Norwegian electronic duo Smerz conjure something rare with “You Got Time and I Got Money.” The track arrived on 19 March 2025 as the eighth cut from their second album Big City Life, and critics immediately recognised its staying power.
The Guardian placed it on their best songs of 2025 list, and listening back now in December, you understand why this four-and-a-half-minute reverie refuses to date.
The Sound: A Vintage High That Never Lands
Close your eyes and this could be 1995. Or 2005. Or last Tuesday. Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt build a woozy, psychedelic haze that floats outside time.
The production moves like smoke through a lounge bar at 2am, all velvet drapes and low lighting. Your first instinct screams Britpop nostalgia.
That opening string arrangement does lift from “Bitter Sweet Symphony”‘s playbook, those sweeping orchestral swells that the Verve made iconic. But Smerz pivot just as recognition sets in, steering the melody somewhere warmer and more intimate.
The strings breathe rather than soar. Where Richard Ashcroft’s anthem lunged for stadium-sized catharsis, Smerz pull you closer, whispering instead of proclaiming.
The arrangement sits back in the mix, a gorgeous cushion for vocals that float rather than push. This restraint gives the track its hypnotic pull.
The vocal delivery channels classic lounge singers without pastiche. Stoltenberg and Motzfeldt’s voices drift through the verses with a breathy ease that recalls Sade’s smokiest moments or even early Portishead, when trip-hop still felt like pillow talk. But there’s a playfulness here too, a knowing smile behind the sultry facade.
When they hit that chorus hook, “You got time and I got money,” the line lands with genuine sweetness, not cynicism. It’s an exchange between lovers who’ve figured out how to make different resources work together, a practical poetry that grounds the dreaminess.
The instrumentation refuses to overwhelm. A minimal beat keeps time without demanding attention. The bass moves in slow waves. Subtle electronic touches shimmer at the edges, never crowding the vocal or those beautiful strings.
Copenhagen’s experimental music scene clearly shaped this approach. Smerz understand that psychedelia doesn’t require chaos. Sometimes the deepest trips happen in hushed rooms where every element has space to resonate.
The Lyrics: Desire, Domesticity, and Delight
Stoltenberg explained she wrote these lyrics when she landed her first proper grown-up job whilst falling in love at the same time. That biographical detail unlocks the entire song.
This isn’t youthful infatuation or tortured longing. It’s adult desire meeting real-world logistics and finding joy in the negotiation.
“Put your hands around my body / Hold me tight and show it to me” opens with direct sensuality. No metaphors, no coyness. The request is physical and immediate. But then comes that perfect chorus trade: “You got time and I got money.” One person brings temporal availability, the other financial stability.
Together they build something neither could alone. It’s transactional only if you’ve never been in a functioning relationship. This is partnership as practical magic, acknowledging what each brings to the table.
The verses add texture. “When I’m with you, I feel so patient” captures how the right person slows time down. “I wanna take you on vacation” speaks to dreams made possible by that pooled money. Then comes the playfully vulnerable bridge: “Baby, can I see you naked? (Please?) / Even though I love how you dress.”
The parenthetical “please” is everything. It transforms the request from crude to tender, showing desire that respects boundaries whilst still shooting its shot.
Other lines sketch intimacy’s small pleasures. “I like your shoes / I like these clean t-shirts on you / I like your sister and your brother too.” This is what falling for someone actually feels like. You don’t just want their body. You want their whole ecosystem, the way they dress, the people they love, the restaurants they choose. Smerz capture this completeness without sentimentality.
The humour threads throughout. That repeated “Mm, mm, mm / Again, again, again, again” in the post-chorus could soundtrack either post-coital contentment or just really enjoying someone’s company. Smerz leave it deliciously ambiguous.
The bridge’s return to “I wanna see you naked” keeps the physical desire present, refusing to dissolve into pure romance. This balance between sweet and sensual, funny and earnest, gives the lyrics their relatability. Real love contains all these registers at once.
Why This Song Feels Timeless
“You Got Time and I Got Money” achieves something genuinely difficult: it sounds both contemporary and ageless.
The production techniques come from 2025’s electronic toolkit, but the songwriting could have emerged from any decade since the 1960s. Great pop always manages this trick, creating something that feels both of its moment and beyond it.
Part of the timelessness comes from Smerz’s refusal to chase trends. There’s no trap hi-hats racing for TikTok virality.
No maximalist drops built for festival EDM moments. Instead, they construct a mood, a vibe that envelops you slowly. The song rewards passive listening and close attention equally.
You can let it wash over you in a coffee shop or dissect its layers through proper headphones. Both experiences deliver.
The duo’s broader artistic vision strengthens the track’s impact. They’ve produced for NewJeans, written choir pieces for Oslo’s MUNCH Museum, and conceptualised entire EPs around fictional pop stars.
This range shows in “You Got Time and I Got Money.” It’s pop music that contains artistic ambition without announcing it, experimental thinking packaged as accessible pleasure.
The video, directed by Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø, extends the song’s surreal domesticity. Fireworks and waves collide with the duo performing in a deliberately artificial TV setting. It’s dreamlike without being pretentious, matching the song’s balance of elevation and intimacy.
The Big City Life Context
As track eight on Big City Life, “You Got Time and I Got Money” sits in the album’s second half, arriving after listeners have acclimated to Smerz’s world. The record explores apathy, loneliness, love, and freedom through the lens of urban existence.
Where some tracks lean into the isolation cities can breed, this song offers the counterpoint: connection that flourishes precisely because of the city’s resources and anonymity.
The album received universal acclaim, scoring 86 on Metacritic. Critics recognised how Smerz blend classicism and futurism, pairing techno beats with chamber music instrumentation.
“You Got Time and I Got Money” exemplifies this approach. Those strings could soundtrack a period drama. The beat and production place it firmly in electronic music’s present. The collision creates something neither retro nor futuristic, just beautifully untethered from temporal expectations.
The remix album Big City Life Edits, released in November 2025, featured contributions from Clairo, ML Buch, Astrid Sonne, and others.
Smerz operate within a Scandinavian electronic ecosystem that values innovation without alienation. Artists like Bladee and the late, great SOPHIE showed how to push boundaries whilst remaining emotionally direct. Smerz inherit this tradition, making music that challenges without excluding.
Why Critics and Fans Connected
The song’s appearance on multiple year-end lists makes sense. In a year when pop felt increasingly fragmented, Smerz offered something genuinely different that still felt accessible.
They didn’t require extensive genre knowledge to appreciate. The emotional core translates immediately: this is what wanting someone feels like when you’re old enough to understand relationships need more than passion.
The track also benefits from its length and structure. At 4:31, it gives itself room to breathe. The instrumental break provides space for reflection.
The song doesn’t rush towards a climax or overstay its welcome. Like the best dream-pop, it simply exists as a mood you enter and exit, leaving you slightly altered.
The Verdict
“You Got Time and I Got Money” works as pure pleasure and rewards deeper analysis. It’s sensual without being explicit, experimental without being difficult, romantic without being saccharine. Smerz understand that the most psychedelic experiences often happen in quiet moments, that intimacy can feel as reality-bending as any drug.
The song captures a specific life stage: when you’ve figured out enough about yourself and logistics to build something real with another person.
When desire still burns but you’ve also got bills to pay and work in the morning. When love becomes less about grand gestures and more about figuring out whose time and whose money can combine to create something neither could alone.
Most impressively, Smerz bottle this adult complexity into something that sounds effortless, timeless, and genuinely beautiful. Those strings still hit every time. That lounge-singer delivery still seduces. That chorus still makes you smile. Five years from now, ten years, someone will stumble across this track and assume it’s a long-lost classic from decades past. That’s not a flaw. That’s magic.