When Nick Cave Says ‘I Love You’, You Better Believe He Means It

I know I’m not alone when I admit that Nick Cave has become my go-to agony uncle.

The man has quite literally lived a million lives and survived to tell the tale. Then, every couple of weeks we get drip fed some of his worldly wisdom through his Red Hand Files.

The latest focused on whether Cave genuinely means the sentiment of saying ‘I love you’ to his audience. It’s something we all think about when sitting in the filled crowd. Musicians often pander around the phrase. Saying ‘I love you’ every two seconds without any sense of sincerity within it. You can hear it in their voice too. To them, it’s often just another crowd, another night and another pay check.

But in the case of Nick Cave, it’s a bit different. You don’t have to know a whole lot about him to realise he doesn’t pander. I mean, he barely even smiles unless it’s earned.

Writing from a flight to Chicago on no sleep, Cave answered a question from a fan named Leah. Her query was simple: does he really mean it when he says “I love you too” from the stage? Cave’s response, somehow both poetic and guttural, was a masterclass in human tenderness.

Cave responded saying the love is real. “Leah, when I tell the audience that I love them, the sentiment is entirely true. I feel an emotional transaction with the crowd that is powerful and profoundly intimate. I stand before you all – strangers – witnessing you both individually and collectively, and sense an unbounded love” he wrote.

He furthered that this love is in no way “metaphorical, symbolic or platitudinous.” It’s a genuine emotional exchange with the audience. A moment of witnessing people—vulnerable, finite, and filled with the potential for both terror and beauty—and realising that, in that moment, love is the only appropriate response.

He talked about how, during ‘Into My Arms’, it feels like a “mutual embrace.” A form shared grief. A moment where death, life, and music coalesce into something that’s not performance anymore. At that point it’s actually communion.

So yeah, when Cave says “I love you,” he means it. Not because he knows your name, or what you had for breakfast, or the dumb mistakes you’ve made. But because, for two hours, you and a few thousand strangers sing the same words and confront the same truths together.

It’s not performative. It’s not cheap. And that, honestly, is what separates Nick Cave from a lot of other touring artists today. He genuinely means it.