Ex-Factor

From The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and for my money the emotional centre of it. It’s a whole doomed relationship compressed into one circling question — “tell me who I have to be, to get some reciprocity” — and the way she stretches and cracks those lines does more than any amount of plot would.

What gets me is that it never resolves. There’s no clean ending, no lesson, just the loop of wanting someone to meet you halfway and knowing they won’t. It’s the most honest song about that particular kind of stuck that I know, and I reach for it whenever I need someone to say it better than I can.