#11, “Who Do You Love,” Mojave 3 (1998)

150 Favorite Songs: #11, “Who Do You Love,” Mojave 3 (1998)

So many of the songs I’ve written about as part of this project connect with me because of something in the lyrics. This makes sense—I’m a writer, words are a big part of what makes songs meaningful to me—but it’s not the only point of connection I feel. I know that’s true, because “Who Do You Love” is one of the most important songs in the world to me, and I don’t think I could tell you what it’s about, or what order the words come in, or even necessarily sing along.

And that doesn’t matter, because that isn’t what hits me about “Who Do You Love.” It’s everything else—the warmth in Neil Halstead’s voice, the gently jangling guitar, the organ running low in the mix, the second guitar that comes in in the middle of the verse, the trombone and trumpet that appear around the two minute mark and turn the whole thing into something that captures my favorite feeling to get from a song (sad-but-triumphant).

“Who Do You Love” is the first track on Mojave 3’s Out of Tune, which is the band’s second album and the first one that was written with the intention of being Mojave 3; prior to that point, the band was a side project for its members, who were in Slowdive, an ambient, shoegaze act that never did much for me. With Out of Tune, though, they decided that Slowdive were over and committed to the idea of making this sort of folky, dreamy reimagining of the music of the American West as it might sound coming from out of England’s Thames Valley. And it just gets me.

I listen to Out of Tune pretty much any time I’m sad, and that means that I have chosen to hear the opening notes to “Who Do You Love” when I need some comfort during some of the hardest times of my life. When my dog was dying, as I was driving back from the veterinary surgeon’s office who told me there was nothing else they could do for him, I put “Who Do You Love” on. It’s been there for me through heartbreaks and grief and disappointments and lonely times. And maybe because the lyrics are so much part of the background, this song reaches me in a way that something more specific can’t. “Salome” is great when you’re in the midst of an angry breakup, and “Suddenly Everything Has Changed” hits hard when you’re dealing with grief, but they don’t land when you’re not in those spaces.

I would always encourage a writer to pursue specificity than to chase universality, but achieving something universal is an incredible achievement. Neil Halstead only sings forty-six different words in the song. The verses are all six line couplets, each of which follows the same basic structure and utilizes the motifs. The chorus is just four words, repeated twice. It’s sort of a blank canvas upon which a person can project their feelings, and hear them echoed back somehow because there’s no specificity to direct you in any particular direction. That might sound like bad writing, and it would be if the point were to engage the listener in a narrative, but I don’t think you write a song this simple, that uses these repetitions, if your goal is to demonstrate your ability to write poignant lyrics. If you’re trying to create a more ambiguous emotional experience, though, it makes a lot of sense.

I’m so grateful that “Who Do You Love” exists, because having something that you can take comfort in just about any time you need it, through different phases of your life, is rare and so important. Maybe for some people it’s a prayer or a meditation. For me, it’s that jangling guitar and the organ that comes in right afterward that signal to me that however bad I’ve been feeling, for the next little while, I’ll feel just a little bit better.