Songfacts®:

• Greg Dulli, who is normally lead singer, opted to let Marcy Mays of local band Scrawl sing lead on this song. Some have said the song hit too close to home for Dulli. He has sung lead on this song in concert, so he must be over whatever negative feelings he once had. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  John - Levittown, NY
• The Afghan Whigs recorded "My Curse" for Gentleman, a concept album that follows a tumultuous relationship as it falls apart. "When I look back on Gentlemen, I see someone trying to figure out relationships, and I think that's why on side two I gave the big song ["My Curse"] to Marcy," Dulli told Uncut magazine. "There's no one like her and we've been friends since the late eighties. That was giving the subject a voice, which also allowed me to call in my own responsibility for the demise of the relationship. And I was able to look at the gray in between the two poles."
• "My Curse" is a wracked female perspective ballad. Marcy Mays sings of being locked into a dysfunctional, emotionally abusive relationship where she feels she's the "slave."
  
  The title refers to The Curse of Eve, the result of Eve's disobedience to God's commandment not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 3 tells us after Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam to eat, God cursed the serpent, Eve, and Adam because of their sin.
  
  God told Eve that because she had eaten from the tree, he would greatly increase her pain in childbirth. Her desire would be for her husband, but he would rule over her, which parallels the master/slave relationship between Mays and her lover.
• The Afghan Whigs wrote both Gentleman and their previous record, Congregation, while touring their 1990 album Up in It. "We wrote it on the road - back-to-back records: Congregation 1992, Gentleman 1993," Dulli recalled to Uncut. "That's something that really doesn't happen anymore. We sort of went nonstop: It was a very prolific period for the group."