Love My Way Album: Forever Now (1982)
Here Come Cowboys Album: Mirror Moves (1984)
by The Psychedelic Furs
Furs frontman Richard Butler had a specific audience in mind when he penned the lyrics to Love My Way. He explained in an interview with Creem in 1982: "It's basically addressed to people who are f--ked up about their sexuality, and says 'Don't worry about it.' It was originally written for gay people."
To the best of our knowledge, Love My Way is the most popular song featuring a marimba as a lead instrument. The Forever Now album was produced by Todd Rundgren and recorded at his studio, Utopia Sound. It was his idea to use the marimba on this track, and he played it.
The demo of the song had a different instrument for those sections, but Rundgren had a marimba in the studio and thought it would be worth a shot. "It turned out that the little musical theme just sounded perfect with the marimbas, and became a signature element of the song," he said in an interview. "So it just was a question of availability. It's not like I had to go rent some marimbas. I happened to have them."
The lead single to their third album, "Love My Way" was the first Psychedelic Furs song to chart in America, where it reached #44 thanks in large part to exposure on MTV. To that point, most Americans only heard the band on college radio or at listening stations in independent record stores. When the song caught on in the States, the band moved there because they found the audience more receptive and they liked what New York had to offer.
Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles sang backup on this track, but you would never peg the "Happy Together" singers as the backing voices. Producer Todd Rundgren used them essentially as an instrument, creating a wash of vocals under the chorus and at the end of the song.
The dreamy, heavily tinted video, directed by Tim Pope, was the first by the band to get significant airplay on MTV, which launched a year earlier. Like many new wave British bands, Psychedelic Furs had been making music videos from the jump and had refined the form by the time MTV went on the air. Their videos didn't rely on subplot storylines where actors would portray characters in the songs. Instead, they typically showed just the band, offset by some abstract imagery.
The Forever Now album marked a change in direction for the band, which had slimmed down to a quartet after losing saxophone player Duncan Kilburn and guitarist Roger Morris. Their first two albums were produced by Steve Lillywhite, but Todd Rundgren was at the controls for Forever Now.
Richard Butler doesn't write love songs, but he does write songs about love. He told Songfacts that "Love My Way" is a great example.
This song is included on the Valley Girl (1983) soundtrack. It was used in the scene when Nicolas Cage surprises Deborah Foreman in the bathroom at a party. Because of issues with music licensing, this song and others hits from the soundtrack, text limit
