“Melt” by Siouxsie and the Banshees

"Melt!" was the second and last single Siouxsie and the Banshees drew from A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, their fifth album, and Polydor issued it in 1982 as a double A-side with "Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant", the band's take on a traditional French Christmas carol. The carol never made the album and stayed off LP and CD until the Downside Up box set in 2004.

Steven Severin wrote the words, and they're steamy and funereal at once, likening a fevered night with a lover to dying, with a whiff of S&M about them. Select's Dave Morrison heard Baudelaire in it, all opium, sex and sickly flowers sliding into morbidity. The music is credited to Siouxsie Sioux, Severin, John McGeoch and Budgie, and the band produced it themselves with Mike Hedges engineering.

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