A 90s deep dive: The Gin Blossoms, “Hey Jealousy”

“And if you don’t expect too much from me

You might not be let down.”

--The Gin Blossoms

“Hey Jealousy”

If you turned on a radio in the mid-90s, chances are you recognize the chorus of “Hey Jealousy.” The singer cheerily offers, “Tomorrow we can drive around this town / And let the cops chase us around.” If you listen no further, you bop along to the bright guitar line while you drive down the highway and belt, “Hey, jealousy!”

And for years, that’s all I heard—disposable pop rock glee.

And I was wrong.

The song opens with a request for a place to stay. The singer, “in no shape for driving,” asks if “I can just crash here tonight.” He has a history with the woman he’s asking: the singer declares her “the best I’d ever had.” But he blew it, somehow or another. (Booze seems likely, given the scenario, and another line hints toward infidelity.) Whatever substance-induced screw-up he committed, the speaker blames it for his being alone, looking for a roof.

And then that bright chorus kicks in.

You can’t help but be caught up in it. “Tomorrow we can drive around this town / And let the cops chase us around.” Which of us hasn’t, at least once, daydreamed about the kind of mischief that chorus advertises? The long arm of the law isn’t a real threat here. The chase is a game of cat and mouse starring Barney Fife as the cat. More mall guard than menace. Between this crystal-clear assurance of a Keystone Cops chase and the unmistakable “Hey, jealousy!” it’s easy to miss the line in the middle: “The past is gone, but something might be found / To take its place.”

And that’s the song’s hidden heart. In among the frivolity and the hooks and the playful bassline, there is a hole. The morrow’s mischief— if it happens—wouldn’t be a spontaneous frolic. It will be planned, and therefore fake. Think of the craziest story of your youth. Did you pencil it on your calendar? Chances are, it was sudden, splitting instantaneously from the ordinariness that preceded it. And that’s what the singer is missing here: he can’t manufacture the new joy. The past is gone, he recognizes, but he still wants to bring back a piece of it through force of will. And hijinks aren’t born from determination. Or loneliness.

The song’s second verse is heartbreaking. The first four lines:

“And you can trust me not to drink*

And not to sleep around

And if you don’t expect too much from me

You might not be let down…”

He has broken his first promise before he made it; a man too drunk to drive is asking for confidence in his sobriety. In this context, the promise of faithfulness sounds just as empty. He means to reassure this girl who got away, but with his intoxication having gotten the better of him, his words are more likely reminding her of his past sins. And yet it’s not exactly dishonest because as he stands there on her doorstep, he means every word. He wants so badly to measure up for her and to her, but at least in his own mind, he is destined to fall short. Hence the sad hope that “if you don’t expect too much from me / You might not be let down.” There’s a subtextual question in those lines. He’s a failure; he knows it. But surely, he pleads, he can still be worth something. Right?

The next two lines reveal the full extent of his desperation:

Cause all I really want’s to be with you

Feeling like I matter too

Whether that’s the bottle talking or not, it’s the truth as he feels it.

The song was written by Doug Hopkins, the Gin Blossoms’ lead guitarist. He co-founded the band in 1987 and saw it become a big enough draw in the Tempe area to lure a record deal. “Hey Jealousy” was the first single off the major-label debut, New Miserable Experience. The album eventually went quadruple platinum, but Hopkins never lived to see it: he shot himself on December 5, 1992, a few weeks after A&M Records sent him a gold record for his song. An alcoholic, he had been out of the Gin Blossoms for months. Reportedly too drunk to stand in his final recording sessions, Hopkins was receiving treatment for alcoholism at the time of his death.

A listener’s first impression of “Hey Jealousy” will be of high spirits, both because of the melody and the most audible lyrics of the chorus. That’s the façade. The truth becomes clearer if one more closely examines the intonation of the title. The optimism sounds a little forced, the voice a bit more plaintive than pleasant. A drunken man is trying so very hard to sound hopeful.

But “Hey Jealousy” isn’t really a love song, or even a devil-may-care invitation. It’s a confession.

*According to Wikipedia, the band changed the lyric to “trust me not to think,” but Hopkins originally wrote the version printed here.