![]() Girl is usually neurotic and/or overwhelmingly anxious. Boy and girl desperately hate each other. Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan have built entire film careers out of replaying different versions of the same story: Boy meets girl. ‘Friends’ fans will remember when Rachel bitterly hated her co-worker Gavin… until he surprised her with a scarf on her birthday and they ended up kissing on her balcony ('There's a thin line between love and hate, and as it turns out, that line is a scarf'). There’s also a never-ending stream of support from pop culture. Plenty of age-old sayings agree: “There’s a thin line between love and hate.” “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” So it seems like love and hate are not quite so different after all. They both make our hearts race, our pupils dilate, and our palms sweat. They’ve both sparked wars, poetry, and some of the greatest epics of all time. They both cloud our thinking and judgment. But are love and hate really all that different? Of course Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about love. Hate? On Valentine’s Day? Isn’t V-Day supposed to be about love, Hallmark, and all of those positive, mushy feelings? Yet, their self-penned “Thin Line Between Love and Hate” adds incredible dimension to soul music and pop radio history.In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to take a quick look at one of the most fundamental human emotions - hate. For instance, Rod Stewart and Maxi Priest would score hits with ’80s versions of “Some Guys Have All the Luck” which the Persuaders recorded to less fanfare in 1973. The Persuaders wouldn’t do better than this hit chartwise, although a couple of other songs they recorded would be covered and made famous by other artists. Perhaps this is why it struck such a chord with record buyers, and with women singers who covered it. To me, that’s the sobering heart of this tune. Not all of those women will end up putting their men in the hospital, of course. But even if their rage doesn’t kill anyone, this kind of rage tends to kill feelings of affection, and then relationships in general after that. What the song seems to do is cast an eye over what many women may be struggling with in their relationships, and about how clueless men can be about it. The song becomes less about the comeuppance suffered by the narrator, or even about the story specifically involving the pent up anger of a woman who is driven to violence. The film features Martin Lawrence as a philandering male chauvanist, undone (and also hospitalized) for his two-timing and other counts of misogyny by a female revenger, not unlike the song. R&B singer Shirley Murdoch sang the song for the soundtrack of the movie A Thin Line Between Love and Hate. Annie Lennox covered it on her Medusa record. The Pretenders covered it in 1984 on my favourite album of theirs, Learning To Crawl. It’s interesting that the song has since been covered extensively, most prominently by women singers. But, on reflection, this song really is about rage, particularly a woman’s rage. Coyote-esque conclusion, as the narrator finds himself bandaged “from foot to head” in the hospital after his girlfriend’s saintlike patience reaches its limit. The Persuaders’ signature hit, which scored number one on the Billboard R&B charts with crossover success on the pop charts in the top twenty, certainly touched on the darker side of love, and on how dysfunctionally men and women can relate to each other in general. Who could predict how the story would end up from here? And, what else does this song reveal? We have the man who is out on the town at all hours, and his seemingly patient and selfless other half waiting at home for him, even at 5 O’clock in the morning, ready to fix him something to eat, unfazed by his absence up until then. Many more are about the scorned woman, the one waiting at home while their men are out “doin’ the camel walk”.īut, with this song, the emotional landscapes are not quite that easily defined. Pop music is full of stories of how love can go wrong, and how lovers can become callous, taking each other for granted. ![]() Here is a classic tale of neglect, seeming acceptance, pent up anger, and one of the best lyrical payoffs in the history of soul music. It’s their signature single and their biggest hit to date from 1971, “Thin Line Between Love and Hate”. ![]() Listen to this track by million-selling New York soul vocalists the Persuaders.
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