Last week I put on my reporter’s cap and tried to figure out why all the straight women I know have such massive crushes on Jamie Lidell. Every single one of them is just enthralled with the guy. Even my die-hard rock-chick friends—women who think synthesizers are for recluses and girlie men—get dragged to his increasingly frequent Seattle shows and leave with misty, distant stares and a sudden interest in MIDI routing and Max/MSP.

So I asked around, pressing for details. The first girl I called said something like, “Ooh, Jamie Lidell…” Pause. “Oh, um, were you asking me something?”

Not helpful. So I hung up on my girlfriend and called Tricia. She’s a levelheaded and thoughtful friend, usually quick with an explanation for anything. But even she turns into a puddle when you mention the guy.

“Oh, that Jamie Lidell, he’s dreamy,” she said.

“Can you elaborate?”

“Soooo dreamy…”

They might not be able to explain it, but I’ve investigated—and I have some bad news. Your boyfriend (and you, too, my sad-sack male reader) doesn’t stand a chance against Jamie Lidell.

Your boyfriend—let’s call him “Matt”—is okay. Smart, caring, sensitive, kinda funny. Great on paper. Looks a little like John Cusack, if you pound three beers and squint. He’s chivalrous to a fault—he even bought you a Bumbershoot ticket so you could see Jamie Lidell, whom you will leave him for as soon as you figure out how.

Because Matt’s nice and all, but he didn’t put out Multiply, the best R&B album of last year, a Motown–meets–Blade Runner pastiche that was surprisingly unadorned by the heavy electronics that dominated Lidell’s earlier work, such as 2000’s frantic Muddlin Gear or his rackety collaborations with techno producer Cristian Vogel as Super_Collider.

Critics heaped nearly universal praise on the record—except for one, who wrote that “at least half of it could have been made by a talented hobbyist,” probably for the same reason some men will trash-talk Derek Jeter while watching the game with their enrapt, drooling partners.

Your boyfriend doesn’t sing in a way that is plaintive and rough and soothing all at once, but Jamie does. His voice slithers around Multiply’s bed of lo-fi production like it’s a sheepskin rug, grunting and groaning up and down the scale, through lyrics that somehow manage to be both highly literal and slightly incoherent. Your boyfriend’s singing voice doesn’t like being in the shower with him, and it frightens the cats.

Your boyfriend has adequate fashion sense—he’d never wear socks with sandals or white after Labor Day, and he’s marginally helpful when you’re picking out skirts. But Jamie struts and swerves around the stage in gold lamé smoking jackets and tuxedo pants, with a towel wrapped around his neck to soak up the gallons of sweat he generates while frantically operating a table full of equipment with a charmingly goofy look on his face. Your boyfriend would look like a tool if he did that. But Jamie’s got style. He could rock socks with sandals, if he wanted to, and he can wear white whenever he damn well pleases, because he’s Jamie Lidell.

And which would you rather hear every day—your boyfriend saying, “I feel like crap today,” or Jamie crooning, “This ain’t no way to be/stuck between my shadow and me/could’ve been the sun don’t shine/but then I’ll tell you that I’m doing fine”?

Granted, your boyfriend does know how to rub your feet in just the right way—gently pulling on your toes while rolling his fist up and down your arches with just the right amount of pressure and a touch of eucalyptus oil. And he can tell just by looking when you really, really need a foot rub.

But Jamie Lidell can come over to your house, beatbox into a looper unit, overdub it with shouts and mumbled bass lines, add delays and hand-played drum machine patterns, then keep tweaking and expanding it into a majestic curtain of intricate feedback that goes on for six full minutes—and then pull it all aside and belt out a perfectly executed smoky blues number like “What Is It This Time?”

You could teach him to do the foot thing.