Cruel to Be Kind

This song reflects on a lover's rather antagonistic attitude. Nick Lowe co-wrote the song with his Brinsley Schwarz bandmate, Ian Gomm, for the Brinsley Schwarz album, It's All Over Now, though said album was never officially released. In 1979, Lowe re-recorded the song for his second solo album, Labour of Lust. Lowe and Gomm were hoping the song would be a pop hit for Brinsley Schwarz, and crafted it for mass consumption. Lowe only grudgingly recorded it, and he considered it an aberration - a pop sell-out song. When he performed the song on The David Letterman Show, he called it "wimpy" and had little interest in discussing it.

Lowe cribbed the phrase "cruel to be kind" from Shakespeare, who used it in Hamlet: I must be cruel only to be kind Thus bad begins and worse remains behind

Lowe revealed the musical influence behind this song to The A.V. Club: "I wrote with 'The Love I Lost' by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in mind."