Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)

Pete Shelley wrote it in November 1977, on the Orgasm Addict tour. The band stayed at a guest house in Edinburgh before a gig at Clouds, and Shelley half-watched the film musical Guys and Dolls in the TV room. A character says that someone should wait until they fall in love with someone they shouldn't have, and he thought that was good. The next day he wrote the lyrics in a van outside the main post office on Waterloo Place, and the music came soon after.

United Artists released it as a single on 8 September 1978, backed with Just Lust, and it reached number 12 on the UK chart. NME ranked it first among its tracks of the year for 1978, and in its list of the 100 best songs of the 1970s placed it at number 85. Rolling Stone put it at number 276 on its 2021 list of the 500 best songs. Pitchfork's Jason Heller wrote that guitars seethe and beats clench, and that Shelley sings like a man whose entire existence hangs by a single frayed nerve.

Covers

In 2005 Shelley re-recorded it with Roger Daltrey, David Gilmour, Peter Hook, Elton John, Robert Plant and other acts as a charity single for John Peel, released on 21 November 2005, with proceeds going to Amnesty International. Fine Young Cannibals took their version to number 9 in the UK. Pete Yorn recorded it for the Shrek 2 soundtrack in 2004.