Want to Want Me

About the song

«Want to Want Me» is an upbeat pop song by the American singer Jason Derulo. Warner Bros. Records released it on 9 March 2015 as the lead single of his fourth studio album, «Everything Is 4», which followed at the end of May 2015. Derulo wrote the song together with Sam Martin, Lindy Robbins, Mitch Allan and Ian Kirkpatrick, and Kirkpatrick produced it. According to the album’s history, it was the very first track made for the record, and Derulo picked it as the opening single after playing it to several friends and seeing how they reacted.

Jason Derulo was born in 1989 in Miramar, Florida, to Haitian parents. He started his career writing songs for other artists and became famous as a singer in 2009 with «Whatcha Say». Hits such as «In My Head», «Ridin’ Solo», «Don’t Wanna Go Home» and «Talk Dirty» made him one of the best-known pop and R&B voices of the early 2010s, and he is also a dancer who has worked as a judge on the television show «So You Think You Can Dance». In 2012 he broke a vertebra in his neck during rehearsals and had to cancel tour dates, but he returned to the charts the following year with «Talk Dirty».

Musically, the track looks back to the dance music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is in E-flat major and moves at a medium dance tempo of about 112 to 116 beats per minute. A bouncing bass line and bright synthesizers carry the rhythm, and Derulo sings much of the chorus in a high, light voice that recalls classic disco and funk singers. The song is usually described as a mix of disco, pop and power pop. The sound is clean and simple: there are few instruments at any one time, so the voice and the groove stay at the front.

There is a well-known story about where the song nearly went. Reports at the time said that it had first been offered to the R&B singer Chris Brown for his 2014 album «X», under a slightly different title, and that he passed on it. The writers then brought it to Derulo, who made it his own. Whether or not every detail of that story is exact, the song fitted Derulo’s light, playful style very well, and it became one of the defining hits of his career.

The words tell a simple story of desire on a summer night. The narrator is at home and cannot rest because the heat is unbearable. He decides to go out at once, looks for what he needs to leave the house and jumps into a taxi, paying the driver in advance so that he will arrive sooner. On the way he can only think about the woman he is going to see. In the chorus he explains what he really wants: not only to be with her, but for her to feel the same longing for him. He says he would do anything at all to be close to her. In the second verse she welcomes him at her door, and the song ends by repeating the chorus with growing energy. The title itself plays with the verb «want», which appears twice in a row, and that small trick of language is what most listeners remember.