Other Voices, Other Rooms: "Starburned and Unkissed"

On distance, absence, and Caroline Polachek

As part of my big mid-decade review series on movies and music, I’ve invited a few cultured friends of mine to contribute some words on their favorite songs of the 2020s so far! To kick off this suite, we have my brilliant friend Gian Balangue on what happens to be my favorite track from last year too: An aching lament to the cruelties distance inflicts on love, from perhaps the decade’s most outstanding artist thus far.

Here’s the full playlist of the 100 Best Songs of the 2020s (So Far).

In case you missed any of our prior newsletters for this series so far:

Top 10 (all by me): “TLC Cagematch” / “Casual” | “American Teenager” / “People, I’ve been sad” | “Silk Chiffon” / “anything” | “Hard Drive” / “Somewhere Near Marseilles” | “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” / “Welcome to My Island”

Guests: “Starburned and Unkissed” by Gian Balangue | 3 K-Pop Songs by Justin Nava | “Huwag Muna Tayong Umuwi” / “The Loneliest Time” by Emil Hofileña | “My Love Mine All Mine” by Ashley Ranich | “Billions” by Niki Colet | “party 4 u” / “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” by Currie McKinley

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I’ve had abandonment issues since I was a kid, but I never really understood how painful oxytocin withdrawal could be until my partner went on a work trip to Florida for a week last year. He flew out on a Monday in April 2023, so I kissed him goodbye in the morning before I left for work, then came home to an empty apartment. I was inconsolable that first night in a way that even our two cats couldn’t soothe. I thought I’d figured out how to manage being on my own after two years of living alone, but having grown accustomed to him being there to greet me at the end of a long day, I couldn’t shake off the weight I felt in my chest. I tried to reason with myself: It’s just four days and he’ll be home, and in the meantime, it’s not like we had radio silence. Didn’t work. All I wanted to do that night was hunker down, put on some sad music, and cry myself to sleep in a king bed that suddenly felt empty.

A little over a year later, I found myself in eager anticipation of Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, based on early glowing reviews out of Sundance. I’d also been an avid fan of Caroline Polachek since her Chairlift days, so when “Starburned and Unkissed” was released as an early promotional single off the film’s soundtrack, I ate that shit up. The film itself became a point of obsession for me, and the soundtrack has since been on my regular rotation.

“Starburned and Unkissed” digs into the mind of a lover in a long-distance relationship. It’s a similar situation to the one that inspired “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings,” but here, bitterness and resentment are revealed beneath the claim of simply “get[ting] a little lonely.” Any craving to see the banana is subsumed by a deeper yearning that just fucking hurts until you can find relief.

The staticky, grunge-inspired production by A. G. Cook brings a grounded frustration to Polachek's usually clarion voice as she sings of “salt on demand”, and burying “a bitter little seed / in digital sand.” Electronic communication is a poor substitute for physical connection. Blurry video calls are a bridge until frozen images become an insurmountable buffer between you and the lips you wish you could be kissing. A screen is just cold glass, both a window and a wall.

Absence makes the heart a black hole. Fondness only returns with the lover's presence. Every time that familiar weight hits my chest, it is a sort of phantom limb pain born of a lack, which I try to alleviate by stretching over the miles in between until I lose my balance and tip over into the void. I just have to trust that my lover is there to catch me after all, quieting my pleas with the kiss of a long-awaited reunion.

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Gian Balangue is a molecular biologist based in Chicago. He likes to spend his free time sewing, doing nail art, and unpacking his emotional baggage through the media he consumes.

IG: @gianbalangue