Songfacts®:

• Garbage singer Shirley Manson wrote this song about feeling unlovable. Because of her insecurities, she questions her romantic partner's loyalty towards her:
  
  I think you're sleeping with a friend of mine
  I have no proof but I think that I'm right
  
  She queries his motivations and wonders why she appeals to him:
  
  Why do you love me?
  It's driving me crazy
• Manson has struggled at various times with body dysmorphia, depression, and self-harm. "Why Do You Love Me" tackles those feelings.
  
  "I think it's important, as someone who's viewed as a well-known musician, to tell the truth about who I am," she told the BBC, "because it's so easy to look at so-called celebrities and only see the glamor."
  
  "When we're in public, we get our hair and our make-up done and we get given incredible clothes by ridiculously talented designers," Manson added, "Then we wake up the next day and we're just normal people. The whole celebrity thing is an illusion. And it's an illusion that's fostered by a really greedy industry in order to make money."
  
  "So I felt a responsibility as a musician to say, 'Hey, look, this is the truth of it,'" she concluded.
• Garbage wrote and recorded "Why Do You Love Me" at their Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. They released it as the lead single from Bleed Like Me on February 22, 2005. It was the band's first Hot 100 appearance since "Special" reached #52 in May 1999, and their highest charting single in the UK since "Stupid Girl" peaked at #4 in 1996.
• Garbage started working on Bleed Like Me in March 2003, but the sessions proved unproductive. After struggling for six months, the band disbanded before reforming to make a fresh start on the album in early 2004. The Sophie Muller-directed video references the turmoil in the band during the making of the record.