WILL Taylor Swift’s engagement leave her without crap relationships to write songs about? None of these artists would have enjoyed the same success without miserable love lives.
Soft Cell
‘The pain you drive into the heart of me’ is not the best basis for a relationship, but Soft Cell’s cover of Tainted Love was a huge hit in 1981. It’s odd that this should be the track they’re remembered for and not their BDSM fetish song about people of restricted growth, Sex Dwarf.
Taylor Swift
If you mostly write relationship songs like We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, getting engaged presents a major problem. Basically Taylor’s got two options now: have affairs with other people and slag them off, or write songs about loved-up domestic bliss. No one wants Travis to be sad, but it might be preferable to a double album of songs like Aw You Remembered I Like Orange Twixes That Is So Sweet.
KC and the Sunshine Band
In many ways the ultimate getting-chucked song, Please Don’t Go has it all: actual begging, getting down on your knees, pathetically saying you’re lucky to have dated ‘someone as wonderful as you’. It’s unclear whether you’re meant to feel sorry for the guy or think: ‘Man up and have some f**king self-respect, mate.’
Hank Williams
Country classic Your Cheatin’ Heart really sticks it to Hank Williams’ no-good first wife: ‘Your cheatin’ heart/ Will pine some day/ And crave the love/ You threw away.’ Sadly there’s not much evidence that cheaters feel this way, and mostly they just have lots of sex that’s better than it was with you.
ABBA
Numerous ABBA tunes, such as Winner Takes It All with its ‘loser standing small’, poignantly record the unhappiness and affairs as the group’s relationships fell apart. On the other hand, when you look at the disparity in attractiveness between the boys and the girls, Benny and Bjorn were clearly punching above their weight and perhaps should have ended their career with an upbeat number entitled Lucky To Get A Shag At All.
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac ‘thrived’ on affairs and heartbreak. If Christine McVie hadn’t been shagging their sound engineer and Mick Fleetwood wasn’t improbably porking both Stevie Nicks and her best friend, they’d have had nothing to write about and Rumours would just be full of songs about watching TV and going to the shops.
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi’s breakout hit was Hey Joe, in which a guy offs his partner for ‘messing around with another man’. Leaving aside the problematic nature of executing unfaithful girlfriends, without Hey Joe a whole alternative timeline might have occurred where Jimi became famous at an older, more sensible age, did not die and now does boogie-woogie versions of Purple Haze on Jools’ Annual Hootenanny.
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
I Hate Myself For Loving You clearly struck a chord with anyone who’s their own worst enemy when it comes to relationships. And for Joan and the guys, it’s lucky they had any hits after saddling themselves with the worst band name ever, in a crowded field that includes Limp Bizkit, Hootie & the Blowfish and Abörted Hitler Cöck.
