Tonight I'm Yours (Don't Hurt Me)

Album: Tonight I'm Yours (1981)
Charted: 8 20
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Songfacts®:

  • In this bouncy pop song, Stewart tries to coax a lady into a night of meaningless sex, offering his undivided affections for one night only.

    If you never see my face again
    Think of me as a permanent friend
    The one who loved you like a hurricane
    Then disappeared


    He just has one request: Don't hurt me.
  • Stewart wrote this song with his guitarist Jim Cregan and keyboard player Kevin Savigar. The song was used as the title track to his 11th album and released as the first single.
  • In his Storyteller compilation, Stewart explained how this song developed: "Written as a ballad, we spent two days working on this one, getting nowhere, when someone said, out of sheer frustration (as opposed to creative genius), 'Speed the bastard up.' We did."
  • The video did well on MTV, which was new at the time and had no choice but to play lots of Rod Stewart videos, since he made so many. It was directed by Russell Mulcahy and shot at the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles, where scores of beautiful women are seen larking about in and around the pool and on the balconies as the band performs.

    According to Mulcahy, Stewart had a little too much fun the night before and didn't want to do the video. Mulcahy told him he was going to shoot the video with or without him, so Rod found the strength to do it.

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