They Don’t Love You Like I Love You

Case/Lang/Veirs “Honey and Smoke”

“They don’t love you like I love you” is a poignant phrase to hear in a song because as earnest as it may be, it can only come from a position of insecurity. The one being addressing is obviously not convinced, or perhaps sees the difference in how you love them and how others love them and has decided they prefer the latter. Intensity of feeling is not a guarantee of a stable, healthy relationship. The singer is an unreliable narrator; maybe they’re delusional or in the wrong. Who can say?

K.D. Lang sings “Honey and Smoke” with the suggestion that her character is a bit deluded, but totally respects that perspective. She’s looking on as other people attempt to woo her ex, in awe of how easily they attract suitors while seething with jealousy and desperate to relive the seduction rather than observe it happen for others. She dismisses her rivals’ sentiments as “all honey and smoke,” insisting that there’s no way these others could understand or fully appreciate them. It’s romantic jealousy as aesthetic snobbery – sure, these people can fall in lust, but only she can fall in love. She’s a connoisseur. This is echoed in the sound of the music, as any anger or overt jealousy is buried beneath a slick, sophisticated affect. Lang’s voice conveys a bit of sadness, but the real emotional truth of the song is in Neko Case’s backing vocals, which condense all the bitterness and sorrow in the song to a few plaintive notes.

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Beyoncé “Hold Up”

Beyoncé is singing “they don’t love you like I love you” too, this time directly quoting the chorus of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps.” “Hold Up” is the second track on Lemonade, and it’s the point in the album’s narrative about infidelity in which she’s processing the reality that she’s being cheated on by her husband. Beyoncé has approached this before, notably on “Ring the Alarm,” but unlike that song, which said more or less the same things with an apocalyptic rage, “Hold Up” is serene and composed. She’s furious, yes, and cycling through severe anguish and anxiety, but she’s graceful and confident through sheer force of will. You probably can’t get to where she is on “Hold Up” without having experienced “Ring the Alarm” first – it’s easier to be composed and collected when you’ve been through it before, right?

A good chunk of “Hold Up” is Beyoncé deciding how much of her emotions she should be comfortable sharing with everyone else. “What’s worse, lookin’ jealous or crazy?,” she sings, aware that any honest display is likely to get dismissed by misogynists. She comes down on the side of not giving a fuck, and that opens the floodgates for the rest of the record – one song later she’s approaching “Ring the Alarm” levels of righteous fury with Jack White at her back, and that keeps up through the middle of the album. “Hold Up” is the crux of the album, though, and her mature approach to dealing with emotional catastrophe here is what sets the table for the reconciliation at the end of the record. If there’s a message here, it could be that you should honor your jealous, crazy feelings, but not let them consume you. In this case, the “they don’t love you like I love you” sentiment could actually be the very thing that holds everything together.

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