Shiver is possibly the oldest song in my collection; that is, I’ve owned it for longer than any Bowie, any Fitzgerald, any Waits. I’d bought other singles before it, of course – Girl From Mars, Bartender & The Thief, Wannabe – but they were empty purchases, bought on the back of hype or peer approval. Shiver was the first song that was mine.
Being thirteen at the time helped, of course. The sentiment is a mixture of idolatry and confidence so low it borders on self-loathing, spiked on this idea of love as something you should change for in order to receive it rather than something that should change you in the act of giving, run through with a sickly devotion to the underdog, and short changing everyone involved by jumping forward to the seemingly inevitable dissolution of all other competition for the object’s love, despite not actually declaring A CHALLENGER APPEARS, instead settling for a CONTINUE? that counts ever upwards instead of down. It’s Clair de Lune gone rotten from the inside out.
Or, in other words, remember my first crush?
More fool me, I held onto Shiver Love until I was nearly nineteen, over five years of systematically repulsing girls whose emotional maturity naturally exponentially increased with each new never-conquest. I don’t think I ever really kicked the habit until I’d finally come to terms with the fact that I didn’t actually like girls in that way, which came a good while after I’d actively started allowing myself to like guys like that. In the meantime the 00’s quickly moved on, to snarl and stomp and droning cool, with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, The Strokes and Muse dominating most of my mid-teen listening habits – not that I snarled or stomped or mastered cool, but boy did I ever want to. Cause, y’know, chicks dig that.
I’m not saying that I’ve never since felt a little too lovelorn or pined a little too hard over a guy. But understanding why I couldn’t get past Shiver Love with all my girl-crushes was definitely an act of self-recognition that helped seal me off from what’s happening here in Shiver, a weird desire of wanting to be recognised by someone else for being something you’re not, in order to validate that something in your own eyes, and then maybe get into their pants if they happen to misunderstand you as much as you misunderstand yourself.
In this way the track could almost be an anthem for the sort of attention closeted boys have for girls they think they’re meant to love. Not exclusively of course, but for a self-proclaimed stalker song there’s absolutely zero lust happening. And if you believe I’m overthinking all this, go listen to how the guitar nosedives just before the chorus. Tell me that isn’t a shrinking, a wilting, a promise of empty promises. For all it’s earnestness, the subsequent ‘Don’t you shiver’ might as well be a cold shower. So now when I hear Shiver part of me gives just the biggest rolling of the eyes. Like, whatever, Chris Martin; I don’t care if somehow you managed to bag Gwyneth Paltrow, this is still a rubbish – a beautiful, tingly, really quite lovely yet unutterably rubbish – template for seduction.
Still it’s been eleven years, and this track is always in my 100 most-played, and I still remember where I was when I first heard it, on the top floor of the Belfast Virgin Megastore. That first chord dropped slow like a felled birch tree, notes of scarlet and ochre settling fast only to be kicked about by angry drums and sad, scorned bass, the whole thing a melancholic autumnal tantrum. Before the last note had died I’d gone and purchased Parachutes. It was my first true gooseloop, or at least the first I can remember, and the song certainly remains one of my most consistently reliable triggers of ASMR.
And they say you never really get over your first love.
