Stephanie Porter's 2015 album, "Radio Theatre," features an original jazz vocal tune, "He Thinks That I'm Wonderful," which moves from the comfort of being accepted in a relationship to the private insecurity that can arise when someone else sees an idealized version of you.
At the heart of the song, the narrator is caught in the undertow of a lover's love. She is not consoled, and she is not sure of herself. She doubts herself and feels secretly sad, and that's the tension between how she looks and how she feels on the inside. When someone puts you on a pedestal, it can be a compliment, but it can also pressure you to maintain an image that isn't your daily reality. The narrator suggests that her openness comes from knowing she may not be the person someone else has dreamed up.
Porter's lyrics don't offer a simple question of love or rejection but rather the distance between public perception and private feeling. The song is about the difficulty of accepting love when it is tied to impossible expectations that you just can't meet. "He Thinks That I'm Wonderful" is about the uncomfortable space between being admired and being self-aware. Porter knows the ambivalence of being loved for an image and not being seen for who you are.
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