THE RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS – “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”
Size always matters: there are few surer-fire ways of creating a pop impact than by recording something which sounds bigger than whatever else is around. It might not win credibility (step forward, Meat Loaf) but it generally wins fans. But the moment passes and faced with former blockbusters you can find yourself scratching your head and saying, yes, but what’s it for?
The Wall of Sound isn’t entirely immune – a few of Spector’s riper productions sound a little bit ridiculous now, as blowsy as the operatic ballads of the pre-rock 50s. But on the whole his insight – that if your songs dramatise young love in crisis, you can never sound too big – served him well. The Righteous Brothers don’t sound young, though, in fact their deep, slow voices sound exhausted, crushed, bound for the tomb – if not already there.
Numbed and broken by their struggles in the quicksand of a dying love, the Brothers sound shocked, then angry, and then the dam breaks on their double-voiced grief and desperation. It’s in that call and response section – and in the granite determination of the final chorus – that Spector’s methods really justify themselves.
(The opening line of this song is fantastic, too – tiny, acute, heartbreaking, you immediately know that no matter how loud the record gets, this is a hopeless battle.)
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This is wonderful. Just hearing those opening seconds makes me go weak at the knees even now. By the end I’m in need of a cold shower.
Thank goodness that this made it to No.1 given the ‘competition’ from Cilla Black’s cover version, which to the UK’s shame, got as far as no. 2.
Is Cilla’s disc the worst ever cover version to get into the Top 10 ?-discuss!
#2 The Cilla version is indeed atrocious; wrong is so many ways. Perhaps the worst top 10 cover version before the advent of the drum machine?
TOTPWatch: The Righteous Brothers performed ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ on the Top Of The Pops broadcast on January 25 1965. Also in the studio that week were; Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers, Del Shannon, The Seekers and Them. Pete Murray was the host. The edition doesn’t survive, but the performance does.
And it’s on BBCFour as I type this Billy.. Even Medley’s out-of-time finger-clicking can’t dim its light.
This was also a number 1 over in the USA, as celebrated
here .
Tom salutes the first line in YLTLF and I agree with that, but the thing I find so affecting in both verses is the half rhyme structure, midway though the lines in each couplet:
You never close your eyes *anymore* when I kiss your lips.
And there’s no tenderness like *before* in your fingertips.
Now there’s no welcome look *in your eyes* when I reach for you.
And girl you’re starting to *criticize* little things I do.
I think it’s this additional rhyming structure, and not just Bill Medley’s breathy, sonorous vocal that makes the verses feel so intimate. We’re right in there with this schmo who knows it’s over.
Everything else about the song and record is great too, but it’s that first lyrical finesse that makes it in my view.
I was in a band that covered YLTLF. It was hard for one’s own stuff to compete with it (this was just before Top Gun killed the song off for a generation). Anyhow, for me this is a nailed on:
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The ‘no hard chords’ link that lonepilgrim provides compares YLTLF’s opening line with the opening line from The Paris Sisters’ ‘I love how you Love Me’ (1961) which shares both a writer (Barry Mann) and a producer (Spector) with YLTLF. And Mann himself agrees that he might have been drawing on that earlier line.
Following that up, ILHYLM feels new to me, but tons of people including Ferry (on These Foolish Things) have covered it, so it must be just that it’s never stuck with me (as contented, happy songs mostly don’t compared to ‘when love goes wrong’ stuff; take a bow, Nick Hornby).
Anyhow, here’s ILHYLM’s opening couplet:
I love how your eyes close whenever you kiss me
And when I’m away from you I love how you miss me
No inner half-rhymes there.
ILHYLM’s best couplet for me is:
I love how your heart *beats* whenever I hold you
I love how you think of *me* without being told to
The inner half-rhyme’s in place, and the small dark cloud of the ‘told to’ note that’s struck is funny and speaks to my inner miserabilist!
Overall, though, YLTLF’s lyrics feel as upgraded from ILTYLM as Spector’s force 9 gale production does.