#35, "Untouchable Face," Ani Difranco (1996)

150 Favorite Songs: #35, "Untouchable Face," Ani Difranco (1996)

"Untouchable Face" is about as perfect a "you don't love me" song as exists. It's helped by the fact that Ani Difranco's voice is so pretty and so good at what she uses it at the beginning of the song to do. It packs an extra punch when she gets to that chorus, to hear it coming from her. Because, ultimately, I’m not sure anyone found a better way than she did to express the sentiment behind the song, a common one that has been explored by many other artists in many other ways, which is: ”I think I'm in love with you, and I know that you don't feel that way about me, and we're still here in the same place anyway.” fuck you and your untouchable face, she sings. fuck you for existing in the first place.

Is it fair? Does the other person deserve it? Maybe, maybe not. But who cares? Fuck you. There are plenty of songs that have said "fuck you" before and after Ani Difranco did it. But coming from her, it's different. When Bob Dylan sings "Idiot Wind," that's fuck you, too, but there's nothing in Dylan's voice that suggests that fuck you isn't what he says when the eggs are overcooked at breakfast. But when it comes from Ani Difranco, who carefully sets a fragile scene in the verse—think i'm going for a walk now, feel a little unsteady / don't want nobody to follow me, except maybe you—that rage, and the catharsis it carries, is so much more powerful. She sings sweetly about driving aimlessly in the middle of the night, about thinking about stopping at a diner and about listening to the radio, about trying to avoid seeing the person she's singing about again. All of these mundane, totally relatable experiences, and when the bitterness drips off her voice in the chorus, she earns it.

In, say, Nick Cave's voice, "Fuck you for existing in the first place" would be brutal, but not as satisfying as you'd want it to be. It'd be too aggressive, and it'd be hard not to listen to it and wonder if he was being unfair, if maybe the song would sound different if you could talk to the person he’s singing about, if maybe once you heard their side of things, you’d realize that they should really be singing, "No, fuck you, actually," and then the song would lose everything that makes it matter.

And that would be a real shame. Because I am confident that I am not the only person who felt something that I struggled to express was said exactly the way I wanted to say, but couldn’t, when I heard "Untouchable Face." It strikes such a balance, carries all of the conflicting emotions that we have to deal with when these situations occur, and it makes it look easy. Of course, it’s anything but easy to say those things, but everyone already knows that, secretly. That’s why we need the song.