We woke up from some sort of obscure, terrifying dream the other night to realize that our abiding affection and love for Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson's improbable summer jam "Relator" had everything to do with Van Morrisson's "Glad Tidings." That the two songs are syncopated in almost exactly the same way is not a demerit. "Relator" is just a genius work of pop-pastiche--it's not like "Glad Tidings" is the only song being borrowed from here. Anyway, "Relator" has a video now, an appropriately sepia-toned and indistinct video, in which a brunette Johansson eerily resembles Sasha Grey (from certain angles, anyway), and Yorn and Johnsson sing to one another across a bed. For all that, it's not that sexy, which won't stop people from loathing this song out of jealousy and hateration, but whatever, that's everybody else's loss.

We have little-to-no stakes in the summer-song horserace, except in a "If I hear that Drake song one more time I'll happily slit his throat with the jagged shards of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix" kind of way. But we are interested in "Relator," the improbably buoyant Scarlett Johansson/Pete Yorn collaboration from the forthcoming Break Up album. This chirpy, playful American pop homage would actually be our stealth nominee for song of the summer if not for a), that thing about us not caring, and b), the fact that any official summer song must have bump-in-your-titanic-SUV potential, which the lightweight "Relator" assuredly doesn't. But we do feel protective of the project, nonetheless, so the news that both Kate Moss and Mandy Moore are making incursions into Johansson's model-slash-actress-slash-singer territory is threatening indeed.