Album: Substance (1980)

Charted: 13

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• When routine bites hard
  And ambitions are low
  And resentment rides high
  But emotions won't grow
  And we're changing our ways
  Taking different roads
  
  Love, love will tear us apart again
  Love, love will tear us apart again
  
  Why is the bedroom so cold?
  Turned away on your side
  Is my timing that flawed?
  Our respect run so dry?
  Yet there's still this appeal
  That we've kept through our lives
  
  But love, love will tear us apart again
  Love, love will tear us apart again
  
  Do you cry out in your sleep?
  All my failings exposed
  Gets a taste in my mouth
  As desperation takes hold
  And it's something so good
  Just can't function no more?
  
  Love, love will tear us apart again
  Love, love will tear us apart again
  Love, love will tear us apart again
  Love, love will tear up apart again Writer/s: Bernard Sumner, Ian Kevin Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Paul David Morris
  Publisher: TuneCore Inc., Universal Music Publishing Group
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 22

• Tashavinyl from EnglandThe song has also been covered in 1983 by Paul Young and is on his first solo album 'no parlez'.
• Brigette from Melbourne, Australiai love joy division. its weird, when curtis was still alive, most of joy's songs were cynical and gloomy, but when curtis died and new order formed, alot of their songs were really happy and stuff. i dunno, just a thought lol
• Samuel from Singapore, SingaporeDuring the recording of this song, a young Irish band arrived in the studio to discuss with producer Martin Hannett the recording of their single. What they witnessed of Joy Division's recording session influenced and inspired them heavily. That young Irish band would go on to become one of the most successful bands of all time, selling more than 145 million records worldwide and winning 22 Grammy Awards. The band's name? U2.
• Jez from London, United KingdomThe reason (well, one reason) Love Will Tear Us Apart didn't climb higher than #13 in Britain in 1980 was that its release coincided with a strike on influential music show Top of the Pops, which would likely have helped it gain Top Ten status. That said, the song has been a Top 20 hit on three occasions, in 1980, 1983 (as suggested earlier) and again in 1995. Atmosphere also made the Top 40 in 1988. Ceremony - a song written by Ian Curtis - became the first UK chart entry for New Order a year after his death.
• Chere from Lumberton, TxDuring practice one night, Joy Division came up with the riff for this song. Ian Curtis said, "I've got an idea for that." And in three hours, Love Will Tear Us Apart was born. It's obviously a beautiful song, but none of the other band members related it to his wife, Debbie, or girlfriend, Annik. They just thought, "Oh wow. Ian's done it again-rock on." But maybe from Ian's point of view, Debbie was his childhood love. We all grow and change, and so was he when he found Annik. Love brought them together, but tore his marriage apart. I kind of pick up "too little, too late" from the song as well. Like, a mistake was made and has been realized, but nothing can rectify the damage done.
• Samuel from Singapore, SingaporeU2, who were heavily influenced by Joy Division's spacious sound, occasionally included a snippet of this song on live performances of With Or Without You.
• Blake from Placentia, Ca24 hour party people, the best movie ever. i am sad though, that they dont have isolation or warsaw on here. :(
• Pinkmonty from London, Englandeach note on the riff is like ice stabbing my spine.
• Kai from Püttlingen, GermanyAgree with Stephanie. "Love will tear us apart" was truely their finest moment, with "Warsaw" and "Leaders of Men" being more raw, "She's lost control" and "Twentyfour hours" more desperate, but always utterly brilliant. I am still stunned, how could they cover such vast areas with such little effort???
• Troy from London, EnglandThe names Joy division and New Order are indeed inspired by the Riech, but are intended to be ironic, probably intentionally choses to piss off middle class liberals who are too scared of their own shadow to say boo to a goose.
• Troy from London, EnglandMy mates girlfriend went to see Mark Owen (formerly of Take That) in concert. He performed a version of this song and then made a hanging gesture with his tie... I'm sure it was intended as a tribute to Ian Curtis, but if the audience wasn't full over ladies trying to rediscover their youth and actually had any fans of the original in the crowd I doubt he would have made it off the stage alive.
• No One from Bodmin, EnglandAs precise as a surgeons knife, Curtis deconstructs the death of consensual love. Only regret and pain are left showing, after layers of false feeling are stripped away, like rotten wallpaper in a seedy flat. Underpinned by one of the great bass-lines of post punk, Love will tear us apart is a fitting tribute to the tortured genius of a cruelly underestimated existential poet.
• Les from Chicago, IlI just saw the movie "24 Hour Party People". Great movie. The band Joy Division hated that people associated them with Neo-Facists. They chose the name "New Order" as a way of establishing that they had re-invented themselves while yet still remaining together - something that most bands never did following the death of a lead singer. New Order, as a band deserves a ton of credit for their work and thier ability to survive when most other bands would have folded. Rest in peace Ian. Your bands mates, friends and fans adored you even though you didn't live to see it.
• Ben from Melbourne, Australiaanyone who believes that joy division or new order have links to anything remotly nazi hasn't seen '24 hour party people' and shows a fair bit about people not looking into things
  
• Gerald Mueller from Woodstock, CanadaBeen a fan of Joy Division for almost 25 year's. At the time I had heard all kinds of great things about this band, so I picked up Unknown Pleasures and then Closer. After a few listens, I just did'nt get it, until one night I decided to smoke a joint and put on the headphones. WOW. I was hooked. Never really took a shining to Love will tear us apart, probalby my favourite is New Dawn Fades.
• Rob from Santa Monica, CaOf all the authentic college rock we listened to in the 80s (The Fall, PIL, the Smiths), I could never understand the appeal of this song or any Joy Division. It sounds like a Casio fed through a reverb unit. The "singing" reveals no charisma (or inflection). My friends obsessed over it, but sorry, I don't get it.
• The Prynce from Dillon / Hamer, ScThis song is mentioned in Thursday's song, "Ian Curtis" which is about... Ian Curtis. In the song, the lines "Love has torn us apart" are constantly repeated and the last line in the song is "We're falling apart together".
  
  Nice tribute to this song and Ian Curtis.
  
  -=The Prynce
• Alanwhite from Macclesfield, Englandthis is a fantastic song, but is very sad to hear when thinking about ians tragic end. he died in macclesfield, where im from, and there is talk of a movie being made about his life.
• Steve from Birmingham, EnglandSlightly dodgy links to the third reich- The Joy Division was the department that catered for the Gestapo's sexual desires, providing prostitutes, drugs etc.
  New Order, as a term, also has heavy links to Hitler's view of an aryan master race.
  
• Stephanie from Aurich, GermanyWhy do everybody only know "Love will tears us apart?" What about" Walked in Lines" or "Ice Age"?
  Great Songs, too!
• Chris from Manchester, EnglandIan Curtis written the song for his wife Deborah because he was having an affair with someone else at the time (Annik HonorÃ?), and they fact that he loved her as well as his wife ture them apart. make sense?
• Simon from Leeds, EnglandThat makes the release of the single seem like a cynical act, which it wasn't. 'Love will Tear Us Apart' was released on April 20th 1980 but distribution problems prevented it from getting to the shops until May 12th. Ian Curtis committed suicide on May 17th. To say it was a hit is an overstatement too: Record label Factory's policy of minimal promotion saw it gain airplay on national and local radio and even kids' TV but this was a band who were about to break anyway - they were due to play their first major US tour the week after Curtis' death. The news of Curtis' death was slow to reach the public as journalists at the three main music magazines were on strike, so the single, with its plain grey sleeve (letterpunches on steel) that now looked like a tombstone, limped into the top 20 as people read the news in the first post-strike issues in mid-June.

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