Nobody's Baby Now

I'm quite surprised that no one has said the obvious - she's nobody's baby because she's dead. The first verse is way over the top for someone wondering why his girl left him, he doesn't hold her hand because love won't allow it (I find that bit quite spooky) & he's trying to lay her ghost. And, yup, I reckon that as he's her cruel-hearted man, he killed her... Has anybody ever done a body-count for Nick Cave's entire back catalogue?

I don't think she's dead at all, after all, she ripped up his imploring letters with 'long fingered hands'.

I think this is about the soul-searching, vacant grief, and longing that happens when a lover ends a relationship that had seemed to be working. The reference to laying her ghost down is an allegory of trying but failing to move on. She decided to become nobody's baby now; he travels the world and searches through the books on human behavior to try and understand why, still he does not know.

To me this song is about a guy whose girl has left him and he can't quite grasp that it's over.

The first verse is about him trying to come to terms with what went wrong, trying to understand why she left him, or maybe how she could have left him.

I get the impression that he drove her away. I always imagine him to be plagued by demons, in my mind its always self loathing or something like that, he can’t truly love her like she loves him till he stops hating himself and being so self destructive.

I think that she tried to cope with this because she loved him and thought he could be saved, but eventually she’d had enough and had to leave him. The narrator’s difficulty in accepting her leaving him is down to how many ‘second chances’ she’s given him. How, no matter what he does, they’re still together, but this time, they’re not.

The second verse is how much a part of him she is, why he finds it so hard without her. The line “but there are some things love won't allow” alludes to him doing something that pushed her over the edge of what she could cope with, making her decide to leave him.

I’m pushed towards this theory by the line “I was her cruel-hearted man” because it makes me think of someone being selfish in a relationship, not appreciating what the other person needs out of the relationship. Maybe he never truly realised until now how much he needed her and is a little remorseful at having let it slip by, realising more and more just how much she meant to him.

The title and chorus, “she’s nobody’s baby now” refers to the pet names we give to loved ones, how those people become our baby’s and honey’s, etc, becoming so familiar and intimate to us, knowing them so well, but when everything’s over, they go back to being just Alice, Jane, Sally, whoever.

how are there no comments on this song? it's an amazing song. i think it's about a girl he messed up with and she's never coming back, thus she's nobody's baby now. SIGH. nick cave is so wonderful!

So awesome. Pretty fucking surprised to see only one comment here.

Yeah, seriously. Such a great song. Cave sounds amazing.

i think this amazing song is about a loving rupture, surely caused by him, for something out of his control. The singer call himself the "cruel man" and not yet can forget she. Now already she is far and to curimng her wounds to follow ahead.

i think she commited suicide and he feels like he contributed to her state of mind

I think this song seems to be about him trying to find solace in religion (first verse) after the death of a girl whom he held so dear to his heart and whom he may (or may not) have killed...although i could be completly wrong...who knows. Anyway, one of my (many) favourite Nick Cave songs...what an amazing talent...as an Australian I am proud that we can call him ours

I think the song moves through the stages in the relationship. He realizes that even though they were still together, she had moved on and grown apart in the beginning. This is just soul-searching trying to come to grips with what and where it went wrong.