Lover, You Should've Come Over

This is hands down my favorite song ever written. It's like a prog-love-ballad to me. There's nothing I've heard that comes close to this song. It's completely unique. The best line for me is "a kingdom for a kiss on her shoulder." It's such an evocative line that makes you really think about what love is. It sums up the whole song for me. Love is deeper rooted than lust. It's a moment when you realise you can't live without someone. It's when you have the kind of weathered yearning and heavy sorrow that Jeff manages to convey with his voice. That's when you know you're in love. I have never felt so sad that someone I have never met has passed. What a damned musical genius he was! Love this song. RIP Jeff Buckley.

He is a tear that hangs inside my soul forever

This song is full of longing and regret. It’s about losing someone because of foolish mistakes you’ve made, and when all is said and done, still loving that one person. It’s the loneliness one feels now that that person is gone... wanting them, yearning for them... not being able to sleep because you can’t stop thinking about him/her. “Lover, you should’ve come over” is his way of telling her that he’ll be waiting.

• Stanza 1: The organ at the beginning symbolises a funeral, which Buckley is watching: "Looking out the door I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners". This seems sad, but to Buckley, all he feels sorry for is himself because of the pain left behind from a previous break-up.
  • Stanza 2: We learn that Buckley's relationship ended as a result of his own disloyalty. He realises his mistakes now that he's "too old to just break free and run", and consequently he realises "really, he has no one".
  • Stanza 3: He wants his ex (lover) to come over "'cause it's not too late".
  • Stanza 4: Buckley creates depressing imagery, metaphorically describing his life as a lonely room with an open, inviting window. He describes his pain superlatively as "burning" and can't sleep because of it.
  • Stanza 5: Buckley repeats that his pain is "never over", and he describes what he'd do to have his lover come over with four hyperbolic metaphors. "My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder" is an allusion to Shakespeare's Richard III: "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" This really is, in my opinion, the most meaningful and beautiful stanza of the poem. It's also a sort-of pre-climax where he lets out his Romeo-esque thoughts before stanza 6.
  • Stanza 6: The climax of the song coincides with where Buckley lets out his frustration with himself for causing the break-up, describing himself metaphorically "too deaf, dumb, and blind to see the damage I've done." Buckley finishes the song with the unanswered invitation, meaning that he'll never believe it's too late for his lover to come back to him, and will never get over it. The song ends with the sound of the organ, recapping the sadness from the beginning and relating the loss of a relationship to the passing of a loved one.

This structure is the reason I love this song. It's not the sort of structure that gets you hooked on the song like a 2000's/2010's pop song structure does, because unlike said pop songs, it is slightly more through-composed, meaning the music follows the nature of the poem rather than the music being basically the same for every stanza. It is in the form A-A-B-A-Coda, but the B and Coda sections are fairly long and that's really where the through-composed style of the piece shines. The A sections really just describe Jeff's sadness, and are thus suitably softly played and sparesly textured.

It breaks my heart to hear it everytime, its a song by a man, about being a man, about vanity and pride, about that dull ache of pining for that one person that everybody meets that you believe is the one. And when the intensity burns both lovers....both are left drowning in a sea of regret...it hurts to hear that song it really does. Reminds me how I lost the love of my life...

I wish someone like Jeff Buckley... someone as beautiful and talented, would write something like this for me one day.

Such a beautiful, beautiful song.

When Jeff sings, "Sometimes a man gets carried away, when he feels like he should be having his fun," is he implying that he left her so he could "have fun" and drink and be a man and bed many women? Then, does he realize that that kind of lifestyle, he "awake[s] to find that really, he has no one"?

That's the way that I interpreted it... A man leaves his girlfriend for freedom, for the pursuit of all "fun" and manly things, only to find that it leaves him empty. It doesn't fill him up the way his lover did.

Is there anything I missed/misinterpreted?

He's regretting being so immatureand probably wrote about it 'cos the guilt was eating him up, I love the beginning of the song, where he describes a funeral and then he changes the subject and moves onto how he's feelin' bad about hurting some chick's feelings, like he doesn't give a s**t! Yeh, I love this track!!!!

What a great song.

To me, it's about denying closure. He is expressing how much he needs this person, knowing in the back of his mind that she isn't going to come back due to the excessive amount of mistakes he made in the past. But he feels some form of comfort knowing that there is that small possibility, so he waits and waits.

I can really feel this song after a breakup. It hurts yet it's comforting at the same time.

i feel like he's singing about his loss, not of a relationship he had that has ended, but the loss of a relationship that never began. he regrets missing the opportunity, the potential of being with this person. and all the "it's never over/it's not too late" is him hoping, trying to believe that maybe there's still a chance.