Songs don’t come a lot more direct in their emotionality than “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” the third track off of Neil Young’s 1970 album After the Gold Rush. This is a song that rapidly lays down a strong melody and a strong chorus and more or less bludgeons the listener to death with them. (In case it’s not clear, I don’t mean this as a criticism.)
The best-known cover of the song arrived in 1990 when Saint Etienne’s version popped up in discos everywhere in advance of their first album, 1991’s Foxbase Alpha. Interestingly, according to Robert Webb’s 100 Greatest Cover Versions: The Ultimate Playlist, Saint Etienne had shown an interest in covering Young’s “Ambulance Blues” but changed their minds after hearing Psychic TV’s cover of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” which appeared on the 1989 benefit compilation The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young, right between Sonic Youth’s cover of “Computer Age” and Dinosaur Jr.‘s cover of “Lotta Love.”
Those expecting a bilious or arch dismantling of this ultimate Boomer ballad from the U.K.‘s premier experimental art punks might be abashed to learn that Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and the gang must have found something in the song that resonated with them, for they appear honor the song’s insidiously catchy chorus as well as, it seems, the message of the song.
In his collection Interrupting My Train of Thought, Canadian critic Phil Dellio (who once isolated “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” as the greatest song of all time) commented, after addressing the Saint Etienne and Juliana Hatfield takes on the song:
And that leaves the bug-eyed, transgendered Satanist with the lengthiest and best version of all, the strangest thing about which is how very unstrange it is. There’s a lifetime of disappointment and missed opportunities in the counsel kept by “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” and while the lifetime that Psychic TV’s Genesis P-Orridge brings to the song is undoubtedly a lot more unusual than where Neil was coming from, all that matters in the end is the way he invests every last bit of it into the delicate fall of “Yes, only love can break your heart” each time he hits the chorus. Perfection.
Indeed. Enjoy.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Somewhere in this world is a Psychic TV Zippo lighter and I totally want it
‘Pirate Tape’: Derek Jarman, William Burroughs and Psychic TV