How Spiritualized predicted heartbreak with ‘Broken Heart’
The 1990s threw up some truly innovative rock music, and a strong case could be made for 1997 as its pinnacle. The year bore the release of such masterpieces as Radiohead’s OK Computer, The Verve’s Urban Hymns, and Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space by Jason Pierce’s post-Spacemen 3 project Spiritualized.
Each of these landmark rock albums has been near-universally applauded for their respective strengths. Urban Hymns saw The Verve swerving towards a more accessible, anthemic sound, while Radiohead and Spiritualized sought a more eclectic and experimental approach.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, Spiritualized’s third studio album, remains Pierce’s (also known as J. Spaceman) magnum opus to this day, despite six brilliant subsequent albums. The sprawling double album champions the 1990s’ neo-psychedelic affections across a truly humbling variety of themes, tempos and emotions.
Providing a cathartic antidote to more energetic moments like ‘Electricity’ and ‘I Think I’m in Love’ are the album’s more introspective and poignant moments, such as ‘Stay with Me’ and ‘Broken Heart’. Meanwhile, the anthemic splendour of the Elvis Presley-channelling title track and ‘Cool Waves’ offer some middle-ground.
Undoubtedly, ‘Broken Heart’ marks one of the album’s most tear-jerking moments thanks to its deeply moving orchestral string composition, courtesy of The Balanescu Quartet. Meanwhile, Pierce sings of abject misery, “Though I have a broken dream/I’m too busy to be dreaming of you/There’s a lot of things that I gotta do/ Lord, I have a broken dream”.
As the lyrics suggest, Pierce had, indeed, suffered from a broken heart before recording the album. In 1995, Pierce broke up with his partner Kate Radley, who had played keyboards for Spiritualized for a few years. The relationship fell apart when Pierce discovered that Radley had started an affair with The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft a year or so before. By the time Pierce found out, Radley had already married Ashcroft at a secret wedding ceremony.
A song as dejected and emotional as ‘Broken Heart’ was particularly apt in light of such a tragic situation. Still, Pierce maintains that the song had actually been written before his breakup with Radley.
In a 2015 interview with Uncut, Pierce explained that the hauntingly prescient song, in fact, resulted from his artistic diet and a past struggle with heroin addiction. “The songs were written ahead of my split with Kate,” he said. “I didn’t split up with Kate and then write ‘Broken Heart’ – that would be quite a weird thing to do. Honestly, I’d been listening to lots of Patsy Cline and Jimmy Scott, songs full of absolutely heartbreaking things.”
“Where do lines like ‘Little’s Js a fucking mess’ and ‘There’s a hole in my arm where the money goes in’ come from? All of that happened before the split. And ‘the hole in my arm’ – that’s a John Prine line,” he added, outlining the album’s many references to heroin addiction.
Listen to Spiitualized’s marvellously mournful ‘Broken Heart’ below.
