The Infamous HER “Dare Me”

Though nobody likes to admit it, something is thrilling about getting a dare. A dare is the most outrageous way to flirt — and when the dare is taken, it’s the person who issued the challenge who has to react next. How many hot nights began with a dare? Too many to count. On “Dare Me,” the latest single from The Infamous HER (the lovely and talented Monique Staffile), the pop-rock singer entices a proposition from a potential lover. In so doing, she turns the solicitation around: she’s daring her target to dare her. She wants to hear something outrageous, salacious, eyebrow-raising, pulse-racing and imagination-broadening. She doesn’t just want to be led somewhere she’s never been before. She wants to consider doing something she’s never even thought about. Does her partner have what it takes to outguess her, and come up with something novel, off-the-wall, mysterious, dangerous, irresistible?

The Infamous HER knows all about challenges like that. In a way, every song she and her band makes is a kind of dare. She’s always reimagining her sound, stepping boldly across genre boundaries, shaking up the old and the new like an audacious bartender mixing up a fresh cocktail. Her audacity has been her guide, and she’s been rewarded for her courage with an audience of true believers who expect to be surprised. “Dare Me,” for instance, matches a monster groove and a pure pop verse with a chorus that evokes the playful elegance of 1960s film soundtracks. As always, the writing is impeccable: smart, sharp, fun and funny.

About the Music Video

A song as sultry as “Dare Me” needs a video to match, and frequent collaborator David Dutton has delivered with something colorful, magnetic, and extremely suggestive. This is the sort of clip that feels like footage of a party that’s about to get too wild to film. The evidence captured before the dare was taken and the subsequent action necessitated a media blackout. As is always the case with The Infamous HER, the video feels like it belongs to every era at once and none at all. Viewers could be looking at a ‘50s pool party attended by a group of girlfriends who could soon be something more, or a glimpse backstage after a sizzling show. The Infamous HER teases fans from frame to frame, posing, cajoling, daring fans to follow.