I Got Addicted to Love and Came Out the Other Side

Modern Love

The New York Times

Nytimes, Redemption, Society & Culture, New York Times, Love, Essay, Storytelling, Loss, Nyt

4.4 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you know one thing about Orville Peck, it’s probably that he wears a mask. The country musician has long kept himself shrouded in mystery, shielding his face from the public and revealing few details about his past. His music, however, is full of emotional honesty and vulnerability — he told the Modern Love podcast that most of his lyrics are about his life — and his songs are imbued with a deep sense of longing. In this episode, Peck talks about why country music uniquely captures our complicated feelings about love, and why love and pain are so often intertwined. He reads a Modern Love essay, “Strung Out on Love and Checked In for Treatment” by Rachel Yoder, about love addiction, and discusses what it takes to pull yourself from its distressing grip.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now and all.
0:03.9	Love was stronger than anything.
0:07.8	And I love you more than anything.
0:12.0	You're still love.
0:13.0	Love.
0:17.0	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
0:19.5	This is Modern Love.
0:21.1	Every week, we bring you stories about love, lust, longing, all the messiness of human relationships.
0:28.0	This week, I'm talking to the country singer Orville Peck.
0:34.3	The sea, we see the boys. Orville is kind of an enigma.
0:47.3	He grew up in South Africa.
0:49.1	He uses a stage name.
0:51.0	And if you've seen pictures of him, you know know his signature look is a cowboy hat and a mask.
0:56.5	He doesn't show his face in public. But that's changing next week, because Orville is making his
1:01.9	Broadway debut in Cabaret. He's replacing Adam Lambert in the role of MC, and he'll do it without
1:08.0	the mask. I wanted to talk to him because even though his vibe and the mask are so mysterious,
1:14.9	his music is kind of the opposite.
1:16.9	He doesn't hide his emotions.
1:18.9	Orville's known for writing these haunting, lonely ballads,
1:22.4	and he told me a lot of them are about his real life.
1:25.1	It ain't to let him go, it's more about the things that you take with.
1:43.8	There's so much yearning in Orville's songs, and yet they're still so romantic.
	...

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