288. Song No. 4,474: “Hey Lover,” Dawes
Stories Don’t End, 2013

I’ve pontificated enough about my complicated-but-ultimately-fond regard for Dawes‘ music the four other times I wrote about them here, so let’s not be coy: I simply, flat-out love this song. There’s no ghosts it resurrects, time it recalls or feeling it invokes, it’s just got some wild lines and a catchily upbeat tune coming together in a less-than-three-minute song ditty I was over the moon to hear when I saw this band play a two-part set five years ago.

And, yeah, actually looking up some lyric interpretations recently made me realize it’s not as joyful or at peace with its circumstances as I originally thought it was. What I assumed was a song detailing the progression of meeting someone, falling in love and settling into domestic bliss was, according to some unofficial but occasionally compelling sources, more like flash-fiction stories across four narratives. So all of a sudden, lines like “Stuffing white spread asshole on a sofa bed” went from being a viscerally amusing oversimplification of what it’s like to be truly comfortable sharing a life and space with that person who feels like home (especially following a verse that talks abut how the narrator wants kids with the person they’re addressing and to “fucking make the first letters of their first names match”) to feeling every ounce of dejectedly returning to a ramshackle half-life after and without the person who made the preceding years so much better than the drearily colorless ones to come.

I’m no stranger to unlearning things and revising my perspective as new information and insights present themselves, so extending that flexibility of new understanding to music isn’t a heavy lift at all, and it’s rarely enough to change my opinion of a song. It can, however, deepen my appreciation of it by adding new dimensions and textures I never considered, and that’s exactly what’s going on here. Yeah, it’s always a little disappointing to find out that the text supports a darker reinterpretation of a more buoyant first impression, but isn’t that life?

(Relatedly, no matter how I come at deconstructing and hearing this song, the line “I may be white, but I don’t like my people much” only gets increasingly relatable with time and progressively disheartening news cycles, what the fuck is that about? Wasn’t being centered for, like, at least the past millennium enough for you, ya fuckin weirdos?)