Story of the song: No More ‘I Love You’s’ by Annie Lennox

On her second solo outing, Medusa, Annie Lennox tackles a few of her favourite compositions by other people. The making of the album was “truly a labour of love”, as Lennox puts it in her liner notes. “A selection of songs I have been drawn to for all kinds of reasons.” Among the hit-and-miss covers is the fragile heartbreaker “No More ‘I Love You’s’”. It was first recorded a decade earlier by the curiously named duo The Lover Speaks.

David Freeman and Joseph Hughes were at a loose end after their punk band The Flys hit the windshield. They took on the name The Lover Speaks from a line in a Roland Barthes discourse, and wrote some songs. Hughes sent a demo tape to Dave Stewart, of the Eurythmics, who nodded his approval and forwarded it to Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders.

Hynde, in turn, spooled the cassette on to her producer, Jimmy lovine. A deal was struck with A&M, and lovine took the duo out to Los Angeles to record. Released in 1986, the self-titled album The Lover Speaks contained one great, swooping ballad about demons in the bedroom: “I used to be lunatic from your gracious days / I used to be woebegone and so restless nights / My aching heart would bleed for you to see.”

Under Stewart’s patronage, Freeman and Hughes hit the road, opening for Eurythmics on their 1986 tour. But their single peaked at No 58 in the charts and was quickly forgotten. Until 1995, that is, when Lennox was looking for songs for Medusa and resurrected “No More ‘I Love You’s’”. As the album’s lead single, it settled just shy of the No 1 spot, becoming something of a signature tune for her solo career.