Day After Day #324: Pretty in Pink

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Pretty in Pink (1981)

Song lyrics often get misinterpreted, especially if a song is tied to a particular thing it wasn't written about, like a movie. The Psychedelic Furs released "Pretty in Pink" in 1981 from their second album Talk Talk Talk, but it got a new life and interpretation five years when it was re-recorded for the soundtrack of the John Hughes film of the same name.

The Furs were formed in London in 1977 by brothers Richard and Tim Butler (lead vocals and bass, respectively), Duncan Kilburn (sax), Paul Wilson (drums) and Roger Morris (guitar). The band was part of the British post-punk scene, although they were soon lumped in with the burgeoning new wave movement. In 1979, Wilson was replaced by Vince Ely and John Ashton joined as an additional guitarist. The band released its self-titled debut album in 1980, produced by Steve Lillywhite. The album did well in Europe, hitting #18 on the U.K. Albums Chart.

The band's next album, Talk Talk Talk, broke on the Billboard 200 chart, reaching #89. The album was a little poppier, highlighted by "Pretty in Pink." The song was a minor hit in the U.K., getting to #43 on the singles chart there, but didn't make much of an impression on the U.S. charts. According to Richard Butler, Molly Ringwald was a big fan of the Furs and a few years later played the song for Hughes and said he should make a movie about it.

Butler said the song is "about a girl who sleeps around a lot and feels like she benefits from it, whereas in reality people are talking and laughing about her behind her back." That, of course, is very different from the high school drama that the movie portrayed.

"Caroline laughs and it's raining all day/She loves to be one of the girls/She lives in the place in the side of our lives/Where nothing is ever put straight/She turns herself round and she smiles and she says/'This is it, that's the end of the joke'/And loses herself in her dreaming and sleep/And her lovers walk through in their coaches/Pretty in pink, isn't she?/Pretty in pink, isn't she?"

The re-recorded version was a lot cleaner and tighter, but the band and a lot of fans prefer the original, which is rougher and more inspired. But the 1986 version was a bigger hit, going to #18 in the U.K. and #41 on the Billboard Hot 100. The video, interspersed with scenes from the movie starring Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy and Jon Cryer, was also a hit on MTV. The Pretty in Pink movie soundtrack went platinum.

"All of her lovers all talk of her notes/And the flowers that they never sent/And wasn't she easy?/Isn't she pretty in pink?/The one who insists he was first in the line/Is the last to remember her name/He's walking around in this dress that she wore/She is gone, but the joke's the same/Pretty in pink, isn't she?/Pretty in pink, isn't she?/Caroline talks to you softly, sometimes/She says, 'I love you' and 'Too much'/She doesn't have anything you want to steal/Well, nothing you can touch/She waves, she buttons your shirt/The traffic is waiting outside/She hands you this coat/She gives you her clothes/These cars collide."

The Furs didn't necessarily need the re-released version to blow up because they were already doing well after Talk Talk Talk. In 1982, reduced to a quartet, the band recorded Forever Now with producer Todd Rundgren and scored their first U.S. hit with "Love My Way." Two years later, Mirror Moves produced two more hits with "The Ghost in You" and "Heaven." 

After the success of the Pretty in Pink movie, the band quickly was pushed into the studio to record 1987's Midnight to Midnight, which was their biggest success to date and produced "Heartbreak Beat," a top 40 hit in the U.S. But Butler later called the album "hollow, vapid and weak." The Furs released a compilation and two more albums from 1988 to 1991, scoring three #1 hits on the new Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.

The Furs went on a long hiatus in the early '90s and the Butler brothers formed the band Love Spit Love with Richard Fortus and Frank Ferrer, who both later joined Guns N' Roses. In 2000, the Butlers and Ashton reformed the Furs, with the touring lineup also including Fortus and Ferrer. 

The band has continued to tour periodically since then, releasing a strong new album in 2020, Made of Rain. I saw them play at the Cabot Theater in Beverly in November 2021; they had cancelled a few shows before ours and promptly cancelled the rest of the tour afterwards because one of the band members had COVID. Despite all that, the show we saw was pretty good.