About The Song
“Love Hurts” was written by the husband-and-wife songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. It was one of the many great songs they wrote for The Everly Brothers, though it is only credited to Boudleaux. Despite this being one of their finest songs, it wasn’t originally released as a single and was initially left buried in the tracklist of the famed duo’s 1960 LP, A Date with the Everly Brothers.
Initially, the Everly Brothers, Don and Phil, wanted to release “Love Hurts” as a single but were dealing with a legal dispute with Rose and his publishing company Acuff-Rose. When the brothers moved to Warner Bros. in 1960, Rose wanted the duo to release singles under the ownership of his publishing company. After their falling out with Rose the brothers were cut off from Acuff-Rose songwriters, including the “Love Hurts” songwriting duo Boudleaux Bryant.
“Wesley covered us with Roy Orbison, which was outlandishly selfish,” said Don Everly in Roger White’s 1998 book Walk Right Back: The Everly Brothers On Warner Bros. “The arrangement was ours, and it was written for us. We couldn’t release it as a single because we didn’t know if Acuff-Rose would license it or not because we were in a lawsuit with them. It got that bitter.”
It is possible that the dark, sexy tones of the song discouraged producers from releasing it as a single. “Love Hurts,” in fact, is considered by many, to this day, as the ultimate anti-love. Exploring a more psychologically, painful side of love through the protagonist’s refusal of love’s common definition as a blissful state-of-being, it different from previous Everly Brothers hits – both the sweeter depiction of love offered in “All I Have To Do Is Dream” (1958) and the altogether more upbeat “Wake Up, Little Susie” (1957)
“Love Hurts” did get some minor recognition a year after its 1960 debut as the B-side to Roy Orbison’s single “Running Scared.” However, by many accounts, it was the Scottish band Nazareth’s interpretation of the song as a rock ballad 14 years later that turned it into a hit. Because it was widely unknown by then, Bob Leszczak writes that for most people, it “was a brand new song, and with this unique interpretation it truly was.”
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Lyrics
Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough nor strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud, holds a lot of rain
Love hurts
Love hurts
I’m young, I know, but even so
I know a thing or two
I’ve learned from you
I’ve really learned a lot, really learned a lot
Love is like a stove, burns you when it’s hot
Love hurts
Love hurts
Some fools rave of happiness
Blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves I guess
But they’re not fooling me
I know it isn’t true, know it isn’t true
Love is just a lie, made to make you blue
Love hurts
Love hurts
Love hurts