The title track of Placebo's second album, this lovelorn ballad was a staple of the band's set list from the Without You I'm Nothing to the Sleeping with Ghosts tours.
Released as the fourth single from the album, it was a minor hit in Australia, reaching #52 on their singles chart and France where it peaked at #79.
The single version featured additional vocals by David Bowie. Placebo's ties to the Thin White Duke went back to 1995, when he heard their demo and invited them on tour. Frontman Brian Molko recalled to Q magazine:
"I was on holiday in Barbados with my brother, and David called at 10 in the morning from Bermuda. I woke up to my brother shoving a phone in my face whispering (unbelievably), 'It's David Bowie!' He goes, 'Brian, you know that song off yours, Without You I'm Nothing? Well, I've written my own harmony part for it, I think we should re-record it.' I'm like (yawning) 'Er, OK!'
Afterwards, it was, 'How the hell did he find me here?' But I was just incredibly honored that he liked one of my songs so much, he wrote himself into it."
The two girls sitting at a table on the cover of the Without You I'm Nothing album are sisters Sarah and Sally Edwards. They were photographed by Corrine Day.
Molko on the album title: "It's a very romantic title and when we were demoing the album it seemed to sort of emerge as something that... a way of getting the theme of the record across. You know the record's like sort of primarily about an ever-pervading loneliness and heartbreak really and you know there's quite a few relationship songs in there so on one level it's kind of like us... it's a message for us, from us to ourselves, to each other in the band. It's a message to our fans and it's also sort of something that's universal in the way that most people have felt that at least once in their lives."
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The band recorded the album at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Bath, England, with producer Steve Osborne. Placebo were intrigued by Osborne's work with Paul Oakenfold via the trance label Perfecto Records but ultimately they didn't click with the mild-mannered producer. Molko recalled in 2017: "We started off not talking much anyway, and then as the months went by, it became less until there was no talking. It was such a strange atmosphere."
Molko said the album represents the "post-coital depression" following their sex-fueled, self-titled debut that boasted the gender-bending hit "
Nancy Boy."
"I think it really reflects what we've been through emotionally over the past sort of like year and a half and kind of how we spun ourselves out emotionally," he told Sally Stratton in 1998. "A lot of it was kind of our own fault and how in many ways our worlds kind of like fell apart around us as we were getting more successful - on an emotional level definitely and on a relationship level. So in that way it's been sort of like a tough couple of years you know but you can't really have it all. There always seem to be things that are sort of inversely proportional to each other you know. As you kind of like get more successful so your personal life has a tendency to suffer. We're very emotional people and very sensitive to things like that so I think we have a tendency to beat ourselves up about it which is maybe why it came out on the album in that way. But sure we have... the reason that we're so reflective at the moment is 'cos you know we went sort of so mad for a while that there's a lot to think about now. And there's a lot to be careful about and there's a lot of you know bulls--t that we don't want to repeat and we don't want to create our own suffering any more like we used to."
This was used on the TV series Queer As Folk in the 2002 episode "Bowling For Equality."
Reflecting on the album for its 20th anniversary, Placebo bassist Stefan Olsdal speculated on what Bowie saw in the up-and-coming alt-rock trio. He told NME: "I don't know what he saw in us; maybe something of himself as a younger Bowie. Maybe there was an outsider element to a lot of what we were doing. Maybe it was the romanticism. Maybe it was the stubbornness of not wanting to fit in."
He added: "He gave us some great advice. We were very young when we met him. [Bowie's producer] Tony Visconti was telling us to read more books on the tour bus, and Bowie told us to never rest on our laurels in your creative space."
The music video is a live performance of Placebo with David Bowie at Irving Plaza in New York City, which was the only time it was played live with Bowie. Molko recalled: "You can tell by the shaky camera work it was filmed by our manager. From the sound desk. Don't give up the day job, love."
