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Love-gone-bad songs

The New Neo Posted on by

If you look at the topic broadly, probably more than half of popular songs are about heartbreak or love gone bad. But I was thinking about a particular sort of heartbreak – the lover who was never sincere, the one who was always fooling you right from the start, and you were the fool. I can think of three such songs that remind me of each other although they’re quite different musically:

The lyrics tell you right at the beginning:

Here the disillusionment takes a tiny bit longer. I love the biting quality Thompson puts into his voice:

And of course there are the Bee Gees, kings of the broken heart. They’re not quite as bitter, but still – when the singer wakes up, she’s gone, and he didn’t see it coming and doesn’t have a clue why. Maybe you can tell him:

This isn’t exactly about the same theme. But hey, I love it, and it’s close enough:

Back to the Bee Gees – as songwriters, anyway. The great Dionne Warwick here:

Comments

Love-gone-bad songs — 54 Comments

  1. I’ve always found the saddest songs to be about the love of a good woman for a worthless man.

    I know of one sad song, where it’s not obvious which one is wronging the other, possibly both.

  3. 20+ years ago as I was going through my divorce, I was especially down while driving in to work and this song came on the radio. The lyrics seemed to perfectly encapsulate how I was feeling toward my ex — “You’re awful– I love you!” but did it in a comedic manner that brightened my mood, at least for that work shift. And the song still holds a place in my heart as a result, despite it not really being a song I’d listen to normally, much less on repeat or anything —

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XH3oMNKApI

  4. Yes it’s a great genre. My favorites are Feel a While lot Better by the Byrds, and Walk Away Renee by the Left Banke The sneaky one that goes way back to early 60s is Red Rubber Ball by the Cyrkle. Upbeat joyful sounding song about a guy really pissed at his ex girl friend.

  7. Physicsguy…Red Rubber Ball, by The Cyrkle:

    A college girl I’d had a crush on for some time, with varying degrees of reciprocated interest, moved to California. A few days late, that song came on the radio.

    It helped.

  8. Today I listened to Black Pegasus responding to the immortal Joan Jett:

    –“Rapper FIRST time REACTION to Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – I Hate Myself for Loving You!!”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jWeeRABzPw

    BP is a rapper and went in to the reaction biz knowing very little about rock. He usually doesn’t even know what decade a rock song is from. But he dug Joan Jett.

    What we humans will do to keep a love gone bad….

  9. “You see it all around you:
    Good loving gone bad,
    And usually it’s too late when you
    Realize what you had.”

  11. On the other side of the male-female fence, here’s the Kingston Trio singing about a poor guy traveling on business, worried about what his gal Sue is up to while he is gone.

    My parents played it when I was a kid and I loved the catchiness, though I had no idea what the song was about.

    So it seems that our narrator comes home early from a business trip and hides in the closet. I get it now. 🙂
    ______________________________________________

    Well, Bobby’s in the living room, holding hands with Sue.
    Nickie’s at that big front door, ’bout to come on through.
    Well, I’m here in the closet. Oh, Lord, what shall I do?
    We’re worried now but we won’t be worried long.

    It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.
    It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.
    It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.
    I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long.

    –The Kingston Trio, “Worried Man – In Color!”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVivHNhf638
    ______________________________________________

    It’s fun to see the Kingston boys in color.

    Fun Fact: Hollywood put a pilot together for a sitcom starring the zany life of the Kingston Trio years before the Monkees.

    But it was a pilot that went nowhere.

  14. Back in the day rock groups (particularly The Beatles) were frequently accused of incorporating drug references into their lyrics. This was the take on Norwegian Wood by some. That was supposedly code for a type of marijuana. Hence at the end of the song, the guy simply lit up a joint (so, I lit a fire. Isn’t it good..) and made the best of it.
    I’m probably a couple of years older than Neo but I bet she remembers these accusations. Some were probably true, but Puff the Magic Dragon??? Come. On.

  15. Though the song was variously recorded, I believe Paul Simon wrote “Red Rubber Ball.”

  16. I think highly of Richard Thompson as a songwriter, but even when he’s singing other people’s material, I absolutely adore his voice.

  19. This was the take on Norwegian Wood by some. That was supposedly code for a type of marijuana…

    chazzand:

    Perhaps.

    My favorite: “Norwegian Wood” was a pun for “Knowing She Would.”

    Isn’t it good … knowing she would.

    John did like puns. He published a book of miscellany titled “A Spaniard in the Works” for the phrase “a spanner in the works.”

    Of course it might have been a specific detail he heard on a one-night stand.

    John had a great ear for words. Hence the titles he picked up from Ringo like “A Hard Day’s Night.”

  20. I never tire of Norwegian Wood, but if you mention that you need to include 4th Time Around

    avi:

    Oh, don’t tease. 🙂

    “4th Time Around” is one of Dylan’s great song parodies, pitch perfect for “Norwegian Wood.” You’ve got to hear it to get it.
    _______________________________________

    I stood there and hummed
    I tapped on her drum and asked her how come
    And she buttoned her boot
    And straightened her suit
    Then she said, “Don’t get cute”
    So I forced my hands in my pockets
    And felt with my thumbs
    And gallantly handed her
    My very last piece of gum

    –Bob Dylan, “Fourth Time Around”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaYo3cn_Qp4
    _______________________________________

    Dylan is always up to something.

  21. No disrespect to Dionne Warwick, but here’s Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker” song. No small part of Zep’s appeal was to burned guys:
    ____________________________________________

    Well, it’s been ten years or maybe more since I first set eyes on you
    The best years of my life gone by, here I am alone and blue
    Some people cry and some people die by the wicked ways of love
    But I’ll just keep on rollin’ along with the grace of the Lord above

    People talkin all around ’bout the way you left me flat
    I don’t care what the people say, I know where their jive is at
    One thing I do have on my mind if you can clarify, please do
    It’s the way you call me another guy’s name
    When I try to make love to you, yeah

    –Led Zeppelin, “Heartbreaker”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5O4073zCKA
    ____________________________________________

    Withering.

  22. Nightwish’s Romanticide (Wacken 2013 version)

    God love and rest my soul
    With this sun down, never ending
    The feeling is gone, yet you ain’t gonna see me fail
    I am the decadence of your world
    I am an eider covered in oil
    Happy hunting, you double-faced carnivore

    https://youtu.be/zz_7OCCQlXs?si=vMywtf79vzaXOwSV

    (and Nightwish’s current lead singer) Floor Jansen’s side project Northward and her song “While Love Died”:

    You love me, you hate me, would you please decide
    We’ve fed hatred through the things we didn’t say
    I guess honesty sometimes really breaks things up
    I love you, I hate you and can’t I decide what feels better when darkn
    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/northward-while-love-died-lyrics.html
    https://youtu.be/bAiPeSsqD-4?si=9SXQIE5O6SCLCJEl

  23. For once I have time to respond to a thread before it times away
    From a somewhat later sensibility:

    Annie Lennox (formerly of Eurythmics): her cover of The Clash “Train in Vain” ca 1995. Wonderfully direct – wonderfully overproduced

    She has a couple of other good candidates. Her best known piece from this epoch would be “Walking on Broken Glass”.

  24. I always thought of “Norwegian Wood” as failed seduction, not love gone bad. I don’t hear any love in it.

    RIchard Thompson’s “Tear-stained Letter” is a good example of using humor to cope with the situation–not only the lyrics but a very lively upbeat tune.

    Paul Simon did indeed write “Red Rubber Ball.”

  25. A song not mentioned so far: “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Lost love? Or love never found? Regardless, very sad.

  26. I always thought of “Norwegian Wood” as failed seduction, not love gone bad. I don’t hear any love in it.

    Mac:

    Me neither.

    Though I doubt Lennon “crawled off to sleep in the bath.” As I recall, Lennon explained the oblique lyrics as his attempt to shield his wife, Cynthia, from an affair he had had.

  27. For me the ultimate revenge fantasy to Love Gone Bad is:
    ___________________________________

    Right now, he’s probably slow dancing
    With a bleached-blonde tramp
    And she’s probably getting frisky
    Right now, he’s probably buying her some fruity little drink
    ‘Cause she can’t shoot a whiskey
    Right now, he’s probably up behind her with a pool-stick
    Showing her how to shoot a combo
    And he don’t know

    I dug my key into the side
    Of his pretty little souped up four-wheel drive
    Carved my name into his leather seats
    I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights
    Slashed a hole in all four tires
    Maybe next time, he’ll think before he cheats

    –Carrie Underwood, “Before He Cheats (Official Video)” (2005)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8
    ___________________________________

    Incredible songwriting and Underwood brings it in the spectacular video with a Stephen King “Carrie” ending.

  30. I agree that Norwegian Wood a not a love-gone-bad song.

    I always misheard “Told her I didn’t [work in the morning] and crawled off to sleep in the bath” as ”told her I didn’t come up to sleep in the bath.”

    Never considered that the last line meant arson, but it fits. 🙂 It’s a pleasant ditty with muddled lyrics, a possible drug reference, and a groovy sitar!

    https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/the-beatles/norwegian-wood-this-bird-has-flown
    —————————————
    (Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song
    by B.J. Thomas

    https://youtu.be/QyrRYIrhLL0

  31. If you play Norwegian Wood backward at 78 rpm you will hear a man who sounds like Gilbert Gottfried chanting “my uncle is sick but the highway is green.”

  32. Karmi (4:31 pm), I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Roy Orbison fan going all the way back to mid-1960 (“Only The Lonely”).

    In addition to that one and “Crying”, I’d call “In Dreams” a ‘Love-gone-bad song’:

    “But just before the dawn
    I awake and find you gone.
    I can’t help it, I can’t help it, if I cry,
    I remember that you said good bye.”

    And I certainly must include “It’s Over”:

    “It breaks your heart in two, to know she’s been untrue
    But oh what will you do? when she said to you
    There’s someone new, we’re through, we’re through,
    It’s over.”

    The Big O had a few others, but of much lesser renown, and of much lesser interest here.

    (Both “Running Scared” and “Oh Pretty Woman” had their suspenseful angst, but in the end in each case, he did get the woman of his desires — until the next tear-jerker.)

  33. Karmi (4:31 pm) said that Roy Orbison “Was good enough of a singer to make it into the Traveling Wilburys.”

    That’s an understatement.
    – Jeff Lynne had loved Roy’s singing since his (Jeff’s) childhood.
    – George Harrison was moved by Roy’s talent since The Beatles and Roy toured together*.
    – Tom Petty, of a younger generation, looked up to Roy (“I get his autograph whenever we gather.”)
    – Bob Dylan was very impressed with Roy’s talent and versatility.

    * that tour was set up with Roy as the headliner and the Beatles as the second act. Roy was immensely popular in the U.K., but by the time the tour began, Beatlemania had taken hold and you might know the rest. BUT John (Lennon) had remarked to Roy, you’re making all the money [which he was (figuratively but not literally) for that tour], why don’t you be the opening act? Roy said, well okay, and long-story-short is, on opening night, I’m very sure it was George who remarked with some admiration and a little shock, “he’s got them [the audience] eating out of the palm of his hand”. Roy did over a dozen encores (fourteen I believe), and finally, John and Paul each took an Orbison armpit and physically carried him off the stage, saying “Yankee, go home!” Source: both official and unofficial Orbison biographies.

    But I digress [smile] . . .

  34. M J R said ‘Bob Dylan was very impressed with Roy’s talent and versatility.‘ Talk about an “understatement,” M J R!? 😉

    Dylan said of Roy:

    With Roy, you didn’t know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop. [After “Ooby Dooby”] he was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal … His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttering to yourself something like, “Man, I don’t believe it”.

  35. Karmi (5:44 pm), that is *exactly* the sort of Dylan quotation I had in mind when I wrote that “Dylan was very impressed with Roy’s talent and versatility.”

    The quotation you’re citing reads a lot like the one I had in mind, maybe identical [not, see addendum below], maybe a different excerpt from a longer quote, but either way, absolutely the same deal in spirit and in intent.

    —

    No, it’s a different quotation [I found it but it’s in a PDF and it can’t simply be copied-‘n’-pasted]. But again, it’s in very much the same spirit and intent.

  36. I can’t help myself. Whenever I hear the Joan Jett song, I hear, “I hate myself for loving Jews.”

    Speaking of Joanie, her “Runaways” band mate Cherie Currie still performs and is also a chainsaw artist and Trump supporter. And what is really interesting is that Cherie is hotter now, IMHO, than she was in the 70s.

  37. Okay, copied it in . . .

    “Orbison transcended all the genres — folk, country, rock and roll, or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn’t even been invented yet. With Roy, you didn’t know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. There wasn’t anything else on the radio like him.” — Bob Dylan

  38. Back in the day, as a fraternity graduate adviser, I heard…stories. From both men and women.
    One which, as far as I can tell, the songs above don’t note is the faithful lover who….changes his or her mind almost overnight.
    He/she was sincere until….he/sne wasn’t.

    Most of the songs presume a degree of maturity. The extended adolescence of a residential college might have precluded at least some of that progress.
    As Bill and Laura were really hot for one another most of a year, then Bill got Jenny as a lab partner in the chem class….

    It’s certainly a heartbreak for one of the parties, but not because of a history of the other party’s deceit.

  41. Elvis Costello’s first album, “My Aim Is True,” was practically a litany of Love Gone Bad or at least sideways. The standout in that respect:
    _________________________________________

    You’re upstairs with the boyfriend while I’m left here to listen
    I hear you calling out his name; I hear the stutter of ignition
    I could hear you whispering as I crept by your door
    So you found some other joker who could please you more

    I’m not angry
    I’m not angry anymore
    I’m not angry
    I’m not angry anymore

    Ooh, I know what you’re doing
    I know where you’ve been
    I know where, but I don’t care
    ‘Cause there’s a-no such thing as an original sin

    –Elvis Costello, “I’m Not Angry” (1977)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_RckIrjWUk
    _________________________________________

    No, he’s not angry. He’s moved on to cold rage!

    Great line about original sin.

  43. I’m not sure it fits precisely, because I think she’s going into as half-heartedly as the man she’s connecting with, but I also thought of Joni Mitchell’s, “Court and Spark.”

    And I thought of Looking Glass’, “Brandy.”

    “But my life, my love, and my lady is the sea.”
    Yeah, Brandy used to watch his eyes when he told his sailor’s story.
    She could feel the ocean fall and rise, she saw its raging glory.
    But he had always told the truth, Lord, he was an honest man
    And Brandy does her best to understand.

    In that case, he isn’t trying to fool the girl, Brandy, but she enters the relationship knowing it’s ill fated from the start and is destined to walk the streets alone.

  44. Maybe not quite on topic, it’s more about unrequited love, but it’s a beautiful song, doesn’t get enough attention and sort-of fits, “Pearl of the Quarter,” by Steely Dan.

    Like Gordon Sumner’s, “Roxeanne,” written 5 years later, it’s about a man who falls in love with a prostitute, and is thus doomed to never having her for his own. The melody is beautiful.

    [Verse 1]
    On the water down in New Orleans
    My baby’s the pearl of the quarter
    She’s a charmer like you never seen
    Singing voulez, voulez, voulez-vous

    [Verse 2]
    Where the sailor spends his hard-earned pay
    Red beans and rice for a quarter
    You can see her almost any day
    Singing voulez, voulez, voulez-vous

    [Chorus]
    And if you hear from my Louise
    Won’t you tell her I say hello?
    Please make it clear
    When her day is done
    She got a place to go

    [Verse 3]
    I walked alone down the miracle mile
    I met my baby by the shrine of the martyr
    She stole my heart with her Cajun smile
    Singing voulez, voulez, voulez-vous

    [Verse 4]
    She loved the million-dollar words I say
    She loved the candy and the flowers that I bought her
    She said she loved me and was on her way
    Singing voulez, voulez, voulez-vous

  45. @ huxley > “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.”
    “My parents played it when I was a kid and I loved the catchiness, though I had no idea what the song was about.
    So it seems that our narrator comes home early from a business trip and hides in the closet.”

    I don’t remember ever hearing the song, but it may be that it’s an inversion of this joke current at the time (Reader’s Digest??) or vice versa.

    A businessman comes home unexpectedly in the middle of the day, goes to the closet to hang up his jacket, and finds a mostly-undressed stranger.
    “What are you doing here?” he exclaims angrily.
    The man shrugs and replies, “Everybody gotta be somewhere!”

    I had no idea what the joke was about until much later in life, but I loved the punchline.

    The Kingston Trio’s song is probably a parody of this one, which I learned a couple of years ago out of a basic ukulele book:
    Wikipedia:

    “Worried Man Blues” is a folk song in the roots music repertoire. It is catalogued as Roud Folk Song Index No. 4753. Like many folk songs passed by oral tradition, the lyrics vary from version to version, but generally all contain the chorus “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song/It takes a worried man to sing a worried song/I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long.” The verses tell the story of a man imprisoned for unknown reasons “I went across the river, and I lay down to sleep/When I woke up, had shackles on my feet”, who pines for his lost love, who is “on the train and gone.”

    Oddly enough, the tune is very similar to a gospel song that I learned as a child, and they may come from the same root; I haven’t done enough research to find out:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Lord_Remember_Me

    You can find lots of covers of both of them online.

    I liked the resonance enough to make a pastiche of the two, alternating verses from each, until the erstwhile prisoner reforms his life and successfully petitions the Lord to remember him, after which he will never be worried again.

  46. The genre itself is very old. I can’t name any medieval or renaissance versions right now (been up too late too long!) but here’s an old music-hall standard I learned about 60 years ago. It’s a lovely ballad tune.

    I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now?

    You have loved lots of girls in the sweet long ago,
    And each one has meant heaven to you;
    You have vowed your affection to each one in turn
    And have sworn to them all you’d be true.
    You have kissed ‘neath the moon while the world seemed in tune,
    Then you left her to hunt a new game.
    Has it ever occurred to you lately, my boy,
    That she’s probably doing the same?

    Chorus:
    I wonder who’s kissing her now?
    Wonder who’s teaching her how?
    Wonder who’s looking into her eyes,
    Breathing sighs, telling lies.
    I wonder who’s buying the wine
    For lips that I used to call mine;
    Wonder if she ever tells him of me.
    I wonder who’s kissing her now?

    If you want to feel wretched and lonesome and blue,
    Just imagine the girl you loved best
    In the arms of some fellow who’s stealing a kiss
    From the lips that you once fondly pressed.
    But the world moves apace and the loves of today
    Flit away with a smile and a tear.
    So you never can tell who is kissing her now,
    Or just whom you’ll be kissing next year.

    Chorus

    (Note: I had to correct the lyrics at Wikipedia – replaced the duplicated “now” in the second line of the chorus with “how” and repaired the punctuation.)

  47. Well, duh.
    This one is still sung, 400 years on.

    Wikipedia: “A broadside ballad by the name “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves” was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers’ Company in September 1580″

    Not all 8 verses though.
    https://lyricstranslate.com/en/Traditional-folk-song-Greensleeves-lyrics.html

    PS: Wiki is a kill-joy.
    “It is a common myth that Greensleeves was written by King Henry VIII. However, Henry did not write Greensleeves[4][5][6] as the piece is based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after his death.”

  48. Although we don’t sing any of these today, the medieval courtiers sang almost exclusively of unrequited love, because, reasons.

    https://www.medievalists.net/2013/02/i-want-what-i-cannot-have-medieval-love-literature-explained/

    Confined by social traditions dictating whom one could marry, the upper classes were often left no choice but to love from afar. Courtiers therefore used love songs as “expressions of fantasies that were never to be fulfilled,” said David Lummus, assistant professor of Italian at Stanford.

    Lummus, whose research centers on medieval and early modern Italian literature and intellectual history, noted that poets of the Middle Ages would likely find our contemporary love rituals completely alien. Medieval desire, said Lummus, was expressed as an ideal to be constantly sought, but rarely attained.

    With songs like those attributed to the 11th-century troubadour William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, who lamented, “I never had the joy of what I loved, / and I never will, as I never did … I want what I cannot have,” medieval lovers would have a hard time relating to our contemporary version of love.
    …
    The inaccessible beloved was described in the songs of 11th- and 12th-century French troubadours, including Bernart de Ventadorn, who wrote, “I cannot keep myself from loving / one from whom I shall get no favor … she left me nothing / but desire and a heart still wanting.”

    And the ultimate “love gone bad” trope is Tristan and Isolde.
    https://www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-music/medieval-songs/top-10-most-famous-and-historically-important-medieval-songs/

    As long as you’re there, listen to the “Cantigas de Santa Maria” (13th century) and the Saltarello.

  50. Well elvis married diana krall so its all good

    1580 that would be the time of queen elizabeth

  52. Two songs about men who’s women get wise and give them a taste of their own medicine; Johnny Taylor’s, “Who’s Making Love?” and Z.Z. Hill’s, “Someone Else is Steppin’ In.”

    Both have some amusing lyrics, especially, “Someone Else is Steppin’ in.”

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