Paper Doll

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by David

I’m fairly certain that it was written on a guitar (not a piano or anything else) — just the way it moves along, bar to bar, modulates on upbeats and downbeats in a really straightforward way with some syncopation on 2 and 4, “communicates” with the bass, and lays rhythm down for the vocal, etc. That song was written on rhythm guitar, and I don’t think Stevie has ever written an up-tempo guitar song. (Sometimes I think she wrote “Angel” on guitar.)

I think many of the words, too, are Lindseyish, but that’s harder to pin down. Now you tell me that I’m crazy/It’s nothin’ that I didn’t know — Lindsey has written a million other songs with that sort of humor and sarcastic self criticism (I didn’t wanna be this late/So don’t make me wait). Stevie doesn’t write stuff like that. She doesn’t admit to her character flaws with quite so much tongue in cheek. But maybe she wrote this lyric to mimic her man’s hippie/mountain man voice. Maybe that’s part of what the song means: Our relationship is hot and cold so often that we can’t even keep up with it, and I’m starting to sound like you.

To your point, the line "hanging on to you" just doesn't sound Stevie to me at all and never has. And given what we know about their relationship as it fell apart, and each of them saying that the more ambivalent she got about staying with him the harder he hung onto her and the more controlling he became, that line feels very like him at that time and not like her at all.