Thinking About Her (Imogen Heap’s ‘Hide and Seek’)

This evening as I was scrolling through Twitter (just another day in the life as a woman in STEM), I noticed that comedian and Rick and Morty writer Grace Freud had made a video paying tribute to “a ton of people” who “died in the last hour.” It pains me to repeat their names as I was close to all of them, but they include Dumb Old Bitch, Dr. Fingerer, Vaginal Flowers, and Man Your Mom Likes, among others.

But I’m not here to talk about those we’ve lost. I’m here to talk about Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek,” a sped-up version of which soundtracks Freud’s video.

The song, as almost anyone who was a teenager in the mid-aughts could tell you, is great. It felt like a truly massive hit when I was in high school, probably thanks to the fact that it played over a pivotal scene in The O.C.’s 2005 season finale (Marissa shoots Ryan’s brother for trying to make Ryan poor again) the day that Heap released it. It even inspired an at-the-time very popular Saturday Night Live sketch! But according to Billboard, “Hide and Seek” didn’t even chart? The 2009 Jason Derulo song that sampled it went to no. 1, but not Heap’s original? A woman’s memory is very strange…

Anyway, this song is still great, and at the risk of being divisive it is possibly one of my favorite songs that I’ve listened to today. The ways in which “traaaaains aaaaaand sewiing machiiiiines” bleeds immediately into “you won’t CATCH me around here”? You just can’t beat it.

If you need me, I’ll be listening to it on a loop while I try and Google-sleuth out which mega-successful former child star bullied Christy Carlson Romano of Even Stevens fame (she doesn’t name them in this new YouTube video, but as one of her viewers pointed out in the comments she and Scarlett Johansson DID go to Professional Children’s School at the same time…).