British singer Billy Ocean’s first Top 40 hit in the US, “Love Really Hurts Without You” was featured on his eponymous first studio album, released in 1976.
Ocean claims he wrote the song while simultaneously learning how to play the new piano he had just bought. “The novelty of it was coming home every lunchtime and evening and tinkling my piano until eventually I did get something out of it which was the song ‘Love Really Hurts Without You’,” he said. “My left hand started playing the melody and my right hand just did some down beats and my voice just started coming out with [the opening lyric] ‘You run around town like a fool and you think that it’s groovy’ and the song just came together there and then.”
The song has since appeared in the 2013 film Filth, as well as in the Netflix series Sex Education. Beginning in F major, the tune modulates up to G at 2:07.
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