This is a song about someone who's confused lust for danger with attraction to a person, building an entire fantasy around a boy she watches but never actually talks to. She thinks she wants him but what she really wants is the aesthetic of choosing wrong, the thrill of picking someone her family would hate and her friends would call a mistake. The chorus keeps saying 'good men die too' like it justifies going for a bad one, but that logic only works if she's already decided safety doesn't matter as much as feeling something.
His daddy's on death row / But he'll say it with his chest, though
She lists his problems like they're selling points. The pride in his voice when he talks about his father being on death row is exactly what hooks her, not in spite of the trauma but because of it. She's attracted to the performance of toughness, the way he wears damage visibly.
His older brother bagged the valedictorian / His mother, steady, screaming he should be more like him
This detail has nothing to do with her desire but she includes it anyway, like she's already defending him to someone who hasn't asked. She knows exactly how this looks from the outside and she's preemptively explaining why he turned out this way, doing the emotional labor for a relationship that hasn't started.
I only want him if he says it first to me / I wanna fuck him in the back of his mom's Mercury
These two lines directly contradict each other. The first is about control and withholding, the second is pure aggression. She wants him to chase her and also wants to pin him down herself, which suggests she hasn't decided who she's supposed to be in this dynamic. The fantasy keeps shifting roles because it's all projection, no actual interaction.
Maybe I'll just be crazy / And piss him off 'til he hates me / Yeah right, he fucking loves me
She answers her own question before he gets a chance to. This entire song is her watching him from across a room or a hallway and filling in what he'd say, how he'd react, whether he'd love her for being difficult. The crush isn't about him. It's about getting to feel reckless without actually risking anything yet.
If good men die too, oh, I'd rather be with you
She keeps coming back to this justification like it's airtight logic, but it only makes sense if she's already decided that danger and attraction are the same thing. Good men die, so why not pick a bad one? The argument collapses if you think about it for ten seconds, which is why she doesn't. She just repeats it until it sounds true.
This song is about someone who wants to feel dangerous more than she wants an actual relationship. She's built an entire narrative around a boy she watches but doesn't talk to, filling in his responses and his desire because the fantasy is safer than the reality. The crush isn't really about him. It's about getting to play at recklessness without leaving the bleachers.