Handlebars JENNIE & Dua Lipa Meaning And Lyrics: Why Love Feels Like a Crash
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Image Cred: Dua Lipa and Jennie in “Handlebars” Youtube
So, let me be real with you — when JENNIE and Dua Lipa dropped “Handlebars” as part of JENNIE’s solo album Ruby, I wasn’t totally sure what to expect. But the second I heard that first line, “I trip and fall in love / Just like a Tuesday drunk,” I was like, “Okay, this is way more honest and vulnerable than I thought it was gonna be.” And since I’ve spent a lot of time reading and thinking over literature and all the creative writing courses I took in college, I couldn’t help but hear these lyrics as a kind of modern poem about reckless love — the kind of love that makes you fall flat on your face, even when you know better.
Now, if you’ve seen the music video (and you totally should if you haven’t), you know JENNIE’s walking around this neon-lit, rain-soaked world, laying on a giant spiderweb-shaped bed, and looking like she’s trapped in her own mind. Meanwhile, Dua Lipa shows up like she’s from another dimension, singing about wanting something real but knowing she’ll probably crash and burn too. And honestly, the whole vibe of the video — with the glitchy monitors, glowing webs, and floating disco-ball heart — fits perfectly with this song’s message: love is weird, it’s overwhelming, and it never goes how you plan.
What I want to do here is give you my own read on the song — using my background in books, poetry, and all that nerdy stuff — to show how JENNIE and Dua Lipa are tapping into something really timeless. I’ll be pulling in some classic writers to back me up (because if people were writing about falling too hard in the 1800s, you know we’re not alone in this mess).
But just to be clear, this is all my take — not a “right answer,” just what I’m hearing when I sit with these lyrics. And honestly, I think this is a good excuse to stretch some of those literary muscles and ask, “What does the history of love songs and poems tell us about why we keep falling, even when we know we shouldn’t?”
Handlebars at a Glance
- This song is about falling head-first into love, even when you know it’s gonna hurt — think “falling over the handlebars” as a love life motto.
- JENNIE and Dua Lipa are both admitting they can’t play it cool when love hits — no matter how many times they’ve crashed before, they still “go all in.”
- The whole vibe (from the lyrics to the music video) is about feeling trapped in love — like you know it’s a bad idea but you’re still gonna do it anyway.
Handlebars JENNIE & Dua Lipa Lyrics
Handlebars JENNIE & Dua Lipa Meaning
“I trip and fall in love / Just like a Tuesday drunk”
To me, these opening lines show that love is something they can’t stop, even when they know they should. I think it’s really smart that they say “Tuesday drunk” because that’s not even a normal time to be drunk — it’s a time when you’re supposed to have control. So what they’re saying is, “I fall in love when I shouldn’t, when I’m not even ready.”
This makes me think of Dorothy Parker, who writes in “A Very Short Song”:
“Once when I was young and true, / Someone left me sad— / Broke my brittle heart in two; / And that is very bad.”
Just like JENNIE and Dua Lipa, Parker says love broke her heart, but she still talks about it like it’s just something that happens. Neither Parker nor the singers are acting like they can stop this from happening — it’s like they’re stuck in a loop.
Also, when JENNIE sings:
“I always go all in, all in, all in”
I think this really shows how much she throws herself into love without thinking. And again, Parker’s poem proves this idea, because even though her heart was broken, she still seems to expect that heartbreak is just what happens when you love someone. This is the first big message in the song: love is uncontrollable.
“Over the handlebars / Hitting the ground so hard”
Now, when JENNIE sings this part, I think she’s saying that falling in love feels like crashing — it’s fast, scary, and painful. If you’ve ever fallen off a bike, you know how sudden that can be. So here, love isn’t soft or sweet — it’s dangerous.
This line makes me think of Thomas Hardy’s poem “Neutral Tones”, where he writes:
“And a grin of bitterness swept thereby, / Like an ominous bird a-wing.”
Hardy is also talking about love hurting — he uses the image of a bitter grin, like even smiling reminds him of pain. That’s the same feeling I get from JENNIE’s words — love knocks her over, but she can’t stop riding the bike, so to speak.
Plus, when she says:
“If I’m alone, fallin’, fallin’, fallin’”
That really hits me because she’s admitting that she keeps falling even when no one else is there — it’s like love is something she fights with inside herself. Hardy also shows that kind of quiet pain, where even when the relationship is over, he still feels stuck in it. I think this part of the song is about how deep love gets inside you — to the point where you fall, even when no one is around to catch you.
“Another round, another drink / I try to stop, but I can’t think”
When Dua Lipa sings this part, she’s saying love is like being drunk, and that even though she knows she should stop — she can’t. She says, “I can’t think,” which shows love makes her lose control of her mind. This is where I think love starts to sound like an addiction — something that keeps pulling her back.
This reminds me of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed,” where she writes:
“I find this frenzy insufficient reason / For conversation when we meet again.”
Millay is saying she knows this feeling of passion (or love) makes her act crazy, but she can’t stop it. Just like Dua Lipa in the song — she can’t think straight when she’s in love. Both Millay and Dua Lipa are showing how love can take over your brain and make you act in ways you normally wouldn’t.
Also, when Dua Lipa sings:
“And I’m a little too buzzed on your love to play it cute”
She’s admitting that she can’t even pretend to be chill because love makes her act wild. It’s like when you like someone so much, you can’t help but let it show. I think this part of the song is saying that love is like being drunk — it makes you lose control, and even if you try to act calm, you just can’t.
“We ain’t gotta talk about it”
At the end, both JENNIE and Dua Lipa say:
“We ain’t gotta talk about it / Na-na-na-na-na-na-na”
This, to me, is one of the most important parts of the song. They are avoiding dealing with the pain and messiness of love. It’s like they’re saying, “We know this is a bad cycle, but let’s not think about it.” This shows that they’re tired of fighting it — they’re giving in to the feelings because fighting love hasn’t worked for them before.
This makes me think again of Thomas Hardy’s “Neutral Tones”, where he ends by saying:
“And a pond edged with grayish leaves.”
Everything is dead and gray — and he’s just sitting with that sadness. He doesn’t try to fix it. JENNIE and Dua Lipa are doing the same thing — they’re accepting that love will hurt them, but they aren’t trying to change.
I think this is a really powerful ending because it shows the truth about how love works for a lot of people — they know they’ll get hurt, but they keep falling anyway.
Connecting All The Dots
This song is really about falling for someone way too fast and knowing you’re gonna get hurt — but doing it anyway. From the first line, “I trip and fall in love / Just like a Tuesday drunk,” JENNIE makes it clear that love, for her, isn’t some careful choice — it’s something messy and out of control. And I think what makes this even more powerful is how honest she and Dua Lipa are about that pattern.
They both know they keep crashing. You can even see that in the video, where JENNIE’s laying on a glowing spiderweb bed like she’s stuck in her own head, while Dua kind of floats in from another world, and together they sing like they’re trapped in a love they can’t quit.
And if that sounds like something you’ve read in poetry, you’re not wrong — because this same feeling has been written about for hundreds of years. When JENNIE sings “It burns me time and time again / So why am I still fixing for this frying pan,” I can’t help but think of Dorothy Parker, who basically made a career out of writing about this exact thing — falling for people even when she knew it would break her.
In “A Very Short Song,” Parker writes, “Broke my brittle heart in two; / And that is very bad.” But like JENNIE and Dua, she doesn’t pretend she’ll stop — she’s just admitting, “Yeah, this is what I do.” Same with Hardy, when he writes in “Neutral Tones” about how love left him bitter and drained, but still hanging onto the pain.
And then there’s Millay, who probably says it best when she writes about knowing love makes her act crazy but giving in anyway. In “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed,” she talks about being overtaken by passion and basically shrugging like, “Yep, here we go again.” That’s exactly the vibe when Dua Lipa sings, “Another round, another drink / I try to stop, but I can’t think.”
So when you step back and really look at “Handlebars”, you start to see it’s not just a song about love — it’s a song about the part of love that’s addictive, reckless, and hard to quit, even when you know better. And honestly, I think that’s why it feels so real — because JENNIE and Dua Lipa are both saying out loud what a lot of people are afraid to admit.
