Tim: A video for this track came out a couple of days ago; we won’t be featuring that because it comes with a (quite literal) car crash moment that takes you out of the song in an annoying manner for a good forty seconds or so. Here’s the audio.
Tom: This is a going to be a complete downer, isn’t it?
Tom: Two out of ten for enunciation, nine out of ten for a surprisingly good chorus.
Tim: Listening to this (and watching the video), it would be incredibly easy to find it all very depressing, because that is one seriously bummed-out message – please let’s get back together, “think of me on a lonely highway”, “I’m alone tonight” and of course the titular “I’m never gonna love again”. Basically, life sucks – in a Rolling Stone interview, she said “Loneliness and heartbreak follow you everywhere” so that’s nice.
Tim: Oh, I know, and it would seem that on some level she does too, as somehow she manages to turn all those lyrics around with a strangely triumphant chorus, which I’m a real fan of – there’s a sense of hope there that isn’t present in the rest of the song, which despite all the “never gonna love again” repetitions still seems to leave the listener (or me, at least) thinking that life’s not so awful, even though it patently is.
Tom: It is an odd dissonance, but it’s one that works well.
Tim: A fairly hefty achievement, really.