Songfacts®:

• You need to read beyond the title on this one - it's not a chirpy love song, but about how to deal with it when love goes away. ABC lead singer Martin Fry told Uncut that this song is "genuinely about the moment you get your teeth kicked in by somebody you love f--king off. You feel like s--t but you have to search for some sort of meaning in your life."
• A track from the group's first album, "The Look Of Love" was ABC's biggest hit in the UK, peaking at #4. It also topped the Canadian singles chart.
• On the album, this song is listed as "The Look Of Love (Part One)," with the last track being a short version of the song called "The Look Of Love (Part Four)." What happened to parts two and three? They appear on the 12" single along with the others. Part Two is an instrumental, and Part Three is a remix.
• Martin Fry mentions his forename in the lyric when he sings: "They say 'Martin, maybe, one day you'll find true love.'"
• Trevor Horn, who was also involved with Yes, The Buggles and The Art Of Noise, produced this track. He also did a remix, "The Look of Love (Part 5)," using a Fairlight synthesizer. This 12-inch single, whic was issued to club DJs, may have been the first instance of a pop song being remixed with scratching and it was among the earliest remixes to be based upon samples.
• MTV played a big role in ABC's American success, and the video for this song was a favorite on the network, which launched in 1981. The clip was directed by Brian Grant, and inspired by old Hollywood movies. Martin Fry describes it as a cross between An American In Paris and The Benny Hill Show. Grant's videos were all over MTV in those early years; his other work includes "Stand Back" by Stevie Nicks and "Saved By Zero" by The Fixx.
• The band's appreciation of Smokey Robinson is well documented, and Smokey had "the look of love" long before ABC. In his 1971 song "I Don't Blame You At All" (a #11 hit in the UK), he sings, "What I thought was the look of love was only hurt in disguise."
• The lyrics were inspired by a real-life break-up Martin Fry had gone through. Trevor Horn is a notorious perfectionist; he insisted the female voice replying "goodbye" to Fry in the second verse should be sung by the actual woman in the relationship who had jilted him.
• Composer and keyboardist Anne Dudley was behind the lush orchestration on ABC's "The Look of Love." A year later, she and Trevor Horn founded the pioneering synthpop group Art of Noise.
  
  The song's grandeur took shape in the studio: "When we were working on 'The Look of Love,' it was becoming evident that it needed to be quite epic," Dudley told Mojo magazine, "and Trevor said, 'I think we need strings, you could do that.' When you're in your 20s and people ask you to do things, you tend to say, 'Oh yeah!' with the fearlessness of youth."
  
  "I'd always been a great fan of wonderful string arrangements, George Martin, Motown, the Sound of Philadelphia," she continued. "What you're trying to do is add extra color, add a lift to the chorus, keep building, and keep the listener enticed. With 'The Look of Love,' we refined it, we made the chords a bit posher."
• Martin Fry added his own perspective, telling Mojo: "In a way, 'The Look of Love' is like a hip-hop record. There's a space at the back of the record, inside the music, which is all about this syncopation. It wasn't overcooked, because we were trying to win the dance floor over."