Jefferson Airplane / Surrealistic Pillow (2003 Bonus Track Edition) / 1967
How Do You Feel
giddy, breathless, mildly anxious excitement
A breezy, repetitive love-at-first-sight song built almost entirely around a single question addressed to a companion as both watch a woman approach. It's less a narrative than a sustained sensory spike, dramatizing infatuation through accumulation rather than development.
infatuation shared observation inarticulacy sensory overload male gaze
Who's speaking
A first-person narrator speaks to a companion (possibly another man) as they both watch a woman draw nearer; the narrator is unreliable only in the sense of being overwhelmed, not deceptive — he can barely form sentences by the end.
What happens
The song doesn't really progress through events so much as intensify: it starts with noticing isolated features (eyes, hair, voice), moves to the woman looking toward the narrator and his companion, then to her actually approaching, and ends with the narrator losing coherent speech altogether as the refrain multiplies and overlaps.
How it's built
Built on short verses that each isolate a physical feature, followed by a repeated chorus-question. The same call-and-response question becomes the song's engine, and by the final section it fragments into overlapping call-and-response layers, mimicking the narrator's scattering attention and rising heart rate as the woman gets closer.
Section by section
Opening verses
The narrator itemizes features one at a time, inviting his companion to confirm what he's seeing. This piecemeal description keeps the woman at a remove — she's experienced as a sequence of appealing details rather than a person being addressed directly.
First chorus
“how do you feel”
The central question is deceptively simple. It could be genuine curiosity about a friend's reaction, or it could function as a kind of incantation checking whether the narrator's own excitement is shared or validated.
Bridge-like verse
“i don't know what to say”
Here the narrator admits his own inarticulacy directly, a moment of self-report that explains why the song itself relies on repetition and simple description rather than elaborate language — the form mirrors the content.
Approach verse
The tension escalates as the woman is now described as moving toward them, and the narrator's physical response (racing heart, speechlessness) intensifies. This is the song's closest approximation of a turn, though it's an intensification rather than a twist.
Closing refrain
The question multiplies and overlaps with echoing responses, dissolving the verse structure into pure repetition. This closing section abandons narrative entirely, ending the song on unresolved excitement rather than any resolution or outcome.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated instruction to look and the recurring refrain asking about feeling create a chant-like momentum, reinforcing the trance-like state of infatuation.
- direct address
- The narrator keeps turning to a companion rather than the woman herself, which displaces the object of desire and makes the song about shared male experience of attraction as much as the woman.
- fragmentation/vocal layering
- In the closing section the single question splits into overlapping echoes, formally enacting the narrator's claimed loss of composure and speech.
- blazon (partial)
- The song catalogs isolated physical attributes in sequence rather than treating the woman as a whole person, a classic device for describing idealized desire.
Reading it
Read straightforwardly, this is a lightweight pop song about the disorienting thrill of noticing someone attractive, built for the dancefloor rather than deep introspection — its appeal is rhythmic and vocal rather than lyrical. A secondary reading treats the repeated question as a comment on male homosocial bonding: the narrator keeps checking in with a companion rather than engaging the woman, suggesting the performance of desire matters as much as the desire itself, with the woman functioning mostly as a trigger for shared male response.
Context
This track is a comparatively minor entry in the Surrealistic Pillow sessions, included as a bonus/outtake-style cut rather than one of the album's signature songs like the two hits that dominate that record's legacy. Its straightforward pop structure contrasts with the more psychedelic, boundary-pushing material the band is best known for, suggesting it may represent an earlier or more conventional songwriting mode within the same sessions. I'm not certain of the specific writing or recording circumstances beyond its album placement.
Listen for
- the way the chorus question gets layered and echoed in the final section
- how description stays fragmentary — features rather than a whole portrait
- the shift from passive observation to the woman actively approaching
- vocal interplay between lead and background voices during the repeated refrain
About Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. One of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the Bay Area to achieve international commercial success.
1965 - 1973 / United States
Full biography and catalogue