There is a specific kind of relationship that has no name, and that is the whole problem. You are not together. You never said you were. But he says your name a certain way and it lands, every time, and you have decided to keep living inside that instead of asking for more. "And It Kills Me" is Lacy Evangeline's song about that exact arrangement, and it is honest about the part most people leave out: she is not trying to escape it. She likes it.
The Story Behind the Song
The song opens on a confession that doubles as a thesis. "We have a thing where we don't have a thing, and the not having is the thing." Lacy built the whole track around that idea. The undefined space is not an accident the two of them are drifting through. It is the actual relationship. The silence is agreed on. Neither one brings it up because bringing it up would end the game, and the game is what they have.
Lacy wrote it plainly on purpose. The lines are short, almost casual, the way you would describe something you have decided not to think too hard about. Then the chorus arrives and repeats one word until it stops being casual: "kills." She says it so many times that it turns from a figure of speech into a physical fact. That repetition is the point. A situationship does not hurt once. It hurts on a loop, every touch, every name said out loud, on repeat, and the song is built to feel like the loop.
"We have a thing where we don't have a thing, and the not having is the thing."
What the Song Actually Means
This is a song about wanting something you have chosen not to name, and choosing not to name it because naming it might take it away. The narrator is fully aware of the trap. She admits she is "living in the past," admits the only day she gets to let it go is the day she dies. That is not romance talking. That is someone who has looked directly at how stuck she is and decided to stay anyway.
The line that separates this from a normal heartbreak song is "and I let it, and I like it." Most songs about a painful almost want out of it. Lacy's does not. She is not a victim of the situationship, she is a willing participant in it, and she is telling you the ache is part of the appeal. The small touches, the sound of her name, they land harder precisely because nothing is official. Definition would make it safe, and safe would make it quieter. She trades the security for the intensity and she knows exactly what the trade costs her.
Almost everyone has been on one side of this. The person you talk to constantly and never define. The connection that would collapse the second someone said the word out loud, so nobody does. "And It Kills Me" is the anthem for the ones who are not confused about their situationship at all. They know what it is. They know it is quietly wrecking them. They are staying.
Full Lyrics | And It Kills Me
[Verse]
I've been spending my days
Playing little games
And lately
The game that I've been playing
Is I don't bring it up
He doesn't bring it up
We have a thing where we don't have a thing
And the not having is the thing
[Chorus]
And it kills me
Every time he touches me
And it kills me
When he says my name
And it kills me
When he talks to me
And it kills me
And I let it
And I like it
And it kills me
When he says my name
[Verse 2]
I've been spending my days
Living in the past
The day that I die is the day that I can let it go
He doesn't bring it up
And I don't bring it up
We have a thing where we don't have a thing
And the not having is the thing
[Chorus]
And it kills me
Every time he touches me
And it kills me
When he says my name
And it kills me
When he talks to me
And it kills me
And I let it
And I like it
And it kills me
When he says my name
[Bridge]
He doesn't bring it up
I don't bring it up
He doesn't bring it up
I don't bring it up
He doesn't bring it up
I don't bring it up
He doesn't bring it up
I don't bring it up
He doesn't bring it up
I don't bring it up
He doesn't bring it up
I don't bring it up
[Chorus]
And it kills me
Every time he touches me
And it kills me
When he says my name
And it kills me
When he talks to me
And it kills me
And I let it
And I like it
And it kills me
When he says my name
Key Lines on File
"We have a thing where we don't have a thing, and the not having is the thing." The whole situationship defined in one breath. The absence is the relationship. It is a riddle that only makes sense to the people living inside it, which is exactly why it works.
"And I let it, and I like it." The line that flips the song. Up to this point it could be a lament. These six words make it a choice, and a choice she owns. The ache is not happening to her. She is opting in.
"The day that I die is the day that I can let it go." Delivered lightly, which makes it worse. She is not being dramatic. She has quietly concluded that this is permanent, that there is no version of her future where she stops carrying it, and she says so in passing like a small fact.
The bridge. Twelve lines of the same two statements, back and forth, "he doesn't bring it up, I don't bring it up." Nothing new is said because nothing new can be said. The bridge is the standoff itself, the loop of two people each waiting for the other to speak, printed out in full.
The Video: Memory on MiniDV
The song lives in San Francisco. The video was shot to look like a 2003 camcorder found in a drawer, grainy and imperfect and candid on purpose, because that is how memory actually looks when you play it back. It follows Lacy, a painter and singer-songwriter, through golden afternoons at the Palace of Fine Arts, lazy couch days, art school, and late-night drives up the 101. Twin Peaks, Pier 39, Ghirardelli Square, the Golden Gate Bridge. The unspoken moments in between are the ones the camera keeps.
The choice of format is part of the meaning. A situationship is a thing you will only understand later, in the rewind, once it is already an old home movie. Shooting it as a memory before it even ends is the visual version of "living in the past." Lacy is filming the thing while she is still inside it, already knowing how she will watch it back.
Where It Sits in the City
Inside City of Dolls, "And It Kills Me" reads like a tape Lacy recorded over an old one, the new signal bleeding through the memory underneath. File 002 is the painter, the one who documents. This is the recording where the documentation is the wound. She keeps every frame not to hold onto him but because holding the record is the closest she will let herself get to holding the thing itself.
The song is out now. Take the situationship home with you on Bandcamp, where every purchase goes direct to the label.
