Most hit songs get old. The single off a record is so chosen because it typically holds the most popular appeal and listenability of any other song on the album. It receives radio play, it usually gets featured on TV shows and in commercials etc. Unfortunately, that amount of exposure tends to wear a song out—and fast. I wish I could listen to Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” or “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley. Both songs are perfectly executed pieces of pop that I love unconditionally, but they got shoved down my throat so often that I grew sick of hearing them before long. However, there’s a certain quality that appears in a few hit songs that somehow inoculates them from the trappings of incessant exposure. It appears extremely rarely, and it’s probably entirely subjective. I cannot explain what confluence of musical factors goes into making a song endlessly listenable for me. I can identify some of them:
- “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk
- “The Wire” by HAIM
- “We Found Love” by Rihanna & Calvin Harris
- “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn
- “Losing You” by Solange
No matter how many times I hear the above tracks, they never get old. They feel just as fresh and tight and well-executed as I remember. And each subsequent listen reminds me of why I fell in love with them in the first place.
Which brings me to Rilo Kiley’s “Portions For Foxes.” I probably listened to that song 50 times after it appeared on 2004′s More Adventurous. In the years since, I’d say I’ve listened to it maybe once or twice a year. And yet in the past 12 months, I think I listen to it at least once a week. For no reason whatsoever. I know what the song sounds like backwards and forwards, I know every lyric. And yet each time I hear it, I fucking love it. I think I’ll try to explain why.
“Portions For Foxes” uses a simple four-chord structure: I-IV-V. It’s one of the most standard, by-the-books, surefire ways to construct popular music. It’s a structure that’s been used for hundreds of years, likely millions of times, because it works and it’s incredibly pleasing to the human ear. But where many other artists might have just relied on the chords themselves to invite the listener in, Rilo Kiley voices them with startling variety, sailing through a stream of layered guitar shapes and colors that constantly evolve. Blake Sennett even tears out five or so seconds of a rapturous electric wail, and all of this takes place in the course of introducing the fucking song. It’s a bold, indulgent, Derek and the Dominos-esque way of kicking things off, and it sounds sublime. Most importantly however, this little 30-second swell of dueling guitars perfectly encapsulates the barely restrained torrent of bittersweet catharsis that bubbles just beneath the placid surface of Jenny Lewis’ pained lyrics.
Lewis sings about her weaknesses in an unhealthy relationship. I think what makes her such a phenomenal vocalist is the singsongy way in which she manages to enunciate her lyrics perfectly, while suggesting but never betraying the intense emotion they represent. Not only can you can always hear and understand what she’s singing about, but she’s brutally honest in a very relatable fashion.
I know I’m alone if I’m with or without you
But just being around you offers me another form of relief
Over the course of this song, Lewis tells us a story, and I think that’s what makes the song and her lyrics so effective. Whereas a young, naive mind like Ms. Taylor Swift might otherwise use her music as an offensive, to attack, to criticize, to chastise her lovers in a triumphant celebration of independence and inner strength, Jenny turns that structure around on herself: she self-mutilates relentlessly—best evidenced by the choral refrain, “I’m bad news”—and on a song equally if not more triumphant than a Swift track. She sings about the deleterious effects of being with this person has on her self esteem: she hates herself for how much she loves [him, presumably], she hates herself for succumbing to that love, and she hates herself for constantly falling back on the basic gratification that sleeping with him gives her, despite the emptiness she always feels afterwards. But she never puts that vicious cycle on him–she recognizes her own faults in that scheme, and it’s that much more devastating. She sings about him sleeping with other women, but doesn’t blame him for it, and admits that she sleeps around as well to assuage her loneliness. The final chorus concludes the story, and brings a new level of understanding to the preceding two minutes:
And you’re bad news
My friends tell me to leave you
That you’re bad news, bad news, bad news
…I don’t care I like you
I like you
And then we recognize what’s going on here: she’s been making excuses for this guy; she’s an abused lover, engaging in all the masochistic tendencies that the human brain inherently suffers from, and she’s attempting to find redemption and justification for her actions. Her friends are telling her to leave this man, her friends are telling her that HE is the “bad news” but she doesn’t care. She likes him. And in admitting this, she hammers the pathos home. Because I think anyone can relate to this in some way or another. I know I can: I was with someone who I loved so much it consumed me completely; I could recognize how unhealthy the relationship was, I could recognize her as “bad news,” my friends told me to leave her, she tore me apart and wore me down to a nub, she criticized me relentlessly and in so doing rendered me a pathetic wisp of my former self, she strung me along and kept me around to fulfill her own selfish desire for validation in full knowledge of my weaknesses and dependency on her, and then when she was done with me she broke my heart into pieces that I’m still trying to pick up… And I didn’t care, I liked her.