Words and Guitar, Vol. 8: I Miss You

The eighth entry in a weekly column by Terence Cawley.

There are so many songs in the world, and only so many words with which to title them. This is never more evident then when I’m scrolling through my iPod and I run into a block of songs which all share the exact same title. Sometimes, different cover versions of the same song are responsible; other times, multiple artists just happen to have settled on the same, usually generic title for their otherwise unique compositions. Which brings us to this week’s theme:

Top 5 Songs on My iPod with the Title “I Miss You”

I knew I wanted to find five songs with the same title on my iPod and rank them based solely on personal taste, but I didn’t have a specific title in mind. So I embarked on a highly scientific research mission. iPod in one hand, iPhone in the other, I scrolled through every song on both devices whose title started with the word “You.” While I found a lot of titles shared by three or four songs (including, simply, “You”), there weren’t any which met my exacting five-song criteria. So I then started scrolling through every song whose title started with the word “I.” “I Miss You” was the first title I found with five unique songs to its name. Riveting stuff, right? I’m totally not running out of ideas for this column or anything.

I guess “I Miss You” is a pretty appropriate sentiment for these isolated times. Though the title does, as expected, seem to lend itself mostly to sad, sentimental ballads, that isn’t always the case. Let’s get into it!

5. Randy Newman – “I Miss You,” from The Best of Randy Newman (2001)

This song originally appeared on Newman’s 1999 album Bad Love, but I’ve never heard that album; instead, I was introduced to “I Miss You” (and to Newman’s non-Pixar music in general) through this compilation. Besides those classic Toy Story songs, Newman is best known for biting satires like “Sail Away” and “Short People,” but on this spare, somber piano ballad he plays it straight. There are some touching lines mixed in with the lost-love platitudes (“I want to thank you for the good years/And apologize for the rough ones/You must be laughing yourself sick/Up there in Idaho”), but if I were to lose all of the versions of “I Miss You” on my various mp3 players, this is probably the one I would miss the least.

4. Kacey Musgraves – “I Miss You,” from Same Trailer, Different Park (2013)

I’m a big Kacey Musgraves fan, but I’ve always thought her major-label debut and breakout album, Same Trailer, Different Park, suffered from an overabundance of midtempo album tracks which fail to reach the same heights as standout singles “Merry Go Round,” “Follow Your Arrow,” and “Blowin’ Smoke.” Listening to this song on its own, however, it does slowly reveal some subtle charms: a cool, wistful guitar tone which Musgraves said in a Spotify interview gave her Quentin Tarantino vibes, a gentle sigh of a melody, and lyrics which bemoan how even when everything else in your life is going right, you can’t enjoy it because (you guessed it) you miss someone. Even if Golden Hour has at least two better songs about missing people (“Lonely Weekend” and “Mother”), the worst you can say about “I Miss You” is that it’s a merely good song by a great artist.

3. Blink-182 – “I Miss You,” from Blink-182 (2003)

It’s a little hard to talk about this song now that it’s kind of become a meme, but despite alt-rock radio’s attempts to overplay it to death, it’s still one I always enjoy hearing. It’s definitely the most popular song to be called “I Miss You,” at least to my knowledge. Apparently, it was inspired by The Cure’s “The Lovecats,” which makes sense since this is the Blink-182 album with a Robert Smith feature (stick around till the end of that live clip for the amusing spectacle of Smith and Blink doing a pop-punk version of “Boys Don’t Cry” where Smith sings maybe half the lyrics). It also inspired the once-inescapable “Closer” by The Chainsmokers, which means The Cure are indirectly responsible for The Chainsmokers’ continued success and the, uh, attendant consequences of that. Strange world, ain’t it?

2. Beyoncé – “I Miss You,” from 4 (2011)

Beyoncé co-wrote this one with Frank Ocean, and you can hear him mutter “let the motherfucking beat build in this bitch” on the intro. Here he is singing the song to a very talkative audience later that year, and here is a version The xx played live in 2013. Both nice renditions, but Beyoncé’s powerful, broken-hearted belting, along with the minimal, deeply entrancing synth-and-drum-machine production, make her version the definitive one. Lots of critics at the time heard “I Miss You” as a modern take on the ‘80s ballad, with one even making a kind-of-on-point comparison to Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight.” It still feels thoroughly modern, though, with Ocean’s involvement perhaps pushing the overall sound closer to the indie-leaning R&B wave just starting to crest at the time. Of all the songs on this list, this is the one that, for my money, does the best job of capturing the ache and loss of missing someone you love.

1. Björk – “I Miss You,” from Post (1995)

But who said a song has to be about ache and loss just because it’s called “I Miss You”? Instead, Björk puts her own twist on the titular phrase, beating Michael Bublé to the punch by 14 years in the process: “I miss you/But I haven’t met you yet.” While the other songs on this list are minor-key and melancholy, this “I Miss You” has a frenzied, live-wire energy that propelled it to the top of the dance charts. Björk sounds both excited by the prospect of a future love unexpectedly entering her life and overwhelmed by the chaotic, unpredictable nature of such encounters. For Post, Björk drew inspiration from the club scene in her new home of London, and “I Miss You” perfectly bottles the headlong adrenaline rush that the endless possibilities of a night on the town can inspire. It’s perfectly fitting for an artist as permanently focused on the future as Björk to take an inherently nostalgic phrase and make it about the thrill of anticipation.

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Thanks as always for reading! Enjoy the Spotify playlist, and try not to miss me too much- I’ll be back next week!