Pleasure and Pain by The Divinyls

Album: What a Life! (1985)

Charted: 76

License This Song

lyrics

Songfacts®:

The Divinyls are best known outside their home country of Australia for their 1990 hit "I Touch Myself," but their first charting song in America was "Pleasure And Pain" from their second album, What A Life! in 1985. Like the John Mellencamp song "Hurts So Good" three years earlier, there's a touch of masochism in the song, which explores the fine line between pleasure and pain.
This was written by the songwriting team of Mike Chapman and Holly Knight, whose credits include "The Best" for Tina Turner and "Love Is A Battlefield" for Pat Benatar. Knight told Songfacts: "It's a great song, I'm a big fan of the Divinyls. I just like the lyrics. I like that it's a little bit darker and still very sort of poppy. And I was a huge fan of Christina Amphlett from the Divinyls. And I just liked the tune. It's sort of more in the line of "Invincible," but a little bit darker."

Regarding the song's meaning, she said: "It can be so good and it can be so bad at the same time. If you're going to go for the good then you better expect that the bad is going to be just as strong if it happens. That's something I use a lot in my songs, that dichotomy."
The song gets a little intense with these lines, which were written by Mike Chapman:

Break my body with the back of your hand
Doesn't make sense from where I stand

The song's co-writer, Holly Knight, addressed this, telling Songfacts: "There was some brutality in there - it is a very brutal line. A lot of the lines in it are pretty brutal, but I don't know if he was being literal when he came up with that line. I just liked the way it sounded."
The Divinyls were led by lead singer Chrissy Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee. Amphlett, who died of breast cancer in 2013 at 53, was very expressive, as shown in the video for this song where she throws her whole being into her performance. The group kept making hits in Australia, but outside of this song and "I Touch Myself," didn't have much impact elsewhere, and they split up in 1996.

Comments: 3

Deek from Qldgreat talent great song great performance way ahead of her time .also had the cassette and played it in the car (miss the days of the mighty cassette, so tactile)
Pete from CheltenhamGreat video, brilliant album. Had it on cassette since mid 80's
Steve from Sydney, AustraliaThe Divinyls video for this song was shot over one night in Balmain Power Station in Sydney, Australia, in 1985. The station had been decommissioned and was closed because it was full of dangerous asbestos. The huge structure has since been demolished and a harbourside housing complex now occupies the site. I was a newspaper reporter in Sydney at the time and I witnessed and I wrote a feature story about the making of the video. It was a long, exhausting night of shooting, but Christina Amphlett was very professional and put a lot of effort into the task.

see more comments

More Songfacts:

DiamondsRihanna

Rihanna's 2012 hit "Diamonds" was written by Sia Furler, who two years later had a huge hit on her own with "Chandelier." Sia also wrote the David Guetta hit "Titanium."

Passionate KissesLucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams wrote and recorded "Passionate Kisses" four years before it was a hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter.

The UnforgivenMetallica

On Metallica's "The Unforgiven," James Hetfield modeled his vocals on Chris Isaak.

Robin Thicke had a #1 hit with "Blurred Lines" in 2013, but he wasn't the first in his family with a hit song. His mom, Gloria Loring, was a singer who had a hit in 1986 with "Friends And Lovers," a duet with Carl Anderson.

GrenadeBruno Mars

"Grenade" was a term used on the show Jersey Shore to mean an ugly girl. Bruno Mars says his hit song with that title was written before the show started.

Sunday GirlBlondie

"Sunday Girl" was written by Blondie guitarist Chris Stein to cheer up Debbie Harry after her cat had run away whilst they were away on tour. The gray cat was called Sunday Man.