Sophie B. Hawkins

Sophie B. Hawkins had been handing demos to anyone who would take them. A coat-check attendant at a New York restaurant mentioned her songs in passing to a stranger, who left a cassette at a studio, where producer Ralph Schuckett found it on a desk and played it on his subway ride home. The original music video for "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" was banned in Australia for erotic imagery, which amplified the song's profile rather than containing it. Schuckett wanted to smooth out the edges. Hawkins refused, telling him to "keep the edges, keep the weird bridges." The song peaked at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1992.

In our deep dive into Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover, we trace the song from a coat-check conversation to a banned video to the slow radio build that made it a hit, and what it reveals about an artist who knew exactly what she'd lose by letting someone else clean it up.

Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover: Lyrics, Meaning & the Full Story →