How I Wish You Would

Iggy Pop “Fall In Love with Me”

Iggy Pop improvised his lyrics to this song, and it shows – it’s pretty clear that he’s free-associating, and there are some lines that probably would’ve been changed or removed if it were more deliberately written. (Why does he seems so impressed by a table being made of wood?)

This is very much a song that would be compromised by too much thought, and a lot of the appeal is in the looseness of the music and the way Iggy seems to be figuring out his feelings of lust in real time. Half of the song is just him trying to describe this woman he’s hot for – her clothes, her personality, her aesthetic – and the rest is him trying to will a relationship into existence. Sometimes the title phrase is a suggestion, other times it’s more of a demand. A lot of the time it’s just a wish that he desperately needs to come true.

The line that really gets me in “Fall In Love with Me” is when Iggy says “there’s just a few like you.” I like the way that acknowledges and appreciates her being special and rare, but hedges just a tiny little bit. That’s the part in the song that best conveys the stakes – he knows he can’t afford to screw this up, because the chances of meeting and seducing one of the others like her seems fairly slim. And when you’re Iggy Pop in the late ‘70s, that’s really saying something.

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