Love You More: The Playlist Pounder

 

One characteristic of the Pounder I forgot to mention last week is its ability to be lost and found again, perhaps over and over. Sometimes maybe you find it again exactly when you need it most. The Buzzcocks’ “Love You More,” like all the songs on Singles Going Steady, played on repeat, on glorious cassette, in my childhood bedroom, in cars, and in assorted dorms. I’m not sure what happened to that tape; it disappeared through various moves and adopting new formats (side note: my current approach is an all-formats approach, which is a lot of fun certainly, but you find yourself seeking more and more new cases on eBay to hold all your various formats in.).

Last week, while driving, when I played Singles Going Steady, now mine on groovy CD, “Love You More” grabbed me by my grayed sideburns and forced me to hear it like I did as a 16-year-old, for just a moment. I can remember listening to it in my bed, too loudly (some habits never go away), bouncing a tennis ball off the wall and ceiling, ringing guitars, sneering, singing it out sometimes, “I’ve been hurt so many times before,” and “although I’m not a child” and “with every heartbeat I want you madly.” I loved the way Pete Shelley sang, “I just can’t explain,” emphasizing “can’t” so very British. And then it ends: suddenly, violently. Then rewinding it and playing it again and feeling it so hard, like only a teenager can.

“Love You More” is only one minute and forty-five (ish) seconds long. According to George Gimarc’s Punk Diary, 1970-1979, when the song came out, on Friday, June 30, 1978, the band promoted it as the second shortest single ever to be released in the U.K. (“Noise Annoys” was the B side). Swell Maps had claimed first place with “Read About Seymour” at 1:27 earlier in the year, he writes. But Girmac also points to Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ famously short “Stay” from 1960. Beyond oldies radio, I think I can certainly credit “Love You More” as one of my more foundational songs that made me appreciate brevity. I mean also obviously there’s the Dead Kennedys’ “I Like Short Songs” at 29 seconds (“Rick Wakeman, eat your heart out”), which like “Love You More” I included on early mix tapes.

In October 1978, Kit Rachlis, in the Boston Phoenix, wrote about the difference between Shelley and original Buzzcocks vocalist Howard Devoto, while discussing Shelley-voiced songs like “Orgasm Addict,” “What Do I Get,” and “Love You More.” Rachlis described Shelley’s voice as “moonier, more vulnerable,” writing, “If Devoto’s ideal was (Johnny) Rotten, Shelley’s is Jonathan Richman.” Also released on June 30 was the Sex Pistols’ “My Way,” with Sid Vicious on vocals. He was dead by the next February. Singles Going Steady debuted in Sept. 1979 on IRS Records, but The Buzzcocks, who had been signed to United Artists on the day Elvis died, had released the last album of their original run, A Different Kind of Tension, the month before. Here’s the band playing “Love You More” on Top of the Pops, the announcer cutting in perfectly after “until the razor cuts.”

View the entire playlist for the Nov. 28 Zero Hour and listen to the archived audio.