Ain't you somethin'

A playlist for the pleasure of being thoroughly taken with somebody. Bring your appetite, your questionable dancing and the compliment you keep forgetting to say aloud.

Ain't You Somethin' lives in the pleasure of another person: their mouth, their timing, their absolute conviction that they can judge the weather by looking out of a different window. Swing, soul, disco and seventies warmth sit within conversational distance of later pop, R&B and intimate modern voices, so affection gets a pulse and somewhere to go.

Put it on while getting ready to see somebody, or when they are already within touching distance. Give them your attention. The dishes have enjoyed worse company.

Love has several rooms

Love Streams gives love enough room to behave like itself. Desire gets restless. Loneliness keeps strange hours. Devotion puts the kettle on and remembers how you take it. Across the series of playlists which circumscribe the many stages of love, those states have space to speak in their own voices, with their own peculiar standards of conduct. Vacuum of Solitude belongs to the hours when absence becomes almost tangible. Spend enough time thinking about the empty side of a bed and you can practically hear it clearing its throat. Then affection has its expansive days: you have somebody to think about, the thought pleases you, and suddenly your walk has acquired opinions.

Love Streams: Ain't You Somethin' lives in that pleasure. It catches you enjoying the fact of another person. Their mouth. Their timing. Their absolute conviction that they can judge the weather by looking out of a different window. You fancy them, you like them, and familiarity keeps supplying further evidence. At some point this becomes an excellent reason to put music on.

Here is a respectable use of an hour: remembering why you enjoy somebody. Give the subject the attention you would give a delayed parcel. Follow its progress. Get involved. You have probably devoted more concentration this week to a password reset than to the person whose neck you would recognise in a crowd. The playlist makes a persuasive case for redistributing that effort.

Its pleasure has a pulse. Admiration travels down into your shoulders; gratitude develops a little movement at the waist. The grand declaration keeps meeting the sort of joke that lets you say something embarrassingly sincere and remain in the room afterwards. Over an hour, affection grows more expansive, more companionable, easier to put into words. You begin pleased with your luck. You feel increasingly inclined to tell the person responsible.

There is an argument here worth defending. Happiness can sustain your attention. A voice enjoying somebody can be as gripping as a voice losing them. Listen closely to a pleased person and the details become wonderfully revealing: what they notice, what they forgive, which small gesture has apparently rearranged the heavens. Joy has taste. It has preferences. Occasionally it has terrible judgement about jackets.

That specificity gives this place its charm. Love in the abstract can take a long lunch. You have a particular human being in mind, and the entire room starts organising itself around the prospect of their arrival. You straighten a chair. Check the oven. Catch your reflection in the dark kitchen window. There you are, taking a Tuesday personally.

Your hips have received the news

Affection is a physical event. You hear their voice and your jaw unclenches. You spot them at the station and accelerate with a dignity you will later overestimate. You stand close enough to make an ordinary conversation slightly impractical. This playlist understands the small movements through which the body announces its allegiance. It gives them somewhere to go.

The rhythmic pleasure matters. Swing lends you the confidence to cross a room as though crossing rooms has always been your speciality. Soul puts warmth and weight into your step. Disco can make the distance between cooker and fridge feel extravagantly underused. Even a restrained pulse has a way of bringing you back into your limbs after a day spent living somewhere behind your eyebrows.

You can feel attraction acquiring manners as you move. A glance becomes an invitation. A hand offered across the kitchen becomes a modest logistical problem involving a tea towel. The person you live with makes a turn of such ambitious incompetence that you remember, with renewed force, why they are your person. The food can survive a brief interval of artistic disagreement.

There is swagger here, too, and affection improves it considerably. Being wanted by somebody you admire gives confidence a specific address. You carry yourself differently because you know whose attention you hope to catch. A little vanity seems reasonable under the circumstances. They have seen your sleeping face and remain interested. Walk tall.

The music's broad sense of time helps. There is plenty of seventies warmth in its temperament, with older swing and crooning within conversational distance of later pop, R&B and intimate modern voices. You feel the changes in posture: the formal approach, the luxurious declaration, the whisper made almost directly against your ear. Each way of speaking lends you a different degree of nerve.

An older kind of elegance can put some ceremony into a cheap evening. A smoother groove can make you aware of the space between two chairs. A voice close to the microphone can lower your own voice before you notice. These are useful effects when the day has left you brisk, efficient and about as flirtatious as a delivery notification.

Try it while getting ready to see somebody. There is a particular pleasure in the last stretch before arrival: the coat chosen, the route familiar, the private anticipation beginning to interfere with your expression. Let that feeling have a rhythm. The pavement becomes more interesting. Even waiting at a crossing acquires a certain poise. You are still obliged to obey the little red person. Romance must occasionally accommodate municipal procedure.

And if they are already there, within touching distance, let the music remind you of that distance. A shared room contains hundreds of possible approaches. You can pass them on your way to the sink. You can rest your hand briefly on their back. You can invite them to dance with a seriousness that lasts approximately three seconds. Three seconds is enough to get things moving.

Sentiment can take a joke

People become very concerned about sentiment when somebody else is enjoying it. They inspect a sweeping declaration for structural weaknesses. They hear an extravagant promise and reach for the small print. Such vigilance must be exhausting at weddings. This playlist gives affection the volume it asks for, and the listener gets the pleasure of letting a feeling complete its sentence.

A huge profession of love can be a marvellous thing. Oceans are recruited. Stars find themselves on unpaid overtime. Someone with a perfectly ordinary speaking voice becomes convinced that geography offers the only adequate measure of their devotion. You can enjoy the excess because you recognise the impulse. There are days when saying you quite like somebody feels administratively inadequate.

The joke belongs inside that feeling. You can adore a person and enjoy their elaborate relationship with the thermostat. You can promise them a future and maintain a lively interest in the noise they make while searching for their glasses. Affection supplies the permission; accuracy supplies the laugh. The best teasing leaves its subject feeling studied with unusual care.

You know the difference by the reaction it invites. A shoulder comes towards yours. A face opens. Somebody says your name in the tone reserved for an offence they intend to encourage. That small exchange can carry an astonishing amount of intimacy. The playlist has an ear for this kind of ease, the pleasure of being known well enough that even mock outrage feels hospitable.

Its humour also helps with the practical difficulty of saying something tender. Perhaps you come from people who express devotion by checking your tyres. Perhaps a direct compliment makes you feel as though you have stood up in a restaurant and requested silence. Music can lend you a little momentum. Someone else has already risked sounding besotted. The room remains standing. Your turn seems manageable.

Here is a scene worthy of the mood. You are making dinner together. One of you is cooking; the other is offering suggestions from a position of comprehensive uselessness. There is a spoon to taste from, an accusation concerning salt, a brief dance performed to obstruct a cupboard. Then the person holding the spoon catches the other's eye and says something plain about how much they enjoy this. The remark lands because this is where you live.

A little foolishness makes that possible. It loosens the habit of sounding measured about everything. You may be competent all day, fluent in schedules and consequences, capable of writing an email whose meaning is understood by every recipient. At home you are allowed to invent an appalling pet name and defend it through repeated use. Language has other jobs.

The playlist's appetite for both elegance and daftness gives you room to find your own register. You might favour a slow dance with an almost ceremonial seriousness. You might prefer a compliment smuggled into an argument about dessert. Either way, the feeling gets expressed. Keep the sincerity audible. A joke should leave enough space for the person beside you to hear that you mean it.

The person, in all their detail

Ask yourself what you actually miss when they are away. Their grand qualities will make a respectable list. Then the real evidence starts turning up: a cough from the next room, the concentration involved in buttering toast, their habit of greeting a familiar dog with greater warmth than they offer its owner. Affection becomes vivid at this scale. Listening here draws your attention towards those particulars until the person in your mind seems to occupy more of the room.

The human business inside this music is wonderfully close to hand. Somebody lies awake beside a sleeping lover and finds the quiet worth staying awake for. Somebody pictures the first embrace after a separation so often that the imagined moment gains weight. Somebody wants to extend breakfast until the afternoon has given up asking. You recognise these small wishes and feel your own gathering around them.

There is also the pleasure of receiving love in somebody's particular style. You enjoy the way they fuss, the way they encourage you, the way they put a glass of water beside you without interrupting the conversation. Being cherished has texture. It arrives with a person's habits attached. The music makes you more alert to those offerings, especially the familiar ones that have become almost invisible through reliable delivery.

Reliability is attractive. I will defend this in public. Somebody remembering the thing you were worried about can produce a stronger response than an evening of carefully managed seduction. There is heat in being paid attention to. There is glamour in a person who follows through. Once you have experienced the erotic potential of competent consideration, certain theatrical gestures begin to look rather labour intensive.

Familiarity also has sudden flashes of astonishment. You know the face, yet an angle surprises you. They are listening to someone else, amused and absorbed, and you get a brief view of them free from the routines through which you usually see them. Desire catches up with affection. You remember that this person has an existence beyond answering your questions about the recycling, and that you find the whole business compelling.

This is why the playlist works for established love as readily as for a new infatuation. Early attraction makes almost everything a discovery. Later, attention does some of that work. You catch the mischievous expression before the remark. You notice the effort behind a kindness. You look properly when they tell you something. Shared history gives each observation extra depth, and the music helps you linger there.

Its sentiment allows ordinary presence to feel consequential. The cup left on your desk can carry a whole morning's affection. A familiar step on the stairs changes the evening. A return after a difficult day has a small homecoming inside it. Give those moments a little sound and you may find yourself enjoying what you have been moving past at speed.

Be specific when you tell them. Say what they did. Mention the expression, the kindness, the frankly unreasonable effect of a rolled sleeve. A precise compliment has somewhere to land. It tells a person they have been seen in their own shape, and it gives them something to smile about later while doing an entirely unrelated task. This is a pleasing amount of influence to have. Use it with care and some frequency.

The little catch in the happiness

Being delighted by someone makes you vulnerable to them. Their arrival can improve your whole day; their silence can send you rummaging through yesterday's conversation for a sentence you might have mishandled. The same imagination that turns a smile into a private celebration can make an unanswered message surprisingly industrious. You bring that exposure into the listening, and the warmth here has room for it.

There are anxious nights in this territory. A promise needs repeating. Distance gives a remembered touch an almost unreasonable importance. Old hurt makes a person hesitate at the very moment they want to move closer. Affection gains weight when you can hear what somebody has risked to offer it. You listen more carefully, and perhaps become a little more generous towards the person who asks whether you still mean what you said.

Reassurance has its own rhythm. People need to hear the familiar words again because today is happening now. Yesterday's certainty may have been excellent; tonight has brought a new worry and poor lighting. A loving phrase can stand repetition. We accept this readily from a chorus. Extending the same courtesy across the sofa seems within reach.

Desire can get possessive, too. A person becomes precious and the imagination starts installing gates. The wish to keep an evening entirely to yourselves is seductive: close the door, let the world manage its own affairs, stay where the warmth is. Enjoying that fantasy can sharpen your awareness of what makes the closeness precious in the first place. Somebody keeps turning towards you of their own accord. There is considerable beauty in that freedom.

The broader emotional weather gives the pleasure some substance. Gratitude sounds different when somebody has stayed through a rough patch, answered a difficult call or made the journey back. You hear the relief underneath the praise. The listener who knows that relief may find a buoyant declaration landing somewhere unexpectedly deep. A pleased grin can carry a history of its own.

Time lends another pressure. Even a lovely evening is passing as you enjoy it. People grow older inside the embraces they keep offering each other. A familiar memory can suddenly reveal how long ago it happened. The music's warmth can make you attentive to that fact without spoiling the room. You hold the dance a little longer. You let the story finish. You say the affectionate thing while the person can answer.

Some days you will reach for this alone. They may be working late, living elsewhere, travelling towards you, or simply occupying your thoughts with their customary lack of restraint. Put it on while making something to eat. Let recollection get specific. The way they laugh halfway through their own explanation. The sleepy weight of an arm. Your solitary room acquires a direction, and you may find yourself reaching for the phone with an actual sentence in mind.

That is the useful consequence of the tenderness here. Feeling can become an action small enough to take immediately. A message. An invitation. An apology with the evasive preamble removed. The music gives affection a little courage, and courage is often what allows an ordinary evening to become one you remember.

Leave the dishes a minute

Keep this close for the transition between the day you have endured and the evening you might still enjoy. You come home carrying an argument with someone who has already gone home themselves. Your beloved asks a harmless question and receives the tone intended for a completely different department. Put something on. Wash your hands. Let your body arrive where your coat already is.

Then pay attention to the person sharing the room. They have had a day, too. They may be hungry, amused, distracted, proud of something small, waiting to tell you something absurd. The playlist suits that moment of returning to each other. A little movement helps. So does a look that lasts long enough to register. Dinner offers plenty of opportunities for both if you approach the chopping with sensible priorities.

It belongs equally to an evening out that has developed a promising reluctance to end. You have talked enough to become loose and funny. The journey home has its own intimacy. Somebody proposes food despite having eaten, a sound decision supported by centuries of human behaviour. Affection enjoys an extension. Back indoors, the music can keep that alert, physical pleasure alive while you negotiate the contents of the fridge.

Reach for it after a reunion, when seeing the person in full size again feels faintly implausible. Reach for it on a wet afternoon when your ambitions have contracted to breakfast and proximity. Give it a place among the things you save because you know the state they help you enter. This one brings you into pleased attention: responsive, physically present, interested in the person whose company makes staying in feel like a decision.

You can also use it to put a little ceremony around something already good. Set the table. Wear the shirt they like. Ask them to dance with enough conviction to make the question flattering. An established relationship can accommodate a flourish. So can a small flat. Furniture has been moved for far less persuasive reasons.

The demand is modest and slightly exposing: enjoy your affection openly. Let the compliment sound like a compliment. Give the grand feeling its moment, and give the inevitable joke a decent pause afterwards. Somebody who knows you well will recognise the effort. Somebody getting to know you may decide they like this version very much.

That is the nerve of Love Streams: Ain't You Somethin'. It trusts pleasure to hold your attention. It lets tenderness speak at a useful volume. It makes room for the body, the boast, the blush and the laugh that comes when you realise how completely this particular person has got you. Save it for the hour when you want to enjoy that fact properly.

For now, there is somebody beside you, or somebody you are about to see, or somebody whose name has been coming to mind throughout this entire piece. You know exactly who. Put the music on. Give them your attention. The dishes have enjoyed worse company.