178. Song No. 2,631: “Does He Love You?,” Rilo Kiley
More Adventurous, 2004

Oooohhhhh, this song.

This is my hands-down favorite Rilo Kiley album. There is so much to love about every album they put out but something about the raw, painstakingly reproduced emotions tumbling through this one juxtaposed with its lush, sultry springtime atmosphere just gives me everything I want from one expansively satisfying collection of songs.

“Does He Love You?” was one of the standouts from the beginning, though it’s gotten messy personal significance smeared all over it through the years. What started out as a confused tangle of college mistakes leading to a pointlessly broken heart and wounded ego that these lyrics about laying yourself bare in every sense of the term hit way too close to eventually got all churned through by wave after wave of realizing way too late that I doled out more than my fair share of false hopes and misguided connections while going through the inherently chaotic process of figuring my shit out. Like, if we’re being totally honest here, I had no business venturing long-term monogamy until about a year after my husband and I had been dating. I had no idea that being so careless with my own heart banged up so many innocent bystanders in the process.

It is so easy to give your heart and your time to someone who deserves neither. It’s fucking intoxicating when someone who has made it abundantly clear in some inexplicably charming way that you don’t even crack the list of their top five priorities suddenly finds the time for you because everything is on their terms and the rarity of their summons is such a thrill that your surging dopamine handily eclipses both your better judgment and sense of self worth and then, whoops, you’re already well on your way to heeding their call before you start hating yourself and wondering just what the fuck you’re doing.

The other side, of course, is short-term euphoria and reveling in the immediate gratification of someone always primed and waiting for you to be ready for them rising up to meet long-term guilt and self-loathing that would be (and, eventually, will be) untenable if you could just be honest about what a terrible and unintentionally cruel situation you’ve created. Either way, it’s such an powerfully fraught emotional hell that is impossible to extract yourself from even if you can admit that there’s no reward and no ending but heartache.

Jenny Lewis, a powerhouse songstress under ordinary circumstances, packs years of broken resolve, too many one more last times, and the interlocking battle of wills between adrenaline and anxiety that drive these electric but always ill-fated power imbalances into the howling final crescendo of “And your husband will never leave you / He will never leave you for me” that serves as the song’s parting blow. It’s an admission and epiphany all rolled into one agonized, brutalized and utterly exhausted cry of defeat that knows damn well this charade, for all its irresistible pull, should have been declared dead on the table ages ago.