Get ready, because this song is just ADORABLE.
The song: The Shirelles, "Everybody Loves A Lover"; 1962
So adorable in fact that I put it on a mix CD I made a few months back for a friend's birthday. (She was turning one. It seemed momentous enough for a mix CD.) And because this friend happens to be what most people would call "a baby", I wanted the songs on this mix CD to be only the sweetest and best I could find.
I can't remember what all I put on there but I know it had Paul Simon's "Loves Me Like A Rock", Jackson 5 "I Want You Back", Miriam Makeba "Pata Pata", and Jackson Browne "Somebody's Baby" (I couldn't resist).
In any case, I can highly recommend any of the above songs if you find yourself in an ebullient mood now or at some point in the future.
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(Previous Shirelles: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow"; I also discovered this Bryan Ferry cover of that song recently [and it's good!])
And "Everybody Loves A Lover" is in fact ebullient, perhaps as ebullient as it gets. I just love the phrasing of "I should worry, doo be doo be do, not for nothing, doo be doo be do" for its unique blend of early 60s un-self-consciousness and what one might term "Yiddishkeit". Which is the ineffable essence of what makes a Jewish thing Jewish, which is something I have had cause to think about a fair few times over the course of my life. I don't know my own personal answer but I am pretty sure it has something to do with having expressive eyebrows. (All jokes aside, "Everybody Loves A Lover" was written by the Jewish lyricist Richard Adler, known mostly for his work in musicals.)
The Shirelles cover is actually a re-work of an original by Doris Day, which is also pretty snazzy in a much different way.
But I find the Shirelles version just killer. Only the sweetest and the best.
Yrs,
AW
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