When Love Breaks Down by Prefab Sprout

Album: Steve McQueen (1985)

Charted: 25

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Songfacts®:

Prefab Sprout were a UK pop/rock group formed in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1982. This song, in which their frontman and songwriter Paddy McAloon recalls the romantic folly of his youth, was their first of seven UK Top 40 hits.
In an interview with the October 2009 edition of Mojo magazine, McAloon was critical of one of this song's lines. He said: "I became very conscious of other people making hit records and I wanted to be there with Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Scritti Politti. It would be nice to have a song the milkman could whistle, I like the glory of language, the gag. Some don't work out, like on 'When Love Breaks Down' - which I'd always heard as uptempo - 'absence makes the heart lose weight.' It seems prissy, glib, too thought out."
The album was titled Steve McQueen in all countries apart from the United States, where it was called Two Wheels Good, due to a legal conflict with the estate of American actor Steve McQueen.

Comments: 1

Rabbi Meyer from Central WisconsinI agree with McAloon. I'd've gone with "Absence makes the heart grow weary..." Nevertheless, this is a wonderful song.

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