"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.
I had a Psychedelic Furs song in one of the previous song-series: the original Pretty in Pink. But my rules state that I can have one song per band, not per human being, so this week I have something else from a later band by Furs frontman Richard Butler (and his knife-sheathed-in-velvet voice).
I'm counting it as Obscure, because I don't know if anyone remembers Love Spit Love. But I loved this song when I first heard it, and still love it today.
For this week, It Hurts When I Laugh.
I'm pretty sure it's a song about someone dying, or thinking he will.
And it hurts when I speak
And it hurts when I talk
And it hurts when I breathe, yeah
There's the singer and "Annie," who lights candles and has a red dress and dreams about tomorrow. It's possible that she's just leaving the singer, and he's taking it really badly. That's the positive interpretation: the negative one is that she's waiting around for him to die.
She's gonna set the candles round her bed
She's gonna light them all
Everything is silent when I'm gone
The whole thing is in a mid-tempo rock beat, driven by a chiming late-90s sound. And I find especially that refrain really compelling - Butler's voice makes it immediate and haunting.
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