Song Meaning
Lloyd Cole's "What Do You Know About Love?" drips with a rain-soaked cynicism, a Leonard Cohen-esque weariness that suggests love is less a gift and more a learned lesson in loss. The opening lines, "Rain on me, I'm not complaining / I'm soaking from my hat down to my shoes," immediately establish a posture of resignation. It’s not just rain; it’s the accumulation of emotional downpours, accepted with a world-weary shrug. The speaker embraces the deluge because he anticipates the inevitable heartbreak – "Love is something I get to lose." This isn't naive sadness; it's the hardened perspective of someone who's been through the romantic wringer.
The rhetorical question, "What do you know about love?" becomes a recurring motif, a challenge thrown at an unseen, perhaps more optimistic, listener. It’s the veteran speaking to the rookie, the scarred to the unscathed. The lines "Take a look at my face, do you get my meaning / Mister I've got scars on my knees" evoke both physical and emotional battles fought in the name of love. The 'scars' and 'praying hands' imply a history of desperate hope and ultimate disappointment. He's knelt, he's pleaded, and yet, the rain keeps falling. The repetition of "It's raining on Bleecker Street / From my heart down to my feet" grounds the abstract pain in a specific, almost mundane, reality. It’s not just a feeling; it’s a tangible experience, a geographic marker of his heartbreak.
Cole doesn't offer easy answers or redemptive hope. The song meaning resides in the acceptance of pain as a constant companion. "Now I know that this blood here is for bleeding / Sure as Jesus is up above" suggests a fatalistic understanding of the human condition. Even faith offers no solace, only the certainty of suffering. The heart, "just for pleading," is inherently vulnerable. The song, therefore, is less a lament and more a statement of weary defiance. It asks not for pity, but for recognition of a hard-won truth: that love, for some, is synonymous with loss.
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