TATAR #10: Only Love Can Hurt Like This

 

by Dianne Warren (2014)

Now I do enjoy the original Paloma Faith version but, whenever I hear it, it always make me wonder what Shirley Bassey could have done with the song. So I'm choosing this Sheyla version. A bit simpler, gentler and, frankly, with better diction. I like diction.

There are several secrets to this song.

The first one is the chord sequence. In songwriting, one of the most common chord sequences is I-VI-IV-V which, if you're not a musician looks like an Italian sending a distress signal. In English, the chords would be called tonic/sub-mediant/sub-dominant/dominant, which doesn't help much either. Let's stick with the Roman numerals.

The good news is that, even if you're sub-par on your sub-mediants, you would definitely recognise this sequence of chords if you heard it. It's everywhere. Most memorably, in Heart and Soul (a 1938 song written by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser, he of Guys and Dolls fame). Also for anyone who started and gave up piano lessons, it's probably one of the things they can remember how to play. That's because it's simple and sounds good and uses that I-VI-IV-V chord sequence.

So why prattle on about this? Well, "Only Love Can Hurt Like This" starts with this standard sequence. The I-VI chords appear over the first four bars and a low, rolling melody:

I tell myself you don't mean a thing

And what we got, got no hold on me

Then you may be expecting another four bars with the IV-V chords. But it doesn't happen. It pulls up short with just 2 bars on the IV chord and misses out the V chord:

But when you're not there, I just crumble

It's almost as the singer can't keep up the pretence of not caring. The chord sequence we're expecting falls away. It literally crumbles.

So now we're back to the first melody:

I tell myself I don't care that much

But I feel like I die 'til I feel your touch

Have to admit, I don't like the double consonant on "feel_like". Sounds awkward. And, for dramatic purposes, 'feel like I die' is probably something you should build up to in a song, rather than have it near the beginning. I mean, where do you go after that? 

Fortunately there's not time to dwell on that because the chorus basically interrupts the verse two bars early:

Only love, only love can hurt like this

And here's another secret to the song. Often composers look to follow the natural patterns of speech so that a song sings well. If you speak the words "only love can hurt like this", I think the emphasis would naturally fall on the love and hurt: "only love can hurt like this". But in this song, the emphasis falls on the first beats of the bars which turn it into "only love can hurt like this".

That slight off-beat emphasis not only tickles the ear, it also colours the meaning. The "only" picks up the singularity of the experience and gives the song more character. What we are hearing is her experience of hurt. And then when we get to "this", we can actually hear the hurt in that long held note. We hear it even more when the line repeats and the tune stretches the word over an extra semitone: "thi-i-is". We feel that.

Then, of course, the final secret. That octave leap. Not so secretive, perhaps, but still unexpected. Just as we've gotten familiar with the verse-chorus structure and are settling in for the bridge, the chorus suddenly hits the high notes and leaps into life. 

From then on, it's pure melodrama (or the Shirley Bassey bit, as I like to think of it):

But it's the sweetest pain

Burning hot through my veins

Love is torture, makes me more sure

OK, so "torture/more sure" is a bit tenuous but, at this point, who cares?

Bring on the Bassey .