67 in Heaven is the album's quiet flip. We knew at some point we had to write a song that wasn't about the meme, wasn't about the rating, wasn't about the chaos. Just about what 67 sounded like when it was a private thing between two people. Not a hand sign in a hallway. A whisper at 2am.
The whole song lives inside one room. Kitchen floor. Old hoodie. Hair a mess. Counting ceiling colors. None of that is a 67 moment to anyone outside that room. To the two people inside it, it's the only thing in the world. That's the version of 67 we wanted to record. The version that doesn't go viral.
There's a pre-chorus line, "Heartbeat jumping on your side of mine", that we kept circling back to. That's basically the whole song in eight words. When you're really into someone, your nervous system starts mirroring theirs. Nobody else can tell. You can. The number is the inside joke for the thing nobody else is seeing.
The "perfect state" line in the second verse, "You say one more then make it eight, but I stay stuck in this perfect state", is actually where we got our name. The band came after the song. We were writing this one, that phrase landed, and it stuck.
There's a joke baked into it too. The whole 67 thing runs on rating everything a deadpan 6-7: mid, fine, whatever. Calling ourselves Perfect State while making an album about that is the loudest possible irony. But it's also the exuberant version. A perfect state is Maverick at the AAU game with both arms in the air, screaming. Same name, both readings at once. That's exactly the vibe of 67, and once we saw the phrase in writing, we couldn't be anything else.
Sonically we wanted to make it feel like the 80s soft pop we grew up on without making it ironic. No winks. Just the actual feeling. Synthy, breezy, a little smiley, a little melancholy. The kind of song you'd put on while you're cooking with somebody who matters.
If the rest of the album is what 67 sounds like in public (the chants, the hand signs, the playgrounds, the world), this is what 67 sounds like when nobody else is in the room. Same number. Different volume.
Perfect State