| You Broke My Fucking Heart | ||||
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| EP by Screeching Weasel | ||||
| Released | 1993 | |||
| Recorded | 1993 | |||
| Genre | Punk rock, pop punk | |||
| Label | Lookout! Records | |||
| Producer | Mark Schwarz, Ben Weasel | |||
| Screeching Weasel chronology | ||||
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You Broke My Fucking Heart is a 4 song EP by Screeching Weasel, written and released around the time of their Anthem for a New Tomorrow album. It features the same lineup as that LP, and represents a time in the band's career considered to be their peak by many fans (and band members). The EP was originally pressed on Lookout! Records and is now out of print. All four songs were later included on the 1995 B-sides and rarities compilation Kill the Musicians, which also fell out of print for a short while, but was later remastered and re-released in 2005 on Asian Man Records.
Ben Weasel himself called this "easily our best EP" in the liner notes to a later album. It features the tight, concise songwriting that made the accompanying 1993 album, Anthem for a New Tomorrow, so successful. Side A contains two Weasel-penned songs, both with a slight political slant. "The American Dream" is a short, sarcastic take on the ideal nation many citizens imagine the United States to be. It makes its point extremely clear with only six lines of lyrics. "Mary Was An Anarchist" is one of Weasel's most linear storytelling songs, chronicling the life of a young girl who protests sexism and "throws a rock at a cop" as a teen, yet ends up a lonely housewife just like her mother by the time she hits adulthood. The song is an exploration of the effect political extremism can have on impressionable young people.
Side B features two songs co-written with bassist, backing vocalist, and longtime songwriting collaborator Danny Vapid, and focuses on more personal themes. "Around on You" is reminiscent of 50s pop songs more than the snotty punk the band was sometimes known for, and marked a new level of quality of vocal harmonizing for Weasel and Vapid. Both Weasel and Vapid have commented that they feel it's one of the very best songs they ever collaborated on. "Goodbye To You" was the band's set closer for most live shows on their last tour in 1993.