Young Love

SONG Young Love

WRITTEN BY Ric Cartey & Carole Joyner

PERFORMED BY Tab Hunter, Sonny James, Chaim Tannenbaum, others

APPEARS ON Young Love: The Best of Tab Hunter (1995); Sonny James: 20 All-Time Greatest Hits (2002); The McGarrigle Hour (1998); many, many, many others

Ric Cartey wrote "Young Love" as vehicle for his band The Jiva-Tones. Released in November 1956, it failed to chart and might have headed to obscurity had not teen idol Tab Hunter and Sonny "The Country Gentleman" James both released cover versions in January 1957. Hunter's version reached #1 on multiple charts, while James hit #1 on the Billboard country chart for nine weeks running. With its operatic chorus and dreamier tempo, it's James' rendition and not Hunter's cooler version that has been sung in showers for over fifty years.

Certainly, "Young Love" is easy to parody and poke fun at: It's hopelessly overblown and melodramatic. And yet the song successfully captures the earnestness, histrionics, and charming naivete of teenage love, which has given it staying power. Anyone listening from the vantage point of middle age knows that there's not "just one love in this whole world." There may be one, there may be more than one, there may be none. This knowledge may not be part of "Young Love," but it's an important part of many listeners' connection to the song, eliciting senses of nostalgia or loss or regret.

There's nothing cerebral about young love, although it is divine ("The heavenly touch of your embrace"). But how much of this is real and how much is fantasy? The third verse ("Just one kiss from your sweet lips") implies that he hasn't yet received a kiss, that the love may be one-sided. Is he actually waiting for her to notice him and respond? Note the future tense of the next verse ("We will vow"), which seems to imply that nothing has happened yet. Is the singer staring longingly at the girl in the next desk, afraid to ask her out or admit his feelings? In this sense, "Young Love" conveys not only the intensity of teen love, with its "true emotion" and "deep devotion," but its uncertainties and insecurities as well. Perhaps the song resonates today because it gets at the truth of unrequited teen love as opposed to the idealized version it appears to celebrate on the surface.

Or perhaps it's both. Two certainties of adolescence are its incredible ups and downs and the intensity with which they are experienced. To the middle-aged listener, "Young Love" is a safe way of revisiting those days without having actually relive them. And to the teenager? Most of today's kids would no doubt scoff at the song. But once it was truth. Or should I say Truth.

LYRICS
They say for every boy and girl
There's just one love in this whole world
And I know that I found mine

The heavenly touch of your embrace
Tells me no one could take your place
Ever in my heart

Young love, first love
Filled with true devotion
Young love, our love
We share with deep emotion

Just one kiss from your sweet lips
Will tell me that your love is real
And I can feel that it's true

We will vow to one another
There will never be another
Love for you or for me

Young love, first love
Filled with true devotion
Young love, our love
We share with deep emotion

The heavenly touch of your embrace
Tells me no one could take your place
Ever in my heart

We will vow to one another
There will never be another
Love for you or for me

Young love, first love
Filled with true devotion
Young love, our love
We share with deep emotion

Sonny James, the Country Gentleman, performing "Young Love" in 1958:




Tab Hunter's 1957 hit single:




Click here and scroll down to hear Chaim Tannenbaum's lovely rendition from 1998's The McGarrigle Hour. That's Kate and Anna McGarrigle on backing vocals. Tannenbaum is a producer and musician who has played with the McGarrigles and Loudon Wainwright III.