Songfacts®:

• Jeff Buckley was very coy about revealing the subjects of his songs, but there's a good chance he wrote this one about the breakup of his relationship with singer and artist Rebecca Moore. Buckley met Moore in New York after she came to one of his concerts. They dated for a while before Buckley released his debut album, Grace, which contains this song about longing for a lover and seeking absolution for his misdeeds.
• Jeff Buckley drowned on May 29, 1997 when he was swimming (with all his clothes on) in the Wolf River around 9 p.m. in Memphis. The autopsy showed no drugs in his system and there was no evidence that the drowning was intentional, but some fans speculated that Buckley's drowning was suicide. The day before he died, Buckley called this song's likely subject, Rebecca Moore, and left a message on her answering machine that said, "Think of me and smile. I'm gonna work my ass off, baby. I'll see you on the other side."
• At a concert in Italy, Buckley introduced "Lover, You Should've Come Over" by saying: "I wrote this song while lying, listening to the telephone in my apartment... but she never called."
• "Lover, You Should've Come Over" found a second life in the mid-2020s thanks to TikTok and other short-form video platforms. Beginning in 2025 and carrying into 2026, the song became a favorite soundtrack for emotional, introspective edits, breakups, regret montages and late-night thoughts set to candlelight, introducing Buckley's voice to a generation born long after his death.
  
  Sustained use across platforms led to a significant spike in global streaming numbers, earning the song chart action for the first time since its original release in 1994. On the Hot 100 dated January 31, 2026, the song debuted at #97, nearly 32 years after its release. It gave Jeff Buckley his first entry on the chart almost three decades after his death in 1997.