“Cruel To Be Kind” by Nick Lowe

"Cruel to Be Kind" had been kicking around since Nick Lowe and Ian Gomm wrote it together in their Brinsley Schwarz days. It first surfaced in 1978, hidden away as the B-side of Lowe's "Little Hitler", until Columbia talked him into cutting it again as a possible single for his 1979 album Labour of Lust.

Good call. Lowe produced it himself and played bass, with Dave Edmunds and Billy Bremner on guitars and Terry Williams on drums, and the result is pure power-pop sugar with a soul heart: the groove owes a debt to Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "The Love I Lost", while the title comes straight out of Hamlet. Released as a single that year, it stalled at number 12 in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia alike, still his only American top 40 hit, and the video starred Lowe's wedding to Carlene Carter.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.