Songfacts®:

• It's one of those quirks of pop music history that a song as timeless as "The First Cut Is the Deepest" began not as a heartfelt confession by a brokenhearted soul, but as a demo by a London teenager named Steven Georgiou, who later became Cat Stevens, and later still, Yusuf.
  
  American soul singer P.P. Arnold - real name Patricia Ann Cole - was newly arrived in London after a stint in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Encouraged by Mick Jagger, she signed with Immediate Records. The 18-year-old Cat Stevens, who lived round the corner from Immediate Records, was more interested in becoming a behind-the-scenes songwriter than a spotlight-hogging star. With this in mind, he sold "The First Cut Is the Deepest" to Arnold for £30.
• Arnold recorded "The First Cut Is the Deepest" as her debut single and released it in April 1967. It became a significant hit in the UK, reaching #18 on the Singles Chart.
  
  "I thought it did great," she told Uncut magazine. "I wanted it to be a hit because of the arrangement I had with my mother. I had two kids in America and the deal was that if the song was a flop I would go home, and if it was a hit I'll bring my kids to England with me. I had a lot riding on this either way."
• The arrangement was the work of Mike Hurst, Cat Stevens' manager and a former member of The Springfields, the group that launched Dusty Springfield. His production evoked the lush "wall of sound" style, with its distinctive harpsichord, horns, and strings. Hurst packed the studio with some of the best session players in London, including John Paul Jones, Nikki Hopkins, Big Jim Sullivan and Clem Cattini.
  
  "A lot of credit goes to Yusuf," Hurst told Uncut magazine. "We had his demo, which had that opening riff, and that was one of the things that sold the song because when you heard it you didn't forget it. That came from Yusuf. My idea was to start with the harp. I wanted something unusual to introduce a song and the harp was perfect."
• The emotional power of Arnold's version wasn't just in the instrumentation - it came from her. She had, as they say, lived it. Married off at 15 in a shotgun wedding, and a mother of two by 17, she endured years of domestic violence, including one incident when her husband threatened her and her children with a knife.
  
  "I had been a victim of a very abusive teen marriage," Arnold told The Mouth Magazine, "and so I could relate to that 'first cut'. That first time you get hurt. That first pain..."
• No wonder critics consider Arnold's rendition the definitive one. She sang like someone who truly knew what the deep cut felt like. Others have tried their hand at it: Rod Stewart (1977), Keith Hampshire (1973), Swedish musician Papa Dee (1995) and Sheryl Crow (2003), have all had hits with Stevens' composition. Cat Stevens recorded his own version for the New Masters album later in 1967, although it wasn't released as a single and largely went unnoticed at the time.
• P.P. Arnold's version of "The First Cut Is the Deepest" shows up in Martin McDonagh's 2012 film Seven Psychopaths.