She’s Your Cocaine

“For She’s Your Cocaine I put on this tiny black body suit, jeans and high heels, got a margarita and walked outside for 30 minutes to drink Tequila in Cornwall, in the freezing November night. After a take I’ll get the guys a coffee and I’ll say, ‘The artist is on one today, isn’t she?’ They often agree.” [Deluxe - May 1998]

“You know, I think it [She’s Your Cocaine] is a reference to my rock chick days, but realized in a different way. There are three characters in that song - a he and a she and the girl singing it. I haven’t quite figured out if the girl singing is really pissed off that she isn’t special anymore, or if she is just horrified that she put this guy on a pedestal and now he’s chosen this thing... this girl who wouldn’t even be let into a real girl’s party. This... black hole of nebulae...

“I think your own sex can see your sex for what it is. You know the tricks of your own sex. Sometimes you can put your little play glasses on and not want to see them. But I know when another woman is flirting with one of my crew - it’s so obvious and yet they can’t see it. They say ‘oh she’s so pained’ or ‘she’s had all this stuff happen to her’. I know a girl like this - who uses her victimness to make people feel they can’t do enough for her, that nothing is ever enough. And you’re like an addict. You can’t spill enough blood, you can’t wrap your dick into seventeen different little shapes, y’know, like those balloons. ‘Here... look! Puppy! Ice cream truck!’ This song is my revenge.” [Attitude - May 1998]

“The idea of a series of songs with the same basic sound didn’t appeal to me. The woman in She’s Your Cocaine, which is about a reptile woman who has no fidelity to sisterhood, had to be distinct from the woman in Spark, who’s addicted to nicotine patches.” [Philadelphia Inquirer - May 3, 1998]

“She not being me, she being the one that he’s obsessed about, and whatever we think of her is whatever we think of her - probably we think about her in Cruel.” The woman in the song that the man is obsessed with could be amazing, concedes Tori, but equally, “she could just be a black hole.” [High Life: British Airways Magazine - May 1998]

She’s Your Cocaine puzzles over a man’s attraction to a woman who will destroy him. “I’ve seen myself become quite angry because somebody that I love has been dragged through the streets emotionally. A vicious narcissist is hard for me to take. But a yummy narcissist, are you kidding? You’re talking to one.” [The New York Times - May 23, 1998]