What if one song could tell you it was okay to exist exactly as you are? What if it came from a group of straight guys who decided silence wasn’t an option? And what if that song , of all things, started with a marimba?
Let’s talk about “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs!
Before we do. I need to apologize. I’ve been quiet too long. Even when I have published an occasional article, I have been quiet in many ways.
After months of fighting through a medical storm that included major surgery, pain management, exhaustion, and fear I told myself silence was healing. But silence has a way of turning into a cage.
And the world is so damn loud right now.
Loud with book bans. Loud with “morality laws.” Loud with people deciding which lives matter and which don’t. Jackboots are now suits, but it is the same show. Cities are potentially under siege by my own Federal government and due process rights are possibly being violated as I write this.
So I’m back. Bruised, stitched, and stubborn as ever.
And I’m coming back with a song that has never left my bloodstream: “Love My Way” by The Psychedelic Furs.
The Song Found Me
I first remember hearing it in high school. That marimba line rolled out of my Walkman like something half divine and half dangerous. I froze with my hands on the cold metal of my locker. I had a hard day after being bullied in drama club (how fucked up is that?). A sophomore who just wanted to belong somewhere and maybe have friends. I would one day, but not that day. Not sure why it hit me so hard. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t fast. But it was true.
I didn’t know what it meant then. Just that it sounded like freedom. It would take me decades to realize there were kids in that same hallway for whom that song wasn’t just beautiful, it was life-saving.
The Furs: Synth Clarity in a World of Static
The Psychedelic Furs came crawling out of 1977 London. Born in the ashes of punk but raised on art school and poetry. Richard and Tim Butler, guitarist John Ashton, and drummer Vince Ely weren’t chasing trends; they were chasing truth.
They took the snarling energy of The Sex Pistols, the alien melancholy of Roxy Music, and the sexual androgyny of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era and filtered it through smoke, saxophones, and heartbreak.
Where Bowie had glamorized the outsider, the Furs made the outsider ordinary. They gave the misfits permission to stop apologizing and be themselves knowing they were not alone and friends were no longer silent.
By 1982, they teamed with Todd Rundgren to record Forever Now. Rundgren added a marimba, an instrument nobody thought belonged in rock (even fans of cowbell) and made a new kind of heartbeat. Richard Butler, part poet and part street preacher, poured everything into it. In 1983 he would say the following about the song:
“It’s basically addressed to people who are fucked up about their sexuality,” Butler said later. “It says, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ It was originally written for gay people.”
Every member of the Furs was straight.
And yet they did something extraordinary and virtually unheard of in the early 80’s: they wrote a queer anthem without irony, judgment, or distance. No profit motive. No PR stunt. They did not make it about them like performative allies do today. Just empathy. Raw, fearless empathy.
That’s allyship before it was a buzzword. That’s friendship in its truest form. Because silence is complicity and they refused to be silent. They did not hide their love for their gay fans with a wink and a nod, they gave them space.
Meanwhile, the gatekeepers were doing their best to pretend empathy didn’t sell.
MTV, the self professed voice of a generation, was erasing Black and queer artists in the name of “advertiser comfort.” They wouldn’t air videos by Black artists until Bowie called them out on live television, and queer-coded videos quietly disappeared from rotation. They built their empire on rebellion while filtering out anything that might make Middle America nervous.
The Psychedelic Furs slipped through that censorship with melody and nerve. “Love My Way” was their rebellion in plain sight. A Trojan horse of hope and compassion on a network afraid of honesty.
Lyrics: Then and Now
“There’s an army on the dance floor, it’s a fashion with a gun.”
In 1982, this was the Moral Majority… televangelists and politicians and Tipper Gore declaring war on difference while buying more airtime. It was an army of pearl-clutchers firing shame instead of bullets.
In 2025, that army’s back and armed with hashtags, “don’t say gay” laws, and corporate sponsors who smile as they strip away rights and the First Amendment.
“There’s emptiness behind their eyes, there’s dust in all their hearts.”
Back then, Butler was describing moral rot. A generation that traded compassion for comfort.
Today, it’s the talking heads who use “values” as camouflage for cruelty and erasure. They shout about God, country, love, freedom and family while hollowing all of those concepts into oblivion.
That dust still blows through the halls of power, choking the air for anyone who breathes differently.
“They’d put us on a railroad, they’d dearly make us pay.”
That line still stops me cold. The pink triangles. The trains. Auschwitz. The quiet efficiency of hate.
In 1982, the lyric was a history lesson disguised as pop. In 2025, it’s a warning we’ve ignored too long. Black people did not ignore it. Immigrants did not ignore it. LGBTQIA+ people did not ignore it. Neurodivergent people did not ignore it. But white suburbia? We could have been better friends and real allies and stopped this. But here we are.
The railroad doesn’t need tracks anymore. It moves forward on its death ride with algorithms, propaganda, and a crowd that doesn’t ask questions or challenge authority.
“Love my way, it’s a new road, I follow where my mind goes.”
This was, and still is, a declaration of freedom.
Not the bumper-sticker meme GIF kind. The kind you bleed for. The kind you die for.
It’s a challenge to anyone trying to legislate love or identity. It’s a sermon for survivors, queer or otherwise, daring to build something new out of everything they were told to hide.
“Love my way” isn’t an invitation. It’s a line in the sand. It is a life on the line if it does not accept who you are and love yourself regardless what those who lack love and compassion and empathy and kindness say.
What Made the Furs Dangerous
The Furs never claimed to be revolutionaries. I think they just felt too much. That was dangerous in an era built on image. It is dangerous today.
They made vulnerability sound like rebellion. They looked worn and restless, like the kind of men who’d seen too much, felt too deeply, and turned it all into sound. Richard Butler’s face could smirk and ache in the same breath. He was beautifully androgynous, disheveled, defiant. MTV didn’t know what to do with that.
Where others used style to hide, the Furs used it to confess.
They made empathy look cool. And empathy, in a profit-driven culture, is always subversive.
The Echo That Still Shakes the Walls
Forty years later, “Love My Way” still pulses.
It’s in queer clubs, Pride playlists, and TikTok edits by kids who weren’t even born when the Furs were first on tour.
It’s also in the DNA of so many other bands that came before and after: The Cure, Depeche Mode, Interpol, The 1975, The Killers. Give me a few hours and I can make a case that they all borrowed that mix of ache and defiance.
But few, especially then, have ever replicated the courage of a straight band writing a gay anthem when it was neither safe nor profitable.
That’s the difference between performance and conviction.
2025: The Army’s Back On the Dance Floor- But So Are We
Now here we are again.
Different decade, same damn war.
Book bans. Abortion bans. Attacks on trans kids. “Parental rights” as a weapon. Politicians monetizing fear like record labels once sold rebellion.
And once again, media profits off both sides and will sell out the poets and free speech to make the president comfortable and gain profitable favor from the FCC. Fear gets clicks. Compassion gets buried. MTV’s duplicitous spirit lives on in every platform that amplifies outrage but silences truth for profit.
Silence to that is surrender.
I’ve got scars from abuse, trauma, surgery, pain, time. You might have them too. They’re a reminder that the body and the voice both heal and that we survived this shit.
If Richard Butler could sing, at risk to his band’s future, “Love my way” into the noise of 1982, I can damn well write into the chaos of 2025 and you can speak up for others.
Epilogue: Before It’s Too Late
“Love My Way” told us to live out loud when the world demanded silence. That’s still the only way forward.
Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World was born from that same spirit. It is the story for the women and survivors being silenced in new, familiar ways. For everyone being told to stay polite while their rights are stripped away.
The Psychedelic Furs proved allyship isn’t about speaking for someone, it’s about standing with them. They used their privilege like a megaphone instead of a shield.
If they gave us the anthem, we can continue to make new stories, poems, songs, and paintings.
Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World is one story inspired by Love My Way. It’s my story. A story that refuses to flinch, refuses to apologize, and refuses to forget. I’d also like to hear your story in the comments!
Read the stories. Share the stories. Live the stories. Dace the stories. Sing the stories.
Because silence is complicity.
And empathy is the last rebellion they can’t outlaw. Loving your way is the only way we’re getting out of this alive.
Love your way!
Stay totally awesome!
Stay true to you!
Still Reading?
Hey… thanks for sticking around to the end.
If this piece hit a chord or maybe made you think, or remember, or just feel a little less alone I’d be honored if you’d check out my book, Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World. (by me- Pat Green)
It’s about survival, love, and the kind of found family that keeps you standing when the world gets mean. You can find it in print, ebook, or audiobook pretty much anywhere you get those things online. If you have trouble finding it you can get it directly from my publisher, Barnstormer Publishing! We can even hook you up with a signed copy for a few bucks more!
If you pick it up, thank you. If you review it, even better. Either way, just know this: your time, your support, your voice… they all matter more than you know.
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