I’m still out here using Spotify as my main streaming service. How you feel about that, I can’t change. But I look on there, search up The Maccabees, and ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ is the band’s most popular song on there by a country mile. Well over 100 million plays amassed. I think it was used in a film or something. But like the other Maccabees track I covered the other day, I heard ‘Toothpaste…’ alongside the rest of Colour It In, when it was available as an exclusive on NME.com. This story I’ve told already. The song was eventually released as the final single from the album, in the form of a newer version that added another verse during the original instrumental outro. And I want to say it was quickly re-released, that time with a new video featuring people eating each other’s faces for almost the song’s duration. I’m all for kissing, I liked the first video much more.

‘Toothpaste…’ wraps a nice little bow on Colour It In, finishing it off very similarly to how it starts, as a gently-delivered number led by a mini, child-size acoustic guitar. Throughout the album, there are songs concerning love and the things that come with it, whether it’s real or fake, whether it will ever be experienced again after losing it. They’re usually performed with hectic rhythms and yelping vocals courtesy of singer Orlando Weeks. But it’s on ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ where Weeks envisions a perfect kind of love. One where the two involved lay together, give each other pecks on the lips with toothpaste in their mouths and do the things that lovers do. Not necessarily in that order. He sings just two verses on the track, and once he says the album’s final word “divine”, the White brothers (Hugo and Felix) join in on their guitars for the outro that feels like a carousel ride to the moon. It’s very sweet stuff.

If you want to hear more about the song, I may as well link this little interview with the two brothers concerning it. Just found it before writing this. Would have never known it was a last-minute addition where Orlando Weeks did his vocal in a cupboard and Felix White recorded his guitar with a toy amp. A little regret I have is missing a live performance of the song the band did on Freshly Squeezed, when that was a programme shown in the mornings on Channel 4. I had it on the TV in my room, but I had to comb my hair and use a mirror – which was in the bathroom – and by the time I came back the performance was over. Annoyingly, this video is labelled as the band playing ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ on the show. They’re playing ‘About Your Dress’. I believe it was just Orlando Weeks and Felix White playing the song on the steps near a beach somewhere. Would be nice if that appeared on YouTube one of these days, maybe we can all will it into existence.