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Yesterday afternoon, I was listening to the song, ”What You Do To Me,” by Teenage Fanclub, from their album Bandwagonesque.
The album was released nearly 18 years ago and has been a staple in my music collection for pretty much that whole period.
About a year ago, someone, I can’t remember who, twigged me to listen to the lyrics. I knew them but I had never really listened to them before. It was like hearing the song again for the first time.
The song has a simple structure: AABAABB.
The lyrics are simple.
What you do to me
I know I can’t believe
But something about you got me down on my kneesWhat you do to me
I know I can’t believe
But something about you got me down on my kneesWhat you do to me
What you do to me
What you do to me
What you do to meWhat you do to me
I know I can’t believe
But something about you got me down on my kneesWhat you do to me
I know I can’t believe
But something about you got me down on my kneesWhat you do to me
What you do to me
What you do to me
What you do to me
What you do to me
What you do to me
What you do to me
What you do to me
The music is simple, too. Light. Jangly. Poppy. Fuzzy.
For years, more than a decade, a decade-and-a-half, nearly two decades, I took the song at what I thought was face value. He had her. He loved her. She loved him. What she did to him was good. It was great. It filled him with awe. He got down on his knees, unable to believe his good fortune.
And then, as I mentioned, it was suggested I listen to the song again. Really listen.
It’s simplicity torn away like a mask being removed to reveal a more complex character.
Did he have her? Was his love unrequited? Is this a love song in the traditional sense? Or is this a song about love, about the darker side of love, the side that some of have suggested involves a certain degree of loathing for one’s lover?
Earlier, I quoted a passage from Philip Roth’s I Married a Communist. It read, in part,
As an artist the nuance is your task. …the task remains to impart the nuance, to elucidate the complication, to imply the contradiction. …to see where, within the contradiction, lies the tormented human being.
This song, this exercise in duality, this melding of simplicity and complexity, sets a tone and remains vague and ambiguous.
If there is, in fact, a contradiction in this song, a contradiction between the tone set by the music and the intended meaning behind the writer’s words, there “lies the tormented human being.”
You can hear the song performed live by the band in this February 1, 1992, BBC Radio broadcast. The song is the first in this clip (audio only).