Perfume Genius - Die 4 You

If there's a suitable word to describe Mike Hadreas' music persona, it might be fragility. He has crafted beautiful pieces where he bares a soul that has been harmed both by social stigma and by tragic love stories. But even when he had to put of a cynic façade of the Queer Queen to cope with prejudice and hate, he has stated clearly that in spite of the perils of a hostile bigoted world, his biggest fear still lies in the love realm: What if my lover goes away because he can't bear my dark past?, he wondered in Hood.

In Die 4 You, he offers a perspective of total abandon, he wants his lover to know that he is willing to do everything for them, and that, in the obscure world of Hadreas is a very literal statement. In interviews, he has said that the song is about erotic asphyxiation, and by assuming the passive figure of this fetish game, he wants to prove that he trust in his partner to the most extreme degree of literally having life in his hands. "Each and every breath I take you are collecting", it's a dangerous game, but the connection stablished by it is strong and deep.

With its intermittent trip-hop beat, dark textures and disembodied voice, he is almost a queer equivalent of Twin Peaks' Laura Palmer, a wild thrill-seeker that tries to suffocate his anguish (in a very literal way) by bordering the dangerous line that ties sex and death, a figure that Lana del Rey explored heavily in her Born to Die debut, but here, this act of submission doesn't come from a rebel Lolita, but from a tortured soul that seeks redemption through total abandon of the self for the loved one; he also sets him free of cinematic drama and glides with elegance and subtleness through a new track that let us see his psyque. He begs "Oh my love, take your time", and sets a rhythm to this peculiar love ritual that will dissolve his anguish in the strong hold of the beloved hand. He might be fragile, but the trust and the love are making him stronger.