Day: June 10, 2025

Chart Week: June 5, 1976
Song: “Love Really Hurts Without You” – Billy Ocean
Chart Position: #36, 10th week on the chart. Peaked at #22 for two weeks in May.

It’s always fun to be surprised when listening to old American Top 40’s. As I worked my way through this countdown, and glanced ahead at the list of songs on Top 40 Weekly, I did a double take when I saw Billy Ocean’s name.

Really?!?! Billy Ocean in a countdown from 1976?!?! I had no idea! I thought he was just an Eighties act. Even more of a surprise was that his first hit song was excellent.

Leslie Sebastian Charles began his recording career in 1969. For most of the early Seventies he recorded music and performed in clubs without much success. During the day he would hammer out demos in studios. At night, he worked a variety of jobs, including on the assembly line at the Ford Motor plant in Dagenham, East London. By 1975 Charles had adopted the stage name Billy Ocean, partially taken from a soccer team called Ocean’s 11 in his homeland of Trinidad.[1] Ocean’s debut album, called Billy Ocean, came out a year later.

One night while working at the Ford plant, Ocean heard “Love Really Hurts Without You” on a radio someone had tuned to Radio Luxembourg. He walked out of the plant as soon as he heard it, knowing that if his song was on the radio, his days of toiling to make ends meet were over. It was time to focus full-time on being a performer.

That move had mixed results. “Love Really Hurts Without You” reached #2 in the UK, #22 in the US. Ocean’s next two singles reached the top 20 in the UK, and 1977’s “Red Light Spells Danger” also peaked at #2. However none of those singles hit at all in the States. In fact, Ocean would not have a Top 40 American record again until 1984, when, out of nowhere, he hit #1 with “Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run).” Over the next four years he had two more #1 hits, two #2s, a #4, a #10, and two other top 20 singles in the US. An impressive, borderline legendary run.[2]

The roots of that stretch were in this song.

There is a heavy, classic Motown influence on “Love Really Hurts Without You.” Almost too much, to be honest. This could easily be a Four Tops song. Fortunately Ocean throws everything he has into his performance, which keeps it from sounding like just another Motown ripoff.

There’s an economy to the piece, how it quickly falls into a rhythm and nothing deviates from that even as progressive instruments, and eventually Ocean, join it. It grabs you right away and doesn’t let up until the final fade out.

Ocean is singing about a woman who breaks his heart by turning him on then leaving him alone as she goes home with someone else. Nothing about this song makes me think of a broken heart, though. There is some pain in Ocean’s voice, certainly some longing, but more than anything else, I hear a sunny smile. There’s an infectious joy to his voice that makes you focus on the general vibe of this tune. It swings. It is, as he describes his lady friend in the opening line, groovy. All that combines to make the song seem more like a shrug that acknowledges a missed chance at love that will be soon replaced by another opportunity. There are plenty of fish in the sea, good things come to those who wait, etc.

Maybe “Love Really Hurts Without You” was a little out of time in 1976, better suited to the Sixties. But hearing it for the first time in 2025, there ain’t nothing wrong with it. 7/10