Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)

"Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" operates in a register that is unusual for punk: it's genuinely sad. The guitar work is bright and jangly, propulsive without being aggressive, and the rhythm has an almost new wave immediacy that keeps the song moving faster than the emotional weight of its subject deserves. Pete Shelley's voice is the key to everything — nasal and slightly fragile, neither conventionally masculine nor conventionally melodic, it carries an openness that makes the anguish feel unguarded and real rather than performed. The song anatomizes a very specific emotional predicament: being caught in romantic attachment to someone who brings out the worst in you, recognizing the damage while being unable to stop. It captures the humiliation of self-awareness without self-control — you can see clearly what's happening and it doesn't help. The Buzzcocks occupied a space that was distinctly their own in the late 1970s, applying the velocity and brevity of punk to the subject matter of personal relationships rather than social revolt, and this song is the peak of that approach. It sounds like heartbreak actually feels — not operatic but urgent, embarrassing, slightly ridiculous, and completely overwhelming. Reach for it in the private aftermath of something you're not proud of wanting, or late at night when a situation you know is wrong still occupies too much of your thoughts.