Swedish duo MAMI UMAMI (Jaquelin Elamiri and Leonard Furby) stormed onto our radar earlier this year with their bombastic singles ‘belly dancer’ and ‘Conor’. They shows no signs of slowing down as they come back with newest track ‘(Don’t) think I like you’, which turns heartbreak into something energetic, chaotic and surprisingly joyful. Once again, the Malmö project offer up an exciting mix of alt-pop, hip-hop and dance into a high-octane track that captures the emotional whiplash of being separated from someone you love. Co-produced with Alex Lopez, the song moves through denial, anger, bargaining and depression before arriving at a synth-charged sense of acceptance.
What makes the track particularly effective is its contradiction. The repeated phrase “don’t think I like you” sounds defiant, yet the parentheses reveal the truth underneath: the feelings are still very much there. Rather than dwelling on sadness, MAMI UMAMI channel their emotions into an infectious, cathartic release, turning a difficult period into something communal and celebratory. With its genre-blurring production and raw emotional core, ‘(Don’t) think I like you’ demonstrates why MAMI UMAMI are becoming such an intriguing presence in Sweden’s alternative scene.
“This song basically wrote itself in our shared heads in about 20 minutes after our partners had left us for work in other cities. Of course, we were incredibly happy for them — they’d both gotten amazing job offers. But no matter how happy we were for them, the sadness of being without them was huge.
Somewhere along the way, the ego takes over, and the sadness turns into this weird, completely unclear and totally unjustified kind of anger that says: I CAN DO THIS ON MY OWN AND, I (DON’T) THINK I LIKE YOU ANYWAY..
The parentheses in the title are the whole feeling. The love is actually bigger than ever, and all you really want is to be in the same room as the person you love. Sometimes, though, a sweaty studio and a friend to talk to will have to be enough.”
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