Songfacts®:

• Texas were formed in Glasgow in 1988 when former Altered Images and Hipsway guitarist John McElhone auditioned a hairdresser called Sharleen Spiteri who was looking to break into music to be the vocalist for his new band. This was the very first song Spiteri and McElhone, who were the band's main songwriters, wrote together. It was their first single release and their first hit.
• The group took its name from the film Paris, Texas, which had boasted a score by Ry Cooder, whose slide guitar playing heavily influenced McErlaine.
• The title Southside referred to a neighborhood of Glasgow. The album eventually sold more than 2 million copies worldwide.
• When Texas released this song, Sharleen Spiteri was adamant that she didn't want a feminine image and she insisted on wearing Levi's jeans and a leather jacket.
• In a BBC interview, Sharleen Spiteri said, "If you go back to 1989 and when we did 'I Don't Want a Lover,' it's got loads of synth on it and that was very much what we wanted to do at that point. But I think people just initially hear the slide guitar. If you go back and listen to some of the early records there is actually quite a lot of synth on them. We were trying to mix it with a real sort of folky vibe."
• Johnny McElhone said in an interview with Mojo magazine in 1996 of the audition of Sharleen Spiteri and their first songwriting collaboration: "It was Sharleen. She sang 'Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? ' by Culture Club. Her voice was unbelievable. The first song we wrote was 'I Don't Want A Lover.' It was our first hit in 1989."
• In 2001 A remixed version was released, peaking at #16 in UK. Spiteri said at the time, "That song has been such a phenomenon on our Greatest Hits Tour. Concert crowds have always loved that song, but this year 'I Don't Want A Lover' has suddenly taken on this whole new dimension. Maybe for a while the song was a bit of an albatross for Texas, but now we're playing huge arenas absolutely everywhere and it's just emerged as this massive celebratory highlight of our current live set."
• It featured in the 2000 film Beautiful People. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for all above
• Spiteri recalled to the Daily Telegraph May 18, 2013: "That was the first song I wrote. I was obsessed with not just wanting physical love, I wanted mental love, I wanted my best friend, I wanted everything and the whole package."