Do You Sleep?

Album: Tails (1995)
Charted: 45 18
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Songfacts®:

  • In our interview with Lisa Loeb, she said of this song: "That was probably around college. I think it was in the middle of a separation from a guy, or maybe after a breakup. It was this feeling where I knew we should be broken up, but it kind of runs the gamut of all the feelings that you have when you go through a breakup, even if you instigate the breakup. You're wondering if they're completely still obsessed with you, like, do you eat, sleep, and breathe me? Like when you're broken up, and still at every moment you're thinking about this other person, and it drives you - it's just so upsetting and it drives you crazy. But then it goes through my own thought process, where I think back, I guess in an abstract and a little bit of a poetic way about what the relationship used to be. And then by the time you get to the chorus, 'I don't know, and I don't care if I ever see you again,' you know, you go through all those feelings - at least I do. My feelings are never completely 100% straightforward, and if they are, they go through many different phases, where I look at things from a lot of different angles."
  • Regarding the lyrics, "You smoked with the ghost in the back of my head," Loeb explains: "The concrete image, "smoked – smoke," is probably related to the fact that the guy that I was dating at the time was kind of a stoner. And then I used it to be more metaphorical, like you're messing around with me. And the ghost in the back of my head is something that's like ephemeral. It's when somebody messes around with you mentally on a deeper level, bringing up things from your past that aren't even really existent anymore. You know, like a ghost isn't really existent. It's based on something that used to exist, but it's kind of like a figment of your imagination in a way. Although there is a presence to it, because it obviously affects you."
  • Loeb performed this on Saturday Night Live on October 7, 1995. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    John - Colorado Springs, CO
  • The Sophie Muller-directed video finds Loeb washing sheets in a steaming basin and cuts to her singing in the midst of twinkling stars.

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