This week’s Best Song Ever (This Week) is “Coin-Operated Boy” by the Dresden Dolls.

I’ve never actually heard the original studio recording of this song, or much of anything else Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione have recorded for that matter—all I have on my hard drive is a live performance of the song with an audibly giddy audience hanging on Ms. Palmer’s every word. While the crowd breaks into tittering at the obvious punch line of “I can even fuck him in the ass,” it’s another line a few moments later where Palmer can’t keep herself from laughing as she sings, “He may not be real, or experienced with girls…”

While at a cursory glance it is just a quaint, queer song about a girl’s deviant fantasy, the song is also barbed with a certain despair and fear of intimacy, and on some level I think it reminds me of all the old crushes I’d have on my sister’s older girlfriends before I knew anything about anything. The music and the lyrics alternate between the whimsical and wistful as Ms. Palmer sings of both the qualitative attributes of her imaginary toy as well as the lovelily aching, dejected loneliness that could actually lead her to wish for such a thing. The song is pure fun, but still relies on the listener’s own moments of weakness for its strength. As such, “Coin-Operated Boy” is the best Best Song Ever (This Week), ever (yet).

the Dresden Dolls - Coin-Operated Boy