Boy! What Love Has Done to Me!

Song Meaning

This tune paints a picture of a woman utterly devoted to a man who offers her very little in return. She's his domestic servant, fetching slippers and filling pipes, enduring his "oldest jokes" and his "quarrelsome" nature. The lyrics emphasize her sacrifices, noting she "might have had a banker" or "a broker," suggesting a life of financial security she's foregone. This stark contrast between potential comfort and her current reality fuels the song's central lament. The core tension lies in her unwavering, almost masochistic, love despite overwhelming evidence of her partner's failings. He's penniless, a "faker," and possibly unfaithful, "out somewhere necking somebody else's frau." Yet, she declares, "I still love him" and "There's nobody above him." This irrational devotion, even when she acknowledges his "brains are minus" and calls herself a "slavey," is the baffling heart of the song. The writing cleverly uses domesticity and financial imagery to highlight her entrapment. She's "anchored" to him, and leaving him would leave her "all at sea" or "up a tree," indicating a profound fear of independence or a deep-seated belief that she belongs with him. The repeated, almost resigned, refrain "Boy, what love has done to me!" underscores the bewildering power this love holds over her, transforming her potential into a life of servitude and disappointment. Ultimately, the lyrics resonate because they capture a complex, often painful, emotional paradox: the irrational grip of love even when it seems to diminish one's own life. The narrator's self-awareness of her situation, coupled with her inability to break free from her affection, creates a poignant and relatable portrait of devotion gone awry. It's this internal conflict—knowing better but feeling otherwise—that gives the song its enduring, albeit melancholic, power.