How a Restaurant Patron Inspired The Greg Kihn Band’s Breakthrough Hit

To paraphrase Walt Whitman, the rock and roll scene can contain multitudes. By that, we mean that there’s room enough for just about every kind of approach. For example, many people love bands that deliver ambitious arrangements and vague lyrics that make you work to interpret them.

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But then there’s also something to be said for acts that come straight at you with the goods. The Greg Kihn Band certainly embodied this latter ethos. And they parlayed it into an unforgettable 1981 single called “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em”).

Kihn You Dig it?

Greg Kihn started his musical journey writing songs in Baltimore in the late 60s. Winning a local talent contest gave him the idea that there might be some meat on the bone for a career in music. He moved to San Francisco to pursue that dream.

In 1976, he formed The Greg Kihn Band. And without much fanfare, they started churning out an album a year without fail. (The band ended up sustaining that streak from 1976 to 1986.) Kihn wrote most of the material, occasionally getting help from his bassist, Steve Wright. Their music tended toward straightforward rock and roll with an R&B bent.

Kihn gained some exposure when he covered a pair of relatively obscure Bruce Springsteen songs (“For You” and “Rendezvous”) on early albums. He also indulged in a neat marketing trick when he started working his last name into his album titles in creative fashion. His sixth album, RocKihnRoll, epitomizes this technique. That LP also produced his Top 40 breakthrough.

The “Write” Stuff

One night, Kihn was sitting in a Japanese restaurant with Steve Wright. Since the weather outside was particularly nasty, the two men were in no hurry to get out of there. While sitting there, a patron started talking about the music being played at the bar, lamenting that “They don’t write ‘em like that anymore.”

Both men were immediately struck by the truthfulness and catchiness of this line. Since Kihn had been dealing with the end of a relationship, it didn’t take him long to churn out lyrics relating to a breakup. He claimed afterward that he and Wright wrote the song in about 15 minutes’ time.

When the band recorded the track, they tapped into the New Wave/power pop hybrid sound that was dominating radio at the time. “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em”) made it to No. 15 in 1981. Kihn exceeded that chart position just once in his career when he hit No. 2 with “Jeopardy” in 1983.

Behind the Lyrics of “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)”

“The Breakup Song” takes place a whole hour after the relationship fracture has taken place. The narrator is already trying to move on, but finds it a bit tricky. “And then the band slowed the tempo and the music took me down,” Kihn explains. “It was the same old song with a melancholy song.”

“But now it feels so strange out in the atmospheres,” he complains about his new normal. The jukebox also betrays him with a resonant slow song. In the final verse, he admits that it’s going to be a long road for him. “Now I wind up staring at an empty glass,” he says. “’Cause it’s so easy to say that you’ll forget your past.”

Greg Kihn eventually added successful author and popular DJ to his resume. He passed away in 2024 at the age of 75. Go through his catalog, and you’ll find many songs like “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write ‘Em)”. They don’t ask you to dig deep to understand them, but still hit pretty hard when you hear them.

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