Talk Talk / Asides Besides / 1988
Why Is It So Hard
weary, contrite, quietly frustrated
A short, plaintive B-side from Talk Talk's early-to-mid period, this song is built almost entirely from apology and self-accusation, circling a single unanswered question about emotional difficulty. It never resolves into explanation, instead using repetition to enact the very stuckness it describes.
emotional avoidance self-reproach communication breakdown frustration and helplessness cyclical conflict
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addresses a partner or close other directly, alternating between asking forgiveness and inviting condemnation. The voice is self-aware but not fully reliable — it admits fault while also implying the other person shares blame for not understanding, which complicates the sincerity of the apology.
What happens
The song doesn't tell a story so much as stage a recurring argument. The speaker confesses to emotional volatility and to taking shortcuts out of conflict, framing both as failures, then retreats into a wish to simply disappear from the situation rather than resolve it. Each verse restates a slightly different failure — anger, haste, avoidance — but the outcome is always the same unanswered refrain, suggesting no progress is made between confessions.
How it's built
The song works in short paired couplets that each open with a plea for either forgiveness or condemnation, followed by a brief bridge-like line about escape, then the title refrain. This structure repeats with minor lyrical variation rather than developing, mirroring the argument's circularity. There's no clear bridge or resolution section — the 'escape' lines function as the closest thing to a turn, but they loop back into the same question rather than advancing anywhere.
Section by section
Opening verse
“flip my face of passion”
The speaker asks for forgiveness for a sudden shift in emotional temperature, framing his own volatility as involuntary or necessary rather than chosen. The wording suggests a masking or transformation, as though the anger is a face put on rather than a true self.
First refrain and escape line
The title question arrives abruptly, functioning less as an inquiry than an exhausted exhalation. The immediately following wish to escape and to teach the other person something implies the real problem is a failure of communication rather than of feeling — the speaker believes understanding is possible in theory but has given up trying to achieve it.
Second verse
“claim, "It's over" when the doubt remains”
Here the confession shifts from anger to avoidance: choosing the easy way out by declaring an ending prematurely, even while uncertainty persists. This complicates the apology, since it suggests the speaker's expressions of finality can't be trusted, undermining any resolution the relationship might otherwise reach.
Closing repetition
The song ends without new information, simply repeating the escape wish and the refrain. This lack of development is the point — the speaker is caught in a loop of self-diagnosis without change, and the song enacts that paralysis formally rather than just describing it.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated openings of 'forgive' and 'condemn' across verses set up a rhetorical pattern of self-judgment, as if the speaker is rehearsing possible verdicts rather than settling on one.
- rhetorical question
- The title phrase, repeated as a refrain, never gets answered within the song. Its unresolved repetition performs the very difficulty it names.
- antithesis
- Pairing 'forgive' with 'condemn' throughout sets up two opposing responses the speaker imagines receiving, capturing the ambivalence of someone unsure whether they deserve sympathy or blame.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading is that this is a song about the impossibility of resolving conflict through direct confession — the speaker oscillates between wanting punishment and wanting escape, unable to settle into either honest repair or clean departure. An alternative reading takes the addressee as internal rather than external — the song as an argument with oneself about inconsistency and self-sabotage, with 'teach you' read ironically, since the speaker seems least able to teach himself anything.
Context
This track appeared on Asides Besides, a 1988 compilation gathering B-sides and rarities from Talk Talk's early synth-pop years, before the band's later shift toward the more expansive, spacious sound of Spirit of Eden. As a lesser-known cut from that earlier period, it likely reflects the more conventional verse-refrain songwriting typical of the band's first two albums rather than their later experimental work. I don't have reliable specific information about when it was written or the circumstances of its recording.
Listen for
- The way the refrain never resolves melodically, if it mirrors the lyrical lack of resolution
- Shifts in vocal delivery between the confessional verses and the resigned refrain
- Whether the 'escape' line is delivered with relief or defeat
- How closely the verses parallel each other structurally despite naming different failures
About Talk Talk
Talk Talk were an English post-rock and new wave band formed in 1981 by Mark Hollis, Lee Harris (drums), Paul Webb (bass), and Simon Brenner (keyboards). Initially a synth-pop group, Talk Talk's first two albums, The Party's Over (1982) and It's My Life (1984), reached top 40 in the UK and produced the international hit singles "Talk Talk", "Today", "It's My Life", and "Such a Shame".
1981 - 1991 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue