Songfacts®:

• On the surface, this song is a tender ode to a lovely girl, but a closer listen to the lyric reveals this is not the case:
  
  The one who insists he was the first in the line
  Is the last to remember her name
  
  In a Songfacts interview with lead singer Richard Butler, he explained the meaning: "The song is about a girl who sleeps around a lot and thinks that she's popular because of it. It makes her feel empowered somehow and popular, and in fact, the people that she's sleeping with are laughing about her behind her back and talking about her."
• The song was first released in 1981 and included on the group's second album, Talk Talk Talk. It was revived in 1986 when the director John Hughes named his 1986 movie after this song. Starring Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy, and Jon Cryer, Hughes wrote the plot around the song's lyrics, but according to The Psychedelic Furs, he muffed the meaning.
  
  Richard Butler recalled to Mojo how this song got co-opted onto the Pretty In Pink movie: "We did the song and were very pleased with it. It wasn't that we were disappointed it wasn't a hit to begin with - at that point, we didn't know what was going on, or whether any of them were singles or whether we were that kind of band. A few years later, Molly Ringwald took it to John Hughes and said, 'I love this song, we should use it for a movie.' He took it away, listened to it, and wrote Pretty In Pink, which totally got the whole thing wrong. It was nothing like the spirit of the song at all. It's really hard to say whether it was damaging for us. I suppose we got tied in with the story of the film, and if that's what people thought the story was about, and didn't look much further than that, they were getting a very false impression."
  
  It's possible John Hughes heard this song from Molly Ringwald, but a more likely connection is Keith Forsey, who co-wrote the song "Don't You (Forget About Me)" for Hughes' 1985 movie The Breakfast Club. Forsey produced the 1984 Psychedelic Furs album Mirror Moves.
• The group recorded a new version of this song for the movie with producer Chris Kimsey. This version was re-released with the film in 1986 - five years after the original.
  
  When the song was first issued in 1981, it hit #43 in the UK and did not chart in the US; the re-release charted at #41 US and #18 UK, but its American impact was far greater as the movie became a classic of the generation.
  
  This new version was mixed to make the song more appealing to a pop music audience. The original includes much rougher, edgier guitar riffs, and the closing, barely audible lines are muttered by Furs lead singer Richard Butler as though he's ruminating in stream-of-consciousness style about Caroline while he's in a drunken haze. The remix has more polished, more upbeats riffs, and while the same lines are included in the trail-off, a louder riff plays over them to make them even less audible and make the overall effect more pop and less bitter. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  S.D. - Denver, CO
• The girl in this song was inspired by two women Richard Butler knew when he was living in the Muswell Hill neighborhood of London. One was the friend of his girlfriend, the other frequented the same pub.
• As Aerosmith pointed out, pink is the color of passion. In this song, being "pretty in pink" is a metaphor for being naked.
• The band was a six-piece when they recorded this song, and all six members got a songwriting credit on the track, which ended up being a big deal when it was used in the film and re-released. Here's the lineup:
  
  John Ashton - guitar
  Richard Butler - vocals
  Tim Butler - bass
  Vince Ely - drums
  Duncan Kilburn - saxophone
  Roger Morris - guitar
  
  As for how the song came together, Tim Butler told Songfacts: "We were in a studio for three weeks writing Talk Talk Talk. Some of the band had gone home; it was later in the day and I think Duncan and Roger, because they lived in the same area, they'd gone. It was just me, Richard, Vince and John. We were just messing around, and the initial riff of it came up. Usually, we'd play an initial riff and Richard would say, 'Wow, that's cool! Carry on. Do something else.' We would just work round and round it and experiment. That one came pretty quickly."
• This was one of the first "new wave" hits of the '80s. The term was first used in a musical sense for the Talking Heads as a way to dissociate them from punk. It ended up as a genre mostly occupied by British bands like The Pet Shop Boys, New Order, and Bananarama that relied on a synthesizer sound that was catching on in the US.
• This was the Psychedelic Furs' biggest hit in the UK. In the US, their only Top 40 was "Heartbreak Beat," which hit #26 that year.
  
  When the song was released in 1981, the entire band was living in England; in 1983, Richard and Tim Butler moved to America, which became the group's home base. They hoped to make it big there with their 1984 album Mirror Moves, but it didn't break through. "Pretty In Pink" became by far their best-known song in the US after it was used in the movie, and they played it at every show. After a few years, they got strung out from touring and playing the same songs over an over, and in 1991 they broke up. They returned in 2000 with a new passion for their old songs. In 2020, they released their first new music in 29 years with the album Made Of Rain.
• Near the end of the song, Richard Butler sings some lyrics that are very hard to understand, on purpose. He made sure they were buried in the mix, forcing fans to listen over and over on their hi-fis to try to make out what he's saying.
  
  The point was for listeners to develop their own interpretations, which they did. Butler heard stories from fans who thought he was referring to classic literature or mythology, and ascribed deep meaning behind it.
  
  On the single version, we can make out something like this:
  
  All their favorite rags are worn
  And other kinds of uniforms
  That kid you are really free
  Like individuality
  You are what you want to be
  Until tomorrow
  
  On the original album version, this part is different. Here's how we hear it:
  
  Caroline's on the table screaming
  Confidence is intimacy
  And all their favorite rags are worn
  Another kind of uniform
  They kid you you're really free
  And you know what you want to be
  Chasing individuality
  Until tomorrow
  
  And everything you are you'll see
  In pure shiny buttons
  They put you in this gear
  And driveways broken
  Doorbell sings in chimes
  It plays "Anything Goes"
  They all talk in rhymes
• The group made a video for this song in 1981 around the same time MTV went on the air. The network gave it some play, but favored offerings from other British new wavers like A Flock Of Seagulls and Haircut 100. Unusually for the Psychedelic Furs, we see the girl in the video, albeit fleetingly. It takes place in a room with red walls, a checkerboard floor, odd perspectives and creepy artwork. An unclothed mannequin and shots of a pink dress hint at what's going on in the song.
  
  The 1986 version got a new video directed by Wayne Isham that incorporates footage from the movie.
• After the movie came out, the alliterative and now-familiar phrase "pretty in pink" showed up in many fashion magazines, which freaked out Richard Butler a bit. "To have coined a phrase that has gone into public use is very odd," he said.
• The girl in this song has a name: Caroline, which is a mismatch with the movie, where Molly Ringwald's character is named Andie. According to Richard Butler, the name Caroline wasn't culled from anyone in particular - he just liked how it sounds (Neil Diamond gave various explanations as to where his Caroline came from). Caroline also shows up in the song "India," from the Psychedelic Furs' first album.
• The original version was produced by Steve Lillywhite and mixed by future Cure producer and pop songwriter Phil Thornalley, who gave Songfacts his opinion of the later mix: "I thought the later one was great. The main thing was that they finally had some worldwide success. I worked on the first two Psychedelic Furs albums, and I just didn't really ever imagine that they would achieve that kind of breakthrough to that type of success - it was a very arty kind of band. That new version of 'Pretty in Pink' probably did them really well in terms of making a living."