Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?

The band first recorded it in 1983 at Park Lane Studios in Glasgow, as the B-side of their self-made single Down at the Mission, and a demo later appeared on the 2004 deluxe Rattlesnakes. When the main album session began in the summer of 1984 it was one of only three songs fully finished. Produced by Paul Hardiman, it closes the album. Cole voted for it as the third single but was outvoted, and Rattlesnakes was chosen instead; it was later included on The Singles in 2004 as an honorary single.

Cole has explained that its mention of Norman Mailer stands for a hard, traditional kind of masculinity. Jim Connelly first thought it too low-key to end an album, until its lush chorus won him over; he noticed a drum machine and heard Love's Forever Changes. Toppermost ranked it first among the band's songs.

Covers and live

Sandie Shaw released it as a single on Polydor in 1986, produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, and it reached 68 in the UK. Camera Obscura replied with Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken, the lead single from Let's Get Out of This Country; Tracyanne Campbell said she wrote it out of love for the original. On setlist.fm it has 44 band performances and 286 by Cole solo, more than any other song of his. It closed the first half of his Glasgow concert with Cowan and Clark in 2025. The upload in the hypersongs web is a later remaster of the 1984 album version.