Who recorded it first
Love Hurts
Not a Nazareth original — a 1960 Everly Brothers album track
Nazareth’s thunderous 1974 power ballad is so total a performance that the song reads as a Scottish hard-rock original. It isn’t. “Love Hurts” was written by Nashville songwriter Boudleaux Bryant and first recorded by The Everly Brothers in July 1960, then buried as track seven on their Warner Bros. album A Date with the Everly Brothers in October of that year. It was never issued as an Everly single — a dispute with their manager and publisher Wesley Rose kept it off the 45s — so the version that made the song famous in America was a cover recorded on the other side of the Atlantic.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Recorded July 1960 and released in October 1960 as track seven on A Date with the Everly Brothers (Warner Bros. Records, catalogue W 1395). It was never issued as a single or a B-side.
Charted Did not chart — it was never a single. The album around it reached No. 9 on the US Billboard chart and No. 3 in the UK.
Hear The Everly Brothers’ 1960 recording, as it appears on A Date with the Everly Brothers. www.youtube.com · An auto-generated “Provided to YouTube by Rhino/Warner Records” upload on the official “The Everly Brothers - Topic” channel. The description names the album A Date with The Everly Brothers and carries a ℗ 1960 Warner Records Inc. line, and the 2:22 runtime matches the MusicBrainz recording for the 1960 Warner Bros. release — so this is the original master, remastered, not a later re-recording.How the song travelled
The original sits on the Everlys’ second Warner Bros. album, A Date with the Everly Brothers ↗, released in October 1960 — a record whose single, “Cathy’s Clown,” had already come out that April.
Roy Orbison took it to RCA Victor Studio B in Nashville on 27 February 1961 and put it out as the B-side of “Running Scared,” where it reached No. 5 in Australia — one of several stops charted on the song’s version history ↗.
Nazareth ↗, formed in Dunfermline in December 1968, released their version as a single on 8 November 1974; it became their only US Top Ten hit and the definitive reading for most listeners since.
Jim Capaldi’s version, released in November 1975, went to No. 4 in the UK — his highest-charting British single — and Cher recorded it twice, in 1975 and again in 1991.
Wikipedia’s version history for “Love Hurts”Know more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
Right band, wrong origin
Nazareth’s 1974 recording is the one nearly everybody has heard, and it is often taken to be where the song began. The chronology says otherwise.
Nazareth wrote and originated “Love Hurts” in 1974.
Theirs is the only version ever to be a US hit single — No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 — and the arrangement is so distinctive it sounds authored rather than covered.
The Everly Brothers, July 1960
Issued that October as an album track on A Date with the Everly Brothers (Warner Bros., W 1395). Never released as a single, so it never charted in its own right.
Boudleaux Bryant
Published by Acuff-Rose Publications on 30 August 1960. Bryant also wrote “Bye Bye Love” and “All I Have to Do Is Dream” for the same duo.
Roy Orbison, recorded 27 February 1961
Cut at RCA Victor Studio B in Nashville and released as the flip of “Running Scared,” reaching No. 5 in Australia — another reason the song was already in circulation long before 1974.
Written by Boudleaux Bryant, first recorded by The Everly Brothers in July 1960 — and made famous by Nazareth fourteen years after the fact.
Context
Why the cover swallowed the original
The interesting question is not why Nazareth’s version was big — it is why the Everlys’ version was invisible. It was never a single. It sat seventh on the second side of an album whose commercial job had already been done by “Cathy’s Clown,” and the Everlys’ relationship with their publisher, Wesley Rose of Acuff-Rose, soured badly enough that Rose cut them off from the Bryants’ catalogue between 1961 and 1964. A song with no 45, no promotion and a broken supply line behind it does not become anybody’s idea of the definitive recording.
Meanwhile the song kept travelling as a B-side and an album cut. Roy Orbison recorded it at RCA Victor Studio B in Nashville on 27 February 1961 and it went out as the flip of “Running Scared,” reaching No. 5 in Australia. Jim Capaldi’s reading, released in November 1975, hit No. 4 in the UK — his highest-charting British single. But only Nazareth’s took it into the American Top Ten, and in the pre-internet decades the hit single is what a song’s history collapses into.
The chronology, step by step
- 30 August 1960 — Boudleaux Bryant’s composition is published by Acuff-Rose Publications.
- July 1960 — The Everly Brothers record “Love Hurts” during the sessions for their second Warner Bros. album.
- October 1960 — The recording is issued as an album track on A Date with the Everly Brothers (Warner Bros. W 1395). It is never released as a single.
- 27 February 1961 — Roy Orbison records the song at RCA Victor Studio B, Nashville; it appears as the B-side of “Running Scared” and reaches No. 5 in Australia.
- 8 November 1974 — Nazareth release their power-ballad version as a single (Mooncrest in the UK, A&M in the US and Canada).
- April 1975 — Hair of the Dog is released; “Love Hurts” closes the international and US editions.
- 1976 — Nazareth’s single reaches No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band’s only US Top Ten hit.
No single, no promotion — just track seven, waiting.