Why Do You Love Me

"Why Do You Love Me" is a 2005 song by Garbage and was the lead single from their fourth album Bleed Like Me. The single charted in both the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Top Ten, their first single to do so in either chart since 1999. The success of "Why Do You Love Me" enabled Garbage to post some of the highest debuts of their career, with Bleed Like Me reaching the top 10 in many countries worldwide. In 2007, "Why Do You Love Me" was remastered and included on Garbage's greatest hits album Absolute Garbage. "Why Do You Love Me" was written and recorded at Smart Studios during the 2004 sessions for Bleed Like Me. The song was incorrectly titled on an 'album news update' as "Why Don't You Love Me" on the band's website in May 2004. Drums on "Why Do You Love Me" were performed by Matt Walker and bass was performed by Justin Meldal-Johnsen. "Why Do You Love Me" was decided as the first single by Garbage's new record companies. The band, which had previously selected singles themselves, were nonetheless happy with the choice and the song was released to radio in February 2005 as the first cut from Bleed Like Me. The single officially premiered in the United Kingdom on the BBC Radio 1 Jo Whiley show on Friday, 18 February. It was playlisted by XFM at the end of February and made XFM's single of the week upon its release. It was added to the Radio 1's C-List on 17 March. On 10 April, it debuted at #7 on the UK Singles Chart, making it Garbage's second-highest charting single in the UK (after "Stupid Girl", which reached #4). In the United States, the song was released for airplay on Tuesday, 15 February. It was the most added song on alternative rock radio for the week of 15 to 22 February. It entered the Modern Rock Tracks chart at #39 on March 5 and shot to #10 by March 26. That same day, it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at #94. The single later peaked at #8 on the Modern Rock Tracks. The song is the band's most successful in the US since 1999's "Special". "Why Do You Love Me" was released as a digital download on March 8. The single is notable as the first instance of a DVD release by the band. In the UK the DVD single was included as one of its three formats, as well as for the first time since their debut album, a 7" vinyl format. The vinyl came encased in pink gaffa-tape, which buyers had to split open to extract the disc. The band's UK record company A & E Records, the Warners label that absorbed former Mushroom UK acts, sent out special card wallet sleeves to house the UK CD/DVD formats in. These could be obtained by applying at Garbage's official website. On the week of February 19, 2008, "Why Do You Love Me" was released as a downloadable master track for use in the video game Rock Band. This was the second Garbage track offered for use with the game, after "I Think I'm Paranoid" which was included on the game disc. "Why Do You Love Me" was edited numerous times for radio airplay after its initial radio impact dates. The first versions sent to radio worldwide had varied between the album version and a clean version, removing the word "shit". In France, the middle 8 section of the song was removed for airplay. In the United Kingdom, Warner Music sent out a revised version of "Why Do You Love Me" to help increase the song's audience as the singles commercial release date approached. This revision replaced the intro guitar riff with a few bars of the verse on rhythm guitar. A shortened version of this revision was also released, which completely removed the opening guitar riff from throughout the song, as well as removing the first bridge and middle 8 sections. This version was edited so that instead of ending abruptly, the last four bars are repeated over and over while fading out. B-sides for the single included "Space Can Come Through Anyone", "Nobody Can Win" and the previously released Ramones cover "I Just Wanna Have Something To Do" on international releases. The UK DVD single also included a ten minute interview with the band and a brand new rock remix of "Cherry Lips". The promotional video for "Why Do You Love Me" was helmed by Sophie Muller, and for scenes filmed on January 31, 2005, included actual Garbage fans who applied through the band's website. The video was shot mostly in black and white (the first B&W Garbage video since "I Think I'm Paranoid") and the storyline centred around cryptic references to the band's difficulty in maintaining proper relations over the previous years, as well as veiled references to Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry and their album Parallel Lines. "Why Do You Love Me" was first performed live on XFM Radio on March 23, 2005. It has been played at each and every show on the 'Bleed Like Me' tour. It has also been performed acoustically, notably on Washington, D.C.'s DC101 in April 2005. At the August 2005 AmsterJam mash-up event at Randall's Island, NY Garbage 'duetted' with electro-rock artist Peaches on a number of songs. "Why Do You Love Me" was performed as a mash-up with Peaches' own "Rock Show". "Why Do You Love Me" has been performed live on TV shows CD:UK, Popworld, Napster Live, Top Of The Pops, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross(UK), Rove Live (Australia) on Canal+ Album D'La Semaine, Traffic Music and 20h10 Pétantes (France), and on Fuse Comp'd (US). Shirley Manson: "It’s about the fundamental insecurity in all human beings that they are unlovable. Feeling unlovable drives us into marriage, monogamy, jealousy and possessiveness". Steve Marker: "'Why Do You Love Me' is an example of a lot of our songs [which] don’t totally come together ‘till they're almost finished. That’s another one I cannot wait to play live because it's loud guitars, it is really fast. I can’t wait to see Butch try to play that speed the whole time too!" Butch Vig: "I’m dreading playing 'Why Do You Love Me' live because it’s like 160 BPM, with all this syncopation. I’m not in shape to do that at this very moment!" Duke Erikson: "It sounds like a girl group song sped up. A girl group on speed kind of thing… Very Spector-esque" Shirley Manson: "It has that strange middle break where everything just sort of disappears and the whole personality of the song changes and it goes somewhere very dark." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.