If my telling you over and over to watch Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies wasn’t enough, we now have a cultural moment surrounding one of the show’s most recent musical numbers.
“Crushing Me” appears in Episode 9 and follows Cynthia (Ari Notoartomaso), aching to finally admit her crush on a female student with whom she had a brief fling. At the same time, fashionista Nancy (Tricia Fukuhara) is crushing on Potato, one of the T-Birds who she torments because she can’t admit her feelings.
See Also: 8 Reasons You Should Be Binging the Phenomally Fun ‘Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies’
Written by pop-wunderkind Justin Tranter and co-writer Brandon Colbein, the lyrics of the song go something like this: “I can’t control the overflow, Emotions rolling like a stone, My fantasies play hide and seek. I got a crush. It’s crushing me.” These words are connecting with audiences all over social media, and the sentiment runs the gamut from girls admitting they have crushes on other girls to girls crushing on boys to every other aspect of the binary and sexuality spectrum! Some are just grooving to the song and realizing they’ve been sleeping on this show and are rushing to their televisions to start binging.
Everyone knows what it feels like to long for someone and feel the excitement of that “like,” but be terrified to admit it to the crush in question. This song perfectly illustrates that desperate, ache, and social media is going crazy for it. “Seeing a song about queer love and longing connect so deeply is a dream come true,” gushes Tranter. “The 12-year-old me who was obsessed with musicals is very, very proud of this moment.”
With over 1248 TikTok videos (and counting), the song also has over 130k views on YouTube and over 1.1 million streams on Spotify already, as well as landing on numerous popular Spotify playlists and Apple Music. This is the first song from Paramount+’s prequel series to enter the conversation, and hopefully not the last.
@lesblight I GOT A CRUSH IT’S CRUSHING ME #lesbian #greaseriseofthepinkladies #sapphic #cynthiazdunowski #nancynakagawa #lydiagrease #cynthiaandlydia #wlw #thepinkladies #riseofthepinkladies #grease #lynthia #lesbiancharacters #musical #fyp ♬ Crushing Me Grease Rise of the Pink Ladies – Lina 🐈⬛
As you get your fill with “Crushing Me.” check out more of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies relatable bangers with “I Want More” performed by Marisa Davila, and “Pulling Strings” performed by Jason Schmidt – both worthy of your time and obsession; not to mention a ton of the other tunes on the 31-song soundtrack.
I think we can all admit – this show is crushing it!
All ten episodes of the first season of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies
are available to stream today on Paramount+.
All songs from Season 1 are available for download or streaming.
