Yes, we must always give credit to the songwriters. They are the poets of the musical world, and though the best singer-songwriters only rarely match poets for sheer literary value, the challenge of linking words, their syllables and their sounds with musical notes makes for a heady and challenging art form for which no composer-lyricist should ever have to apologize.
So: hosannas to Don McLean, he of “American Pie” and “Vincent” fame, still going strong with an active concert schedule at age 80, a good 55 years after his less renowned, less brilliant “And I Love You So” premiered on his 1971 debut album, “Tapestry.” (Not to be confused with Carole King’s same-titled album that followed McLean’s by four months).
A year later, “And I Love You So” landed on the B-side of McLean’s first single that featured “Castles in the Air,” which got more far more attention and playtime on the nation’s airwaves. Here’s his somewhat rueful reflection on “And I Love You So” in the You Tube clip you can see below:
“This is a song that kept me from getting a recording contract for about two years because everybody said it was too old-fashioned, it was never going to be recorded by anybody and couldn’t be valuable in any sense. I’ve always liked music that I thought was GOOD, regardless of whether it was current or not… But I had my feeling about it and I loved it, so I got lucky and someone made a recording of it, then a bunch of other people did and it got on the charts four different times…And now you can hear it on elevators around the world.”
That “someone” McLean references was to the mid-century crooner Perry Como, who landed the song at #29 on Billboard Magazine’s “Hot 100” list in 1973 and #1 on the “Easy Listening” list. Como made it an international hit, further cementing the young folkie McLean’s financial security that had been kick-started two years earlier with his iconic “American Pie.” When asked once by an interviewer what that song’s somewhat obtuse lyrics “mean,” he replied, “It means I’ll never have to work another day in my life.”
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McLean played “And I Love You So” as an intimate but almost mournful, slow-moving expression of intense, heart-to-heart romantic love. The fun English teacher’s word I kept thinking of listening to it again now was “lachrymose” (lack-rih-mose: “tearful or given to weeping”).
McLean’s version has always left me wondering if this man is so deeply in love, why is he so sad? And indeed, in this version above, we see his typical performance sweat under the lights mingling with what appears to be tears running down his cheeks, so moved and almost somber he at least appears to be.
The fact it was a hit for Como and his middle-age, middle-America audience but not for the then-youthful McLean reinforces the idea it was too “old-fashioned” to be relevant to the rockier, more politically charged tenor of the times.
Elvis Presley, Bobby Vinton, Harry Belafonte, Johnny Mathis, Englebert Humperdinck, Helen Reddy and Olivia Newton-John were among others who found it irresistible to fold the song into their repertoires, for audiences largely similar to Como’s, there to have their hearts tugged by crooners whose cups had runneth over with tender sincerity.
But then there is Shirley Bassey.
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What you’ll see and hear below is a version of “And I Love You So” that is as far from “lachrymose” as Jay-Z is from Julie Andrews. The renowned Welsh-born Shirley Bassey, like McLean still active in her ninth decade (she’s 88), makes no mistake she’s addressing her one true love in her song, but the immensity of that love makes her barely able to contain it.
Serving as the title cut of her 1972 album of ballads that included “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “I Don’t Know How To Love Him,” Bassey digs as deep as she can into her well-trained mezzo soprano, in control all the way as she projects her love to the mountaintops, leaving nothing in doubt for her lover while also ready to share her joy with the world.
Then, as she launches into the third verse at about the 2:10 mark, she folds her hands under her heart, and allows herself a sly little wink and smile as she notes:
And you love me, too
Your thoughts are just for me
You set my spirit free
I’m happy that you do
Unlike McLean and the quiet flow of his tears, the joy and tinge of sexiness here are palpable and knowing, Bassey giving voice to a deep and resonant love, nothing understated or reticent about it. Tender and inviting in parts, volcanic in others.
As such, she mines the emotional depths of the great quaking feelings that regularly turn lovers’ lives upside down, particularly in the throes of new love, when the lovers are giving and showing their very best to each other and manage to convince themselves it will be ever thus.
Sure, Bassey is twice-divorced with some messy, tabloid-worthy complications and tragedy along the way. McLean’s story is similar, with an overlay of spousal abuse allegations in his second marriage and a more recent seven-year relationship with a woman 43 years his junior.
But that is the stuff of real life and the inherently imperfect people trying to find their way through the brambles and trapdoors of love and woundedness, generosity and greed, vulnerability and self-protection. Yes, the lyrics page and performing stage are idyllic and dream-infused, but the dream is universal and worthy of tender regard.
So we need not doubt either singer’s sincerity in projecting this lovely song from their respective inflamed hearts, pure and powerful in those moments of habitation, still ringing their way around the world more than a half-century after their song was first sung.
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Comments, questions, attaboys, arguments or suggestions for future posts, songs, poems? Scroll on down below, and/or on Facebook, where you can Follow my public posts and find regular 1-minute snippets of wisdom and other musings from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied always by the kind of creative photography you see on this post. https://www.facebook.com/andrew.hidas/
Deep appreciation to the photographers! Unless otherwise stated, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing
Homepage rotating banner photos (except for library books) by Elizabeth Haslam https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/
Library books by Larry Rose, Redlands, California, all rights reserved, contact: larry@rosefoto.com
Sparking heart by Jamie Strceet, Surrey, UK https://unsplash.com/@jamie452
Shirley Bassey courtesy of https://www.officialcharts.com/
Much appreciation to reader Robert Spencer for recently bringing this song to my attention
Wow! She’s new to me, but I will be listening for more!
You might check the original, old-timey James Bond films, Deanna—she sang the hell out of “Goldfinger,” and the song became almost if not more popular than the novel!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnseiOJ2jGQ&list=RDEnseiOJ2jGQ&start_radio=1
Oh Andrew you really hit the nail on the head unraveling Bassey’s interpretation of this song. All other singers don’t come close to hers.
So glad it delighted you as well, Barbara—she is really something else! I’d enjoyed her in the past, but it had been a while, now back clearly on my radar.