This is one of the best break-up songs ever. And Scott Walker’s deep baritone is just magnificently, ridiculously handsome, a Monarch-of-the-Glen outlier. It’s freakishly deep: he sounds like someone thirty years older. One of my mates at uni used to listen to this every morning before he went out to face the day. For him, (despite its avowedly miserable content) it was musical methamphetamine, the ultimate pep pill or upper. The thing that used to knock us out about this song is the speaker is just being so damned heroic. He’s not only giving her permission to dump him; he’s giving her his blessing. (Spoiler alert: this is the opposite of how I, or anyone I know, behaves in the real world.)
But Scott is having none of that pettiness or bitterness mar his love for her:
Oh, breaking up
Is so very hard to doIf you really love him
And there's nothing I can do
Don't try to spare my feelings
Just tell me that we're throughAnd make it easy on yourself
Make it easy on yourself
'Cause breaking up
Is so very hard to do
The whole song is about the idea encapsulated in the line from the Sting song: If you love someone, set them free. The generosity of spirit is just astounding. Given it’s so hard to separate, he’s going to go out of his way to minimise the emotional fall out, to protect her. All the normal emotions, the hurt, the anger, he’s going to suppress. It’s the very definition of unselfishness, adult grown-up behaviour.
Musically, the song is given the full Wall of Sound treatment, turning it into a little symphony. There’s a full orchestra and timpani drums here, the perfect foil for Scott Walker’s sonorous booming. The intro is sweeping and majestic, strings, and a choir doing the Aaaa ahhh aaaah ahh ah bit. Scott’s opening exclamation Oh is pure melodrama, the entry point to a whole implied world of grief.
But, language wise, implication is the key to the song. What matters is what’s not said. For example, the opening line Breaking up/ is so very hard to do is, on one level, a generic statement, encapsulating a kind of proverbial wisdom. But more importantly, in the context, it’s a neutral or non-contentious thing to say, something they can both agree on. But the presupposition encoded within the statement is: they are breaking up.
The true weight of what’s unsaid is really felt in the first conditional sentence: If you really love him/and there’s nothing I can do/Don’t try to spare my feelings… If-clauses are like questions in implying uncertainty. The intensifier ‘really’ is crucial here. For the condition to apply, she has to be absolutely sure; she has to really love the other guy. The speaker is, in effect, asking her if she has any doubts. He is also asking her, implicitly, if there’s anything he can do to change her mind, rather than the nothing that appears to be the case. What’s unsaid here is screamingly loud. Paradoxically, he's letting her go at the same time as letting her know he still loves her deeply. He’s respecting her decision at the same time as offering her a way out.
The gap between what’s said and not said is at its most extreme in what are probably most poignant lines in the song:
And if the way I hold you, can't compare to his caress
No words of consolation will make me miss you less
My darling, if this is goodbye, I just know I'm gonna cry
So run to him before you start crying, too
The idea that his rival is a better lover must represent the ultimate wound to the speaker’s macho pride, an exquisite agony. It is the single most hurtful idea. But the speaker couches his response as a general statement of fact: no words of consolation will make me miss you less. The clear implication is, in fact: he is inconsolable; that nothing she can say will reduce his grief. But he says all this in such an indirect way it is fantastically polite and respectful. The singing is what betrays the feeling. The way he rolls and prolongs some of the sounds is just awe-some in the old-fashioned sense of inspiring awe. The way he sings the quantifier less is a sound poem in itself. The word is deconstructed into five different syllables, five different registers of pain. Oh baby it’s so hard to do signals a contrast in register, suddenly both personal and intimate. It’s sung so quietly and softly it becomes more than just a general observation. This is the closest he comes to admitting how much it hurts. But, again, it is just implied, not overtly stated.
Apparently, research by the LSE has just revealed that modern song lyrics are much more angry, self-obsessed and egocentric. Well, that’s not something you could accuse the speaker of this song of being. Ultimately this is a song about the radical power of forgiveness. There’s something semi miraculous about the speaker’s behaviour. The speaker’s letting go, with all the sacrifice that entails, is a supreme act of love.
Click on link to hear Walker Brothers
CROON FM - PUTTING THE SWOON BACK INTO CROON