Sarah Knows Nothing About Music- Everytime We Touch: An Analysis

I’m trying to use my writing, whenever I can be bothered, to explore new avenues in music and discover genres, artists and songs I didn’t know enough about before. But hey, that’s not to say I know nothing, and can offer no insight at all into the musical world as it stands. I know some stuff. I like some artists, I follow what they do. I can hit you with my rhythm stick at times if I so choose (das ist good, c’est fantastique). So today I thought I would write about something that I have a little bit more understanding of, and enlighten you to some of the artistry that I love.

That artistry is the greatest song ever written: Every Time We Touch, by Cascada. A soaring, euphoric Europop dance monster from the heady days of 2005, ETWT (as everyone calls it for short, which is necessary given how much people need to discuss it) is the masterpiece of the German techno dance group who took the world by storm in the noughties. Surpassing the brilliance of even Evacuate the Dancefloor and What Hurts the Most (I know, how is that even possible), the song was a worldwide hit, reaching a peak of number 2 in the UK (unforgivable) and number 1 in Ireland and Sweden. I mean, this is hardly surprising from a group voted the 3rd best German music act of the 21st century according to Wikipedia (I don’t know who 2 and 1 are and I don’t care), but still, the majesty of the song is overwhelming. Featuring a video where the group’s singer Natalie Horler dances anarchically in a library, because how else will she get the sexy librarian to notice her or something, the song’s quality has only matured with age like an expensive blue cheese.

To do my small part for the upcoming 15 year anniversary of the song’s initial release (16th August 2005 but obviously you already knew that), I have decided to take a little look over the central pillar of this work of beauty: the lyrics. Poetry should always be celebrated and shared, and today let us honour this most stunning of poetic pieces set to music.

The song opens boldly, with a slightly stuttered voice singing the opening lines with virtually no instrumental backing:

“I still hear your voice when you sleep next to me

I still feel your touch in my dreams”

I mean, you would still hear someone’s voice if you slept next to them. They’re right next to you. Or is she saying that she hears the voice when the partner has gone to sleep? Do they sleep in some kind of magnificent echo chamber that reverberates for hours after speaking? Does she have short term memory loss, thus making it significant that she can remember this partner’s voice even though she’s presumably heard it fairly recently? What awful condition could have prompted such a state? The power of the ambiguity here is almost overwhelming.

“Forgive me my weakness but I don’t know why

Without you it’s hard to survive”

There’s such an emotional rawness here in begging forgiveness literally seconds into the song. And if you think about it, that is something to feel apologetic for: basing your actual ability to not die on some unknown factor about your beloved. ‘I’m very sorry, but if you’re not around I’ll probably end up dead but idk why lol’ is the message here, but of course, expressed through the preferred medium of Europop.

The beat starts to race like an excited heartbeat at this point, as we move to the first part of the legendary chorus:

“’Cause every time we touch, I get this feeling [presumably the feeling of touch]

And everytime we kiss I swear I could fly

Can’t you feel my heartbeat fast, I want this to last

I need you by my side”

Such brilliant, surrealist imagery! A girl who starts floating every time a certain person kisses her! It’s like a Lewis Carroll story. Only more ingenious. And then we have a further indication of the possible medical dependency hinted at in the opening lines: might she die if this partner disappears because they are responsible for monitoring her “fast” heartrate? Is this a metaphor for an electrocardiogram, “needed by [her] side”? Is this contributing to her memory loss of her partner’s voice the moment they sleep? The plot thickens.

The pulsing dance beat strengthens here (like an increasing heart rate on a monitor perhaps?! So many layers) as we move into the second, Shakespearean, section of the chorus:

“'Cause every time we touch, I feel the static

And every time we kiss I reach for the sky

Can't you hear my heart beat so I can't let you go

Want you in my life”

My god where to start. The ECG metaphor is deepened here with the reference to the touch feeling like “static”, to say nothing of her desperate plea for the partner to hear her heartbeat “so” (absolutely not a word just used because it rhymes with go how dare you). But we need to focus our attention now on possibly my favourite line of this entire epic, “every time we kiss I reach for the sky”. They’ve taken the surrealist imagery we saw in the first part of the chorus, and amplified it to the fully Dadaist scenario of a woman who automatically reaches one or even both of her arms upwards whenever she is kissed. Is the obvious stupidity of this image a comment on the stupid futility of life the singer now faces due to whatever issue put her on an ECG with significant memory loss? The mind boggles.

The music echoes this sense of increasing urgency by cranking up the volume on the synths, and then hitting us with the mother of all EDM drops. At this point, the power of the song has briefly transcended language, and we have only a banging tune to see us through this part of the song. As the beat increases and increases until a sudden halt when the lyrics come back to us again, we can experience the exhilaration and uncertainty of an excessively speeding heartrate. And what art awaits us when words come back to us again:

“Your arms are my castle, your heart is my sky

They wipe away tears that I cry

The good and the bad times we've been through them all

You make me rise when I fall”

Simply stunning. The erratic heartrate has only exaggerated the bizarre, Dada, postmodernist symbolism at play. Her partner’s arms have become full castles, presumably pretty large ones given that their “heart is my sky”, and as we all know, the heart sits between the arms. Her partner’s arms are now not only gargantuan, sky encompassing medieval fortresses, but ones that can somehow be physically manipulated to WIPE ACTUAL TEARS FROM A FACE? The metaphor now laughs in the face of rationality and particle physics, but is made tender by the follow up of “the good and the bad times, we’ve been through them all”. One can only presume the good times were when she finally remembered this castle-armed partner’s voice, and that the bad times were a) when she first unconsciously jerked her arms up and flew off upon being kissed by them and b) when she realised that probable death awaited her if they left. Of course they make her “rise when [she falls]”: they’re some kind of magical ECG Castle Monster with presumably infinite powers of healing and love!

Having reached this poetic zenith, the singer can only joyfully refrain her previous statements in a repetition of the chorus accompanied by previously noted enthusiastic German dance synths. Every time she touches this magical presence her arms continue to jerk skywards (which, as we remember, is between her lover’s magnificent castle arms as well as above her, somehow), she continues to feel the static that is presumably keeping her heart from flatlining, and she continues, as repeated in the final line of the song, to need this lover “by [her] side”. What we have had the pleasure of hearing in just over three minutes is a surrealist postmodern fragment of a strange and intense medical love story, with a fragile heart and a strangely proportioned lover at its core. Electronic dance music may try to hit these dizzying heights again, but it will struggle to find scenes as viscerally powerful in their strangeness as those presented here.

That, friends, is the conclusion of this journey through a true giant of the Western musical canon. I think it cannot be doubted that this epic of song writing and dance music creation sits comfortably alongside Beethoven’s 5th, Sgt Pepper and even the work of Beyoncé in the magnitude of its genius. I don’t have to tell you to blast it loud come August 16th, but I hope this little adventure has given you a stronger appreciation for the majesty that is Every Time We Touch.