I Wish I Had an Evil Twin

You know, I was listening to the song and I think that the last line might have a double meaning as far as a wish and possibly the wish that any evil he had done in his life could be erased from his conscience. He goes through his list of evil acts and at the end he expresses the wish slightly differently using the past tense and not the present conditional tense. Also, he says that he is basically a good person and it wears thin. Maybe he is saying that when he does evil it bothers him and his past evil acts still prey on him and that an evil twin would help erase the evil within himself. Just a thought.

mmmm i dunno, i think he really means he wish to have and evil twin. just based on all the other stephin merrit's lyrics, i doubt he is more evil than good. i think what he means in this song is that we wish he could make a vengeance for all the bad things he has been through and he actually can't because that not the way he really is.

Don't we all just wish we had evil twin's?

I wish I had more songs about evil twins so I could make a mix about them, is that the same thing?

This song seems to just convey the message that evil is sexy. The twin would "stink of sex appeal" and "all men would writhe beneath his scythe" and then "bring the pretty ones to me/and they would that I was he." Given Stephin Merritt's sexual orientation, this would be more than agreeable. And also, it would seem that it doesn't make much since that the twin would stink of sex appeal when Stephin doesn't, but then you realize that the sex appeal comes from the fact that the twin is evil.

Conclusion: the song is about how evil is sexy.

lol absolutely

This song totally rocks! I wish I were the evil twin...

I think you definitely have to listen to this song and recall the story of the Ring of Gyges: that mythical ring that turned its wearer invisible, and thereby able to do anything without repurcussions ("and they would think that I was he // I'd hurt them and I'd go scot-free"). For those who have read your Plato, remember that this device was used by the character Glaucon to demonstrate that no-one is perfectly virtuous. Just as the narrator feels himself to be good ("cause evil's not my cup of tea") but seeing how he would actually use his evil twin, we see this is not the case.

With the fairly strong connections to earlier ethical Gedankenexperiments, this song may be thought of as almost a social commentary about the nature or good and evil, and how people are good because for fear of getting caught being evil.

I love the idea of having an evil twin so that when I'd do all the bad stuff, they'd blame her instead of me. "All my life there should have been/ An evil twin" That's how I feel sometimes. What a wonderful song.