Squeeze – "If I Didn't Love You" (1980)

If I

If I

If I

If I

If I

If I

If I

If I didn't love you, I 'd hate you

[NOTE: I originally wrote about this song – which may have the first Squeeze song I ever heard on the "Mystic Eyes" in 1980 – on May 15, 2010.  Here's a lightly edited version of my original post.]

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Squeeze is yet another band I first heard on the "Mystic Eyes" program, although they were popular enough that I later heard their music elsewhere as well.  

This song is from their third LP, Argybargy, which is a new wave masterpiece – it has a number of very memorable tracks, and it's impossible not to sing along when you listen to them.  (I was singing along to this one today while on a bike ride, and got a number of admiring looks from the walkers and joggers that I passed while singing at the top of my lungs.)

I have to disagree with Squeeze when it comes to love and hate – love and hate aren't always mutually exclusive, either-or emotions.  Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel wasn't talking about romantic love when he said "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference," but I think that principle applies to romantic love.  

The French writer, Marcel Jouhandeau expressed a similar sentiment: "To really know someone is to have loved and hated him in turn."  (Jouhandeau also said "The heart has its prisons that intelligence cannot unlock," which may be as good as any explanation why love and hate can go together.)

Love most often turns to hate when it is not reciprocated, or when the beloved is guilty of deception or betrayal.  Perhaps Squeeze should have said Because you don't love me, I hate you, or Even though I love you, I hate you.

In any event, no one wrote songs more clever than Squeeze's Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook.  More importantly, no one wrote songs that were more convincing when it came to portraying real people in real situations.

Click here to listen to "If I Didn't Love You."

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: