“Down to Zero” by Joan Armatrading

"Down to Zero" comes from Joan Armatrading's self-titled 1976 album, the record Glyn Johns produced and engineered at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London, and it was the first song they got down on tape for it. It followed as a single on A&M in January 1977.

She wrote the lyric first and then found the music at the piano, and the lyric grew out of watching people she knew split up and divorce. What stuck with her was that the women all put it down to their looks and nothing else; she knew they were wrong, and admitted she'd probably have felt the same. Armatrading sings and plays guitar, B. J. Cole lays pedal steel over it, the Faces' Kenney Jones drums, and Jerry Donahue on electric guitar, Graham Lyle on 12-string, Dave Markee on bass and Peter Wood on piano round it out.

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