Songfacts®:

• The song is from the first, eponymously titled album by Cousteau, which later changed their name to CousteauX. The song opens with melancholy trumpet and piano, builds to a triumphant-yet-tortured chorus, and then returns to its slow, sad beginning. It details a passionate, strained relationship that seems caught in-between dissolution and reunion, with contrasting emotions coming together in sex.
• The song's title is almost identical to the Sugarcubes' "F--king in Rhythm and Sorrow," but Davey Ray Moor of Cousteau didn't know of that Subarcubes song's existence until it was brought up in a Songfacts interview.
  
  "I'm slightly shocked to know it exists," Moor said. "Our title is something that came to me in a dream; an old girlfriend asked me whether I'd read this book called F--king in Joy and Sorrow. In the dream I remember thinking what a cool book that must be. So on awaking I searched around for that book title and couldn't find it, and thought it would make a good song. Much to my relief the Sugarcubes' song is suitably bizarre and ours is achingly soft.
  
  But hands up, I must have read, or misread, or somehow absorbed Björk's song to have it be so similar in my unconscious mind. Björk and I share the same birthday, so maybe that's the cosmic link."