There’s a delightful absurdity in how “Game of Love” even exists. On paper, it sounds like the setup for a logistical disaster: Michellar recording in San Francisco, Rad Datsun chiming in from Minneapolis and then just to keep things interesting, the whole thing being fed across the world to a Romanian producer named Marius Alexandru, who presumably had to stitch it together like some kind of sonic quilt. And yet, astonishingly, the resulting track doesn’t sound like three different continents arguing. It sounds… good. The kind of good that suggests everyone involved was operating under the unspoken agreement that this song needed to be better than it had any right to be.
Thematically, it’s a love song, but not the mushy, Spotify-core kind that sounds like it was written by a neural network trying its best. “Game of Love” leans into the playful chaos of romance, where excitement and emotional warfare are the same thing and nobody is entirely sure who’s winning. Michellar and Rad Datsun bounce off each other with the exact energy of two people who absolutely should not be flirting but are doing it anyway, enthusiastically, and possibly in a kitchen at 2 a.m.
If you’re familiar with Michellar’s previous work, the evolution here makes an almost annoying amount of sense. This is the same artist who turned “Dreaming” into a whole retro spy-film hallucination, who made “Never Say Sorry” sound like a diary entry someone accidentally released on streaming, and who somehow turned “Truth Over Lies” into a kind of quietly defiant public service announcement. Michellar doesn’t write songs so much as little atmospheric pocket dimensions; each track like a room she invites you into, shuts the door, and says, “Right, let’s talk about something real.” The remarkable thing is that it keeps working.
“Game of Love” feels like Michellar letting herself have fun in public, which is dangerous for everyone else because she’s annoyingly good at it. The vocals have that soft-sung, conspiratorial tone; half confession, half dare. Rad Datsun adds texture and grounding, like the narrative anchor in a rom-com who knows they’re in trouble the moment the music kicks in. Meanwhile, Alexandru’s production is suspiciously polished for a track recorded across a map; everything slides together with the smug cohesion of a puzzle that just clicks.
All in all, “Game of Love” isn’t just another notch in Michellar’s absurdly fast-growing discography. It’s proof that when she collaborates, the universe briefly rearranges itself to accommodate her very specific brand of emotional storytelling. And honestly? We should all be excited about what she does next.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
