Xlover, "Faking It" (2005)

The exterior of this track is all crunchy electrorock fierceness. There are screeching guitars: throughout the song, as riff (wa-wah-wah-wah-wah!), but also as breakdown. There are rude injunctions: "Fuck my lips/While you fuck my tits." And there is snarling. Oh, is there snarling.

But there is also a soft gooey center. "I'm fucking you/I'm in love with you." But even more: "I want to fake it/I want to fake it/With you." (Imagine that as a wedding vow.) This is, presumably, the best the narrator can do: unable to feel, her highest compliment is to give herself to someone with whom she can be her best fake self. If she, as the song implies, can't be real, then she can at least be fake with someone whom she comes closest to loving. It's something. Better than nothing. Maybe even better than something.