Album: Boys And Girls in America
Year: 2006
This is my favorite song on Boys And Girls in America.
“You Can Make Him Like You” is everything I could want in a rock ‘n’ roll song: catchy, smart and anthemic, and not for a second does it ever stop moving and changing, even as it builds to a fist-pumping, screaming-at-the-top-of-your-lungs climax.
It comes roaring out of the gate with a balance of stinging guitars and big piano hook, before dropping into a quietish first verse where Craig Finn’s giving some pretty sketchy advice:
You don’t have to deal with the dealers
Let your boyfriend deal with the dealers
It only gets inconvenient
When you want to get high aloneYou don’t have to know how to get home
Let your boyfriend tell the driver
The best way to go
It only gets kind of weird
When you wanna go home alone
I can’t deny it, there is a bit — maybe even a lot — of meanness in “You Can Make Him Like You,” but the second the full band roars back in between those first two verses, I’m gone. I’m totally and completely gone, so I’m going to make the excuse that this song is about a specific, damaged person.
You don’t have to go to the right kind of schools
Let your boyfriend come from the right kind of schools
You can wear his old sweatshirt
You can cover yourself like a bruise
For four verses, “You Can Make Him Like You” gets more and more intense, so when Franz Nicolay adds a soaring organ and piano triplets to the mix for the chorus, all I can do is sing along.
If you get tired of the the car he drives
There’s always other boys
You can make him like you
If you get tired of the music he likes
There’s always other boys
You can make him like you
At that point, the music drops into a “Candy’s Room” drumroll and piano duel for the bridge, and Finn makes one last observation:
They say you don’t have a problem
Until you start to do it alone
They say you don’t have a problem
Until you start bringing it home
They say you don’t have a problem
Until you start sleeping alone
And then, “You Can Make Him Like You” trumps itself one last time by going into a full-throated stop-time singalong of the chorus:
There’s always other boys
There’s always other boyfriends
There’s always other boys
You can make him like you
There’s always other boys
There’s always other boyfriends
There’s always other boys
You can make him like you
It’s so huge and anthemic that maybe it comes across as empowerment. After all, who wants to deal with the deals or the drivers or the status. Let him deal with all of that shit, and if he turns out to be a dud, find somebody else.
Maybe. All I know is that except for “The Swish,” the ending of “You Can Make Him Like You” is the part of any Hold Steady concert where I lose it the most, just shouting that chorus at the top of my lungs for all I’m worth.
“You Can Make Him Like You”
“You Can Make Him Like You” performed live at Glastonbury 2007
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