Radio with Pictures - 'Valentine's Day is Over' by Billy Bragg

Thank you for the things you bought me thank you for the card / Thank you for the things you taught me when you hit me hard / That love between two people must be based on understanding / Until that's true you'll find your things / All stacked out on the landing. Surprise, surprise.

– From the song

I wanted to write a song about an abusive relationship from a female perspective, contrasting the version of romance that we’re sold on Valentine’s Day with the brutal reality that this woman faces,” Billy Bragg tells us over e-mail. “Some feminists criticized me for writing this song, saying that I could never really know what a woman feels like when she’s the victim of male violence. I agreed on that point, but told them that I didn’t write this song for women – I wrote it for other men, to state clearly that, as a man, I believe that abuse in a relationship is totally unacceptable.

– Billy Bragg, in an American Songwriter interview, 14 February 2014