually I’m going home with her. She knows all my shit and occasionally drives me fucking insane, but she has also survived every terrible date and every 2 a.m. decision right beside me. Always and forever is a long fucking time to spend with anybody. I might as well ask the bitch to dance.
