My Top 20 John Hiatt Songs: She Loves the Jerk (#5)

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My final music discussion tonight gets into the top five of my favorite songs by the great John Hiatt. If you noticed, I started a new series today looking at my all-time favorite singer, Jim Reeves. Here's your worthless trivia: Reeves and Hiatt share a birthday. They were both born August 20. You're welcome. Here's the next song. #5: She Loves the Jerk I previously posted a discussion about Rodney Crowell's version of this song. Crowell, who's no slouch himself when it comes to songwriting (his song "Shame on the Moon" was covered by Bob Seger; and "Ain't Livin' Long Like This" and "Leavin' Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" were country hits for Waylon Jennings and the Oak Ridge Boys, respectively), covered this on Street Language, which is what made me sit up and take notice of Hiatt. Thank you, Rodney. This is a great song about a man who's in love with an abused woman. He tries to convince her to leave the abuse ("she lives with the lies and the bumps and the bruises") but he realizes she's enslaved by co-dependency: "she'll never let him go though she knows it'll never work, she loves the jerk." This song will always have a soft spot in my heart and my iPod because it is the song that "officially" introduced me to John Hiatt. She Loves the Jerk Written by John Hiatt From Riding With the King, 1983 Here's Hiatt's original: