Suki Waterhouse released “Good Looking” on her 2017 Sub Pop EP, Milk Teeth. Then it went viral on TikTok in 2022, becoming a surprise hit for the English singer. The retro-leaning ballad features her voice, floating inside the mix in hazy reverb, as she sings about desire and identity. Here, she tells the story of a couple, as individuals, slowly coming into focus.
We Are Not the Same
Waterhouse sings about want, intimacy, and peeling back layers as closeness reveals a clearer picture of each person in the song.
Tides thrash inside, baby, I’m high octane,
Fever in a shock wave.
My core vibrates in an opium haze,
Yet you think we’re the same.
Romantic entanglements can unearth versions of ourselves we didn’t know existed. Often, we present the best iteration to the world or to someone we are attracted to. But relationships unveil a less curated and, for better or worse, more honest representation.
The skyline falls as I try to make sense of it all,
I thought I’d uncovered your secrets, but turns out there’s more.
You adored me before,
Oh, my good-looking boy.
“Good Looking” is about identity, self, character. It’s falling in love, and even in the primal sense of falling for someone, the landing, however awkward, offers a lesson in self-reflection.
TikTok Helped an Old Song Go Viral
“Good Looking” was an older song that went viral on TikTok. However, Waterhouse’s record label and management wanted to scrub her older works as they marketed the singer. Which makes the backstory a kind of metaphor for the song’s theme.
“I felt this wave from the past of the song getting this new fire underneath it and getting recognized in a way it never had been before,” she said. “It was a strange moment because before we put out the record, the record label and my management said, ‘Can we delete this old music? Get rid of ‘Good Looking’ and all these old songs?’”
But Waterhouse refused to pull them offline. “Those songs are everything to me. They’re where everything started. They came from a real need to start putting them out,” she said.
You’re not who you are to anyone, to anyone, these days.
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