How She Broke My Heart

When I was 14 years old, in the mournful winter days of a pre-millenium February, my very first girlfriend ever broke up with me after 8 months of earnest yet naïve dating. Of all possible days to break up with me, she chose Valentine’s Day. And she did it over e-mail. The e-mail consisted only of the lyrics to the song “Believe” by Cher, followed by the words “I’m…I’m sorry.” For a brief simulation of how this must have felt, please briefly visit this unknown person’s GeoCities page, and then come back right away.

Upon receiving the email, I hadn’t actually heard the song yet. It was brand new on the radio, so all I had were the words, detached from their peppy and empowering musical context. For those of you unfamiliar with the song, let’s experience it together.

In the first verse, we find out that Cher is: “So sad that you’re leaving / Takes time to believe it / But after all is said and done / You’re going to be the lonely one, ohh oh.” We go on to experience verse 2, in which she states: “I need love to feel strong / ‘Cause I’ve had time to think it through / And maybe I’m too good for you, ohh oh”.

These verses are punctuated by the chorus, during which Cher asks if you believe in life after love, because she feels something inside her say, she really doesn’t think you’re strong enough now. The song culminates in a brutal (yet catchy) victory cry, where Cher and my ex-girlfriend join together in a triumphant duet, proudly declaring: “I don’t need you anymore / Oh I don’t need you anymore / I don’t need you anymore / No I don’t need you anymore!”.

In the days following, I tried very, very hard to imagine what might have inspired her to do this to me, but I’m still a little stumped. The best I can up with is she was probably doing aerobics in her house, jazzercising around her room in sync to Cher’s peppy little pop tune and thinking to herself, “I feel empowered! I’ll break up with Kevan! Yeah! And I’ll do it by sending him the lyrics from this vicious and cold-hearted break-up song!”

I bet that synthetic whoosing sound in the intro and modulated auto-tune thing really made it seem like a good idea at the time, huh? Well, guess what: it wasn’t. Especially when the only thing accompanying the lyrics were the shattering sounds emanating from within my chest. Jeez, it’s been like, over 8 years since it happened and I still get all misty-eyed when I hear Cher’s digitally manipulated voice telling me she doesn’t need me anymore.

I guess I just wanted to advise you all to be careful. Whenever you feel that maybe a quote from a song might express your emotions better than you can, you are wrong. There are many songs out there which seem like nice songs when you first listen to them, but were actually composed by Satan himself in his special studio on the bottom level of hell. These songs include Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River,” that song “Too Little Too Late” by Jo-Jo (because I know one of you was thinking of using it), and pretty much anything sung by Bright Eyes or Chris Carrabba. As Bambi’s mother said, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t expect the lyrics from some pop song to say it any more tactfully. And good grief, don’t say it over e-mail.