“Take the L” by The Motels

The Motels pulled "Take the L" off All Four One, their third album, as its second single in 1982, and the song began as a wisecrack. Marty Jourard, the band's keyboard and sax man, told John Carter, producer of their first two albums, that he was breaking up with his girlfriend, and Carter answered with a letter-dropping pun on the word "lover" that became the title and the chorus. Jourard thought it was beyond corny, almost camp. It stuck anyway.

The music needed fixing too: Jourard had a simple chord progression that sounded wrong until Martha Davis told him to flip the two chords around. With Val Garay producing, the band cut it in a single take on December 7, 1981, and Russell Mulcahy directed the video. It stopped at 52 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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