“You Missed My Heart”

– Written by Leyla Mendoza –

I was listening to you missed my heart by Phoebe Bridgers and I started asking myself what the song was about. So I did my research and I learned that the song is a cover, originally written by Mark Kozelek and Jimmy Lavelle. The story is about a man who breaks into his exes house and sees her with her new lover. The song has layers to it as it describes a murdering. The song starts off by describing an angry man breaking into his ex lovers home to discover her in the presence of her new lover. This infuriates the intruder but he asks the new lover to leave in which he refuses. The intruders anger escalates and he decides to passionately kill her new lover. He stabs her new lover in the back with his shiv and right before he dies, his last words were to the intruder saying “you missed my heart, you got me good i knew you would.” To me, this implies that the new lovers knew that her ex was going to come and cause them harm. I think the sentence “you missed my heart” has a specific meaning to it but the meaning of it changes throughout the song. When the new boyfriend says “you missed my heart” as he’s being stabbed, I think it signifies that he didn’t stab him in the right place (the heart) where he holds his love for the woman they are fighting over. He was unsuccessful in killing the love he has for his girlfriend/ the intruders ex lover. The next perspective of the song is told from the point of view from the ex-girlfriend. After the intruder kills his ex girlfriends new lover he goes on to kill his ex. He chases her up the stairs, pins her to the ground and right before he kills her he starts going on a tangent about everything he missed about her and everything they would do together. She lets him reminisce for a moment before she stops him and says “that’s quite the list but there’s one thing you missed. you missed my heart.” In my point of view, I believe that what she means by saying “you missed my heart” is that he missed the idea of her and doing things together but he neglected to mention that he what he missed is her and rather than missing her presence. The song then goes on to tell the story from the killer’s perspective. He’s running through a field, listening to the sound of sirens knowing the police are after him. The police finally catch up to him when something hits his skull and cracks it. They take him to jail and set his bail at a million dollars. He tried to hang himself in jail but he was unsuccessful so he escaped the prison. While he was running through the prison yard he was shot down by a tower guard in the shins. They capture him and put him in a gurney where they take him to the infirmary where a priest reads his last rights before he dies. As he dies he says to the priest “He missed my heart” implying that the tower guard didn’t shoot him in the heart where he held the love for his ex girlfriend. As everything goes dark and the killer dies, he sees beautiful parts of life that he loved the most which are described as a childhood scene, fishing with his friends, the moonlight beaming from the night sky and the Ohio river flowing at night. The perpetrators dies, downriver from the Moundsville Prison Graveyard. He died with love in his heart for his ex lover even though the guards got him good. I admire that the phrase “you missed my heart” holds different meanings throughout the song. I really like this writing style because it’s not something you come across often. Phoebe Bridgers did a great job covering this song and I would definitely recommend listening to the song in depth.