One of the worst parts of going through a breakup with someone who likes music as much as you—but not the worst part, because that’s undoubtedly the losing-your-best-friend-in-the-entire-world part—is that there isn’t just one song that needs to be expunged from your memory and avoided at all costs. You know the whole “our song” trope, the song that appears maybe three times in a romcom—when the couple-to-be is forced into a spontaneous karaoke number at the work Christmas do; then again at the everything-has-gone-wrong part of the film, when one of them is trudging despondently through the rain, looking at happy couples in warmly lit restaurants as the song emanates from a bar; and finally a lush rescoring swells over the closing credits as the reunited couple embraces at midnight on New Year’s Eve or whatever.
Most couples have an “our song” onto which they project hopes and plans for the relationship. Maybe their song soundtracks the relationship’s special moments, the lyrics speak to their commitment and shared values, and they probably bonk to it too. But when you end a long-term relationship with someone who loves music as much as you do, it’s not only one song—the “our song”—that has to be avoided. You have to write off whole albums, from Heaven or Las Vegas and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea to Big Star’s #1 Record (not to mention their second and third) and No Cities to Love (we used to extol our mid-sized town and sneer at supposedly pretentious city dwellers).
You have to drop whole bands, too—especially those you saw together in concert, like Wolf Alice, Bob Mould, Ducks Ltd., Sam Fender, Another Sky, Pavement (the biggest upset), Flyte, Baby Queen, Dinosaur Pile Up, Declan McKenna, and alt-J (I’ll manage). Thank god we broke up prior to seeing Stereolab, who we had tickets for.
You might have to wipe out whole genres, too (British indie released between 2009 and 2014; and C86 twee), and treat your vinyl collection the same way Ed treated Shaun’s during the garden scene of Shaun of the Dead. You have to delete carefully curated playlists—songs we heard in the pub, songs we heard on TV, songs inspired by colours (“Hue gotta hear this”), songs inspired by places we’ve been (“Where’s the music literally at?”), songs with a person’s name in the title (“Rock & Roll Hall of Name”), songs we used to bonk to (this one had a more cryptic title)—and completely rethink what your favourite songs even are!
This rebuilding doesn’t happen overnight. It happens one day and one album at a time, with one glimmer of light to counteract one 40-minute-long ugly cry sesh.
I Bruise Easily—named after one of Bart’s catchphrases from The Simpsons: Hit & Run video game, not the Natasha Bedingfield song—is the documentation of my quest to replace my favourite albums with ones I discover in post-breakup life. I can no longer listen to albums that I shared so intimately with my ex, albums where she’s hiding behind every key change, atop every lilting backup harmony. And so I Bruise Easily is a way to reclaim my love of music, and a way to grieve the loss of my first and only love.
In each ‘episode’ of I Bruise Easily, I write about one album that defined my relationship and one I discovered after it ended, exploring how the two records relate to my life and each other.
The rules:
New albums can be from any era. My used-to-be favourite albums, like any good music fan’s—James Acaster excepting—spanned many decades, so the new ones can too.
New albums must have been discovered after the breakup, which occurred on Saturday 19 November 2022, in a Welsh Airbnb. But I’m allowed to have heard of the band prior to the breakup.
Pre-breakup albums must have played a significant part in my relationship. This is a serious fucking overhaul. I’m not messing about here.
I’m allowed to retain some pre-breakup true-blue favourites. This is a scary undertaking, so for comfort, I will continue listening to Stereolab’s Transient Random, The Weakerthans’ Left and Leaving, and Courtney Barnett’s Things Take Time, Take Time when I need a sonic cuddle to keep me strong.
Erase: Heaven or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins
Cocteau Twins’ 1990 opus is the first album my ex (who I’m going to call Lorelei in reference to the Cocteau Twins song but also Gilmore Girls) and I bonded over. Shortly before Christmas 2020, I moved into Lorelei’s damp, cold, poorly insulated flat above a bougie restaurant in the seaside town of Worthing, West Sussex. This town is where I grew up and where she and I met around age 18, mixing in similar circles at local gigs and (sigh) Wetherspoons. Giant windows in the living room overlooked the grey sea, and Lorelei’s dingy box room was located at the rear of the building, overlooking the Dome Cinema’s bins and a halfway house that a man with a knife once tried to break into, prompting the arrival of four police cars and some juicy drama that we watched through the blinds with the lights off.
I bought Heaven or Las Vegas for Lorelei as a move-in present, along with a card that read “congrats on your new pad” beneath a picture of a frog. While a fan heater roared in the corner, we would sit on the bed and take turns deciphering frontwoman Elizabeth Fraser’s elusive lyrics while the other one had the lyrics up on their phone, confirming whether the guesser was correct. “Singing of a famous street/ I want to love, I’ve all the wrong glory/ But is it Heaven or Las Vegas?/ But you’re so much brighter than the sun is to me”? There’s no fucking way that’s what she’s singing, surely. Somehow, by the time we got our own place six or so months later, the record had become super warped and was unlistenable, which is pretty apt now. I’m sure this is down to the stark contrast of fan heater and subzero temperatures, which, incidentally, gave my toes serious chilblains so that I had to wear huge novelty Rick & Morty slippers. Also, the fact that Cocteau Twins’ music can actually be warped is curious because it already sounds like wax sculptures of people bonking are being pushed through different dimensions or something.
Heaven or Las Vegas was the Scottish group’s sixth album, an icy, euphonic dream pop record defined by its gauzy production and Fraser’s otherworldly vocals, which she always recorded after her partner, the band’s co-founder Robin Guthrie, had got the music sounding exactly how he wanted (men, everyone). Recorded at September Sound studio on the banks of the Thames, the album was created at an emotionally intense time. Bassist Simon Raymonde’s father had recently passed away; Fraser had recently given birth to her daughter Lucy Belle; and the baby’s father—Guthrie—was doing truckloads of coke and hallucinating in the studio. In many ways, it’s probably a weird record on which to map the early days of our romance. But the music is undeniably magical, seductive, and uplifting, and it has always been a special record. Until now. When it goes in the fucking bin.
Enter: I’m With Stupid by Aimee Mann
It makes sense to replace the first album to define my relationship with the first album I found post-breakup. Also, I’m With Stupid is a relevant title since I’m literally with stupid, i.e. with myself, the guy who screwed up the best thing in his life. You may know Aimee Mann as the composer of the Magnolia soundtrack, the one with that song that goes, “It’s not going to stop until you wise up,” accompanied by the most uplifting piano chords ever. I only realised this a few hours ago and had been enjoying the songwriter’s 1995 album solely on the recommendation of a fellow music writer pal, who recommended it after I tweeted a mawkish, urgent request for breakup album recommendations.
The centrepiece of Mann’s second album is called “Amateur,” a breakup ballad that, while not quite relevant to my situation, is nevertheless comforting. “I was hoping that you’d know better than that/ I was hoping, but you’re an amateur,” Mann sings over a waltzing orchestral pop arrangement. “Amateur” is the first Aimee Mann song I heard—except for my brush with Magnolia—and when I came to try out the whole album on a three-hour train trip from Brighton to Oxford mere days after the breakup, I was surprised that it opened with a fuzzy, staccato guitar part rather than piano. “Amateur” is, in a way, the outlier, while the rest of the record has more in common with the punky, witty pop of artists such as Liz Phair. It is quietly confident and gallant, which was what I wanted to channel at the time.
My favourite song on I’m With Stupid, though, is “Par For the Course.” It’s the second-longest track on the album, and it’s pretty damn epic. “I don’t even know you anymore” is the phrase that Mann keeps returning to, a simple idea but one that holds enough weight and nuance—and, for me, prescience—to sustain a six-minute song. I was feeling pretty shitty on that train journey to Oxford; I was googling ways to cope with dark thoughts and messaged one of my closest friends, who sent me a reassuring voice note that made me cry in the middle of a packed Great Western Railway carriage. But I’m With Stupid showed me that music could still comfort and excite me even at my lowest, even if it wasn’t one of my old favourites I’d been clinging to since adolescence, even if it was loosely associated with a three-hour-long drama starring John C. Reilly, and even if, for now at least, I am with stupid.