My Top 1000 Songs #76: Love My Way

Another one where my undying love for the song is as much a result of teenage associations as it is a recognition of the song's stand-alone merits.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great song. One of the most perfect encapsulations of the new wave era, expertly combining distinctive synths and a haunting atmospherics but never straying far from infectious, sing-along pop. Richard Butler tames his sandpaper rasp into more of a Bowie-esque croon, making it more inviting than some of the band's more abrasive tracks. But ultimately it's one of those rare songs where, if you try to compare it to something that came out before, you come up empty-handed. Yeah, you can point to influences in Roxy Music, Bowie, Joy Division, the Cure... but frankly, I don't think there's anything else that sounds remotely like it.

But, again, for me it's at least as much about the nostalgia factor. Another one that landed smack dab in the middle of high school, and it's impossible to overstate how much the music we hear at that point in our lives shapes our very existence. 40 years later, and every time I hear this I'm sitting in Cecile's living room spinning her big sister's vinyl, or watching Valley Girl--damn, that soundtrack, so perfect--with Patty in the long-since-abandoned, architecturally trippy Edens movie theater in Northbrook, Illinois.

Oh, Nicolas Cage...

Comments

  1. Not a band that holds a big spot in my collection but there are a handful of pretty amazing tracks in their catalog and this is certainly one of them. Funny that you mention references like Valley Girl because for me the Psychedelic Furs connection that is indelible is Pretty in Pink with the John Hughes film of the same name. Memories are pretty powerful things.

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    1. Yeah, that movie also boosted my love of the Furs (who I agree are best served by a hits collection rather than as an album-oriented act). To this day I prefer the horn-backed version of Pretty in Pink recorded for the movie over the original, and I think that's because that was the version I heard first and it's always felt naked to me without the horns as a result.

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