Paul Woolford and Diplo ft. Kareen Lomax – ‘Looking For Me’

16 October 2020

On the Covid pandemic timeline, mid-October 2020 was when Ireland moved to Level 5 restrictions: no household visitors; a 5km confinement for outdoor movement; restaurants and bars limited to takeaway service; clubs and cultural venues closed. Ironically, since the start of the pandemic and lockdown in March 2020 all of Ireland’s number one singles had been mostly dancefloor tracks, be they house bops like ‘Roses’ and ‘Head & Heart’, the trap of ‘Toosie Slide’, the anthemic ‘Rain On Me’, the hip-hop of ‘Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)’, the R&B-pop of ‘Mood’, or the rap of ‘Rockstar’ and ‘WAP’. Now, here’s the EDM of ‘Looking For Me’. Does all of this mean anything? Can we infer that a locked-down and shut-in Ireland was seeking solace through listening at home to the danceable tunes denied to them in the usual public spaces?

Perhaps it’s fairer to say that all these tracks would have gone to number one anyway because they’re all solid tunes. ‘Looking For Me’ benefits from the combination of pounding beat, old-school house piano chords, and Kareen Lomax’s yearning vocal – perhaps not a full-on sad banger but in that ballpark. It’s that contribution of Lomax which lifts ‘Looking For Me’. Neither he nor Woolford, a DJ and producer from Leeds, have had a follow-up hit yet. As for Diplo, we’ve already established, when considering his previous chart-topper ‘Lean On’ as part of Major Lazer, how he isn’t the most sympathetic character, so perhaps here we can overlook him and restrict our contact.