The 10 best Nick Cave love songs

Posted On August 7, 2024August 7, 2024

When it comes to Nick Cave, love might not be the first thing people think of. When he emerged on the music scene in the late 1970s with The Birthday Party, the group were considered a wild card, violent troupe. For a long time, Cave was more interested in rage than romance. But as time wore on and things changed, it became clear that no one could write a love song with such splendour as he could.

But these aren’t typical love songs. While others might sing about lust and longing through the lens of relatable scenes, Cave casts the feeling onto a whole other, divine plane. His love songs treat the emotion like an apparition from above or something genuinely otherworldly as he repeatedly uses religious imagery or calls upon the muses for the right words.

Cave’s love songs feel more akin to classical poetry than any typical love song. His words feel as inspired and lofty as those used in sonnets or scriptures from the great writers of the Romantic era. Even in the moments when he deals with day-to-day images or scenes of domestic bliss, his depiction of love is never dull. In his eyes, the feeling is always marvellous.

Across his entire discography, from the band’s first albums through their various different sounds and eras, the topic of love has remained a staple. Especially after the release of The Boatman’s Call, when Cave began writing more introspective works, emotion ruled over his pen like a power that guided him. But out of all of them, these ten stand as the most beautiful and emotive love songs he’s ever penned.

The 10 best Nick Cave love songs:

‘Into My Arms’

To couples across the globe, this will be their song. It will soundtrack wedding first dances, romantic embraces, and beautiful moments where love demands a soundtrack so glorious that only these godly lyrics will do. “I don’t believe in the existence of angels / But looking at you, I wonder if that’s true,” Cave sings, calling out into the great beyond and asking whoever’s in charge to leave his lover exactly how they are because they’re perfect that way.

While Cave’s discography is often dark and regularly difficult, ‘Into My Arms’ is simple and easy. It is a pure and unfaltering love song powered by nothing but pure devotion. It also poured out of the artist in a very different way from the rest of his work, as it seemed to come to him fully formed during a stint in rehab when he walked back to his room from a church. From its creation to its enduring appeal, it’s awash with a kind of divine light that places love on a whole other, higher plane.

‘Love Letter’

So many of Cave’s love songs seem to have this timeless energy. In the case of ‘Love Letter’ off his 2001 album No More Shall We Part, it feels like this song could have been written decades, if not centuries, ago. It feels classic in the truest sense of the word as if some Victorian could have been singing it or some old-world composer could have crafted it.

But that’s precisely what’s so beautiful about the song. Cave seems to treat the feelings of love and longing with the kind of lofty, historic weight that they have as emotions that everyone from any year, country, era or lifestyle has experienced. To him, it seems like these symbols of love, like a love letter, act as uniting ties that bind us all.

‘Babe, You Turn Me On’

Of Cave’s love songs, ‘Babe, You Turn Me On’ has the sweetest instrumental. The wild punk that once terrified crowds as part of The Birthday Party or with his raging murder ballads isn’t one that would commonly be associated with a delicately built layering of acoustic guitars and pianos. But on this track, the musical nest of the song is light and tender, like a gentle breeze on a beautiful day.

As he weaves his way through a half-crooning, half-spoken word ode to desire that feels more like a poem than any rock song; the music sits around it like a perfect soundtrack to the sensations. It leaves you with that warm feeling in your tummy or butterflies fluttering in your chest, just like love itself should.

‘Far From Me’

Something changed in Nick Cave when he made The Boatman’s Call. Fresh from a heartbreak after a brief romance with PJ Harvey collapsed to an end, he suddenly seemed incapable of keeping himself from appearing in his writing. While his work had previously existed in the realm of fiction, he was suddenly writing about feelings and found his work being utterly at their whim.

In the case of ‘Far From Me’, it was a track that took the entire duration of the relationship and inspired him to be able to finish it. It begins as an utterly devotional ode born out of fresh love, with Cave declaring, “For you, dear, I was born / For you I was raised up.” But he found that he couldn’t find the words to finish the song until the love was over, with the lyrics descending into heartbroken doubt as he croons, “Did you ever care for me? / Were you ever there for me?” The song demanded heartache to be born, with Cave admitting, “I have songs waiting now for the catastrophic element to manifest itself. [I need to] experience the disaster to complete the work.”

‘Wide, Lovely Eyes’

Since Cave first set eyes on model Susie Bick by chance in London’s Natural History Museum, all of his love songs have had her face. Bick herself said of her husband’s songs, “I always seem to be walking in and out of them”, adding tenderly that “His songs look after me”.

In ‘Wide, Lovely Eyes’ his wife’s face becomes the very image of a happy life and simple domestic bliss as Cave put his wild youth aside and found himself enamoured with the softer world around him. It’s a simple song, thinking of Bick inhabiting their home in Brighton and immortalising the look on her face as they wander down to the seaside. But within its beauty, he proves that not all love songs need to be grand to be glorious.

‘Lime Tree Arbour’

However, Nick Cave does grandness incredibly well. For the majority of his love songs, the feeling is explained through a series of codified images that feel as if they could be classical paintings or romantic era poetry.

‘Lime Tree Arbour’ especially has that feeling, carrying a hymn-like quality to it. As one of the love songs written for PJ Harvey during their incredibly inspiring entanglement, the track sees Cave clinging to his lover for peace and hope amidst the suffering of the world. While carnage rages around him, Cave sings “There is hand that protects me / And I do love her so.”

‘I Need You’

But the course of love isn’t simple. Even after finding the one, Cave’s life has been darkened time and time again by tragedy. In 2015, the Cave family lost their son Arthur, and ever since, the musician’s love songs hold grief in equal measure to gratitude.

That’s the atmosphere that hangs over ‘I Need You’. Built of largely improvised lyrics and recorded in the immediate wake of his son’s death, the track’s chugging sound feels like a man dragging himself through, trying to survive. And while he does, there is one simple thought; “I need you”. He calls it out over and over. It’s as devastating as it is beautiful as Cave and his wife clung to one another in their pain.

‘Balcony Man’

Since the death of his son, all of Cave’s music seems imbued with this new sense of wisdom and feeling that only comes from grappling with the very worst of experiences. The result is an understanding of the power and depth of love and its importance in everything, from the simple days at home to the grand declarations. For the prior, ‘Balcony Man’ is Cave’s ultimate ode to love in the small moments.

“This morning is amazing, and so are you,” he sings over and over in what could be argued to be his most romantic lyric ever penned. It’s so simple and paired with a stripped-back instrumental, but it’s exactly the plainness of that sentiment that makes it so powerful.

‘Breathless’

From the opening choir of mismatched and poorly played flute flutters by Warren Ellis through to the joyous acoustic guitar strums, ‘Breathless’ is undeniably Nick Cave’s lightest song. It radiates joy in a way that isn’t normally associated with the musician, but in this depiction of love, everything is optimistic and bright.

Once again, it feels classical, like a romantic era poem from Keats or Wordsworth. Cave aligns himself with a lineage of artists who worshipped love as something as glorious as God or nature, casting it with a divine glow. “For still, the fire of love is true / And I am breathless without you,” he sings in lyrics that could be a sonnet.

‘Straight To You’

Occasionally, back in their early days, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds would deliver an anthemic classic rock track with lyrics that demand a mass sing-along with arms in the air. ‘Straight To You’ is one of them, appearing on their 1992 album, Henry’s Dream. Instrumentally, it’s big, with a whole band playing at their best but with a simple rock build. At the time, Cave was inspired by street performers and beggars who would grab beat-up guitars and play. “It was very violent and seemed to come straight out of the heart,” he said, with ‘Straight To You’ matching that same description.

It’s a deliverance song, seeing Cave running full pelt to the person he loves in the hope of being saved. It celebrates the glory of love and its power but in a more boisterous way than any of his more delicately romantic later works. But when it comes to big declarations, this song has it covered.

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