Sometimes It Hurts

Album: Darkest Days (1998)
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Songfacts®:

  • Stabbing Westward drummer Andy Kubiszewski wrote the lyric to this one, which describes a brutal hangover and a re-examination of his life as he looks at how he got there. In a Songfacts interview with lead singer Christopher Hall, he explained: "I know exactly what he's talking about. He had a situation where he broke up with his girlfriend and moved from Cleveland to Chicago. The night after it happened, he went out with friends and tried to drink the whole thing away – just tried to forget the whole thing. He completely wrecked himself and didn't remember how he got home, but he remembered the next day that it still hurt just as bad as the day before, but that he was incredibly hungover.

    He put some really introspective lyrics in that one that I enjoy, like, 'After all this time you'd think I'd understand the way you feel.' He had a really unique way of writing. Andy wrote a lot of our lyrics and songs – he had a really cool way of writing that perspective that I didn't take. And to me, it was really refreshing and it added depth to the album. Otherwise, it would have been only one person's thought process."
  • This was released as a single from the Darkest Days album, Stabbing Westward's last for Columbia Records. The song did well on Modern Rock radio and the album sold over 500,000 copies, but the industrial sound was getting rusty, so the label purged them. Their next album, Stabbing Westward, was released on the independent Koch label.
  • The music video has a lot of Wizard Of Oz imagery, with visual references to the ruby red slippers, poppy field, Munchkins and Wicked Witch. Lead singer Christopher Hall plays a kind of alternate-universe Dorothy.

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