#31, “Ex Factor,” Lauryn Hill (1998)

150 Favorite Songs: #31, “Ex Factor,” Lauryn Hill (1998)

Lauryn Hill’s voice is like no other instrument in music. I don’t know how else to describe it. She sings as well as pretty much anyone in the history of pop music, and also raps about that well, too, when she chooses to. But more than that, she’s expressive in a way that’s really fascinating, and creatively risky, for someone with a voice that’s as technically perfect as hers is. You can hear all of that in “Ex Factor,” which is also probably the finest example of what Hill does as a songwriter that sets her apart, which is write something that gives her the opportunity to do all of these things so well. No one sings a Lauryn Hill song like Lauryn Hill. Not Amy Winehouse or Rihanna or Beyoncé or Kandace Springs or Alicia Keys or H.E.R.

“Ex Factor” is a break-up song, but it might be more accurate to call it the break-up song. It’s older now than “I Will Survive” was when “Ex Factor” was written, and not much younger than “I Will Always Love You” or “I Want You Back” or “I Fall To Pieces” or “Yesterday” were, at this point. But what’s funny is that you don’t really need two and a half decades of history to recognize that “Ex Factor” has a clear place among the greats, that it’s every bit as essential as any of those. It’s interesting to think about now, because I think maybe the release of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was the first time I can remember seeing something anointed an instant classic with no doubt about it at the time, and of course no doubt was needed. “Ex Factor” joined the canon pretty much immediately. I first understood that back when it was a new song and the Afghan Whigs, who were very much My Guys when I was a teenager (and now too, sure), and who often dropped pieces of classic songs into their live sets, started filling out their own breakup song by weaving in “Ex Factor” in the middle of it, where they might otherwise drop in the Rolling Stones or The Who or the Supremes or Prince. It was maybe three months old when they did that. It was just understood that this was one of Those Songs. Did we know that it’d be something the biggest stars in the world would be singing twenty years later? Pretty much, yeah.

It starts very pretty, some piano and programmed drums, with live bass behind it. And then Ms. Hill starts singing, performing with a quiver in her voice and her breath hanging heavy as she sings tell me who i have to be / to get some reciprocity, which, if it’s not the first time “reciprocity” found itself in a pop song, is definitely the finest. She does this for three verses, just bleeding all over the track, her voice alternately unadultered and layered, as if she sometimes needs the backup of future- or past-Lauryn to say what she’s trying to say. And then she gets to the chorus, where suddenly her vocals go double-time—the music doesn’t really change tempo, but she does, sing-rapping her way through an indictment of the fella the song is about: no matter how i think we grow / you always seem to let me know / it ain’t working, it ain’t working / and when i try to walk away, you hurt yourself to make me stay / this is crazy. It’s certainly familiar to anyone who’s been in a toxic relationship, and the way she puts it—so plainly, so clearly, so direct and unadorned that it would almost seem artless except it’s fucking Lauryn Hill singing it so it’s definitely art—gives the entire song its heart. There’s a finality to it that it feels like Ms. Hill is recognizing in real-time, which is a trick of the tempo change in her delivery, I think—it’s like she’s still in the relationship in the verse, and then she gets to that chorus and it’s like “oh shit, this doesn’t make any sense anymore.” She spends the next verse coming to terms with that, and then she makes her break in the one after that: see, i know what we’ve got to do / you let go / and i’ll let go too. The chorus repeats, and it’s over. “Ex Factor,” indeed.

Except it’s not, because the break-up is never the end, and she gets that, too. And so we get nearly two minutes of breakdown at the end, where she puts the cap on it, lamenting all that went wrong and all that might have been, just repeating things like said you’d be there for me and you said you’d die for me and why won’t you live for me and on and on, her voice still in the sing-rapping that she didn’t exactly pioneer but also didn’t not pioneer, until she bleeds one more time on the track, her perfect voice calling out where were you when i needed you, while a guitar solo comes in that I always thought was played by Carlos Santana but learned just now is actually Johari Newton (Santana is only on “To Zion,” it turns out).

I think what makes “Ex Factor” so important is that it articulates something that’s incredibly common—a relationship that’s turned toxic and mutually destructive—in a way that none of the other great breakup songs that preceded it really did or could. It gives a voice to the ache of “I have to be the one to end this because you never will, and how dare you make me do that,” which simply by existing actually provides that way out to people who need it. By the time Lauryn Hill wrote “Ex Factor,” there were decades and decades of pop music devoted to exploring the sentiments of failed love and heartache, but until she wrote this one, we didn’t have these in the same way, and now—nearly thirty years later—it lives among the greats. There’s always something new to say.