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Love and Its Opposite

album by Tracey Thorn

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 10, 2025
Entity authorityQ6691623 ↗
Source-derived summary

Love and Its Opposite is the third solo studio album by former Everything but the Girl singer Tracey Thorn, released on 17 May 2010. The album was released on Thorn's husband Ben Watt's label Strange Feeling in the UK, and on Merge Records in North America. It was produced by Ewan Pearson, who also produced tracks on Thorn's previous album Out of the Woods. The album peaked at number 51 in the UK Albums Chart.

An EP of remixes, Opposites, was released digitally on 24 August 2010.

Background

Love and Its Opposite was recorded in Berlin and London, and features guest contributions from Hot Chip's Al Doyle, The Invisible's Leo Taylor, Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman, Nashville musician Cortney Tidwell and Los Valentinos' guitarist Jono. It contains eight original songs and two cover versions: Lee Hazlewood's "Come on Home to Me" (a duet with Jens Lekman) and "You Are a Lover" by The Unbending Trees (with whom Thorn collaborated in 2008).

The album's opening track, "Oh, the Divorces!", was made available as a free digital download on 17 February 2010, along with the confirmation of the album's track list. "Why Does the Wind?" and "You Are a Lover" were released as singles later in 2010 and 2011, respectively, accompanied by several remixes. The remix EP Opposites included versions of the album tracks "Late in the Afternoon," "Swimming," and "Kentish Town," and in 2011 Thorn released the Night Time EP with a cover version of The xx's "Night Time" and new mixes of "Swimming."

Thorn has described the theme of the album as "a record about the person I am now and the people around me ...

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Love and Its Opposite” is album by Tracey Thorn. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Love, Opposite and album, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2010, 2008, 2011—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2010. For this dossier, Love, Opposite and album is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “album by Tracey Thorn” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6691623. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2008 and 2011.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Tracing reception history
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Love and Its Opposite”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Love and Its Opposite primary sources, Love and Its Opposite archive and Love research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Love and Its Opposite” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.