Elvis Presley: Can't Help Falling in Love

SONG Can't Help Falling in Love

WRITTEN BY George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti, and Luigi Creatore

PERFORMED BY Elvis Presley

APPEARS ON Blue Hawaii (1961); numerous anthologies

NOTE 1 "Can't Help Falling in Love" is an essential Elvis Presley song. Avoid any anthology of Elvis film soundtracks or of Elvis material from the 60s that does not include it. 2 There's an interesting analysis of Blue Hawaii here, in which the writer points out that the film features a sexless Elvis who, far from representing the underclass from which he arose, is a member of Hawaii's upper crust.


"I sing all kinds," a callow Elvis famously claimed, and added that "I don't sound like nobody." He spent the next twenty years proving those points in one of the most remarkable and important careers in popular music. It's received wisdom that the five years from 1953-58 were a still inconceivable outpouring of groundbreaking innovation and hit singles, but that after Elvis joined the Army in a mismatch as ill-conceived as deep fried peanut butter and mashed bananas, his career became a barren wasteland of uninspired music marked by mediocre films.

But that's too pat. In fact, Elvis recorded brilliant music throughout his life, especially 1969's From Elvis in Memphis and From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis (collected, along with alternate versions, on 1999's excellent Suspicious Minds). The great music was admittedly harder to uncover, which gave credibility to the notion that military service drained his creativity. But even the much (and often justly) maligned movie soundtracks usually featured a gem or two: Given good material, Elvis invariably sang it with with typical brio. Blue Hawaii, lame by even the relaxed standards of Elvis movies, is no exception. It includes the classic "Can't Help Falling in Love," in which the man famous for loving his mother sings movingly and touchingly to the 60-year old Wahila (Hilo Hattie).

That's right: Elvis found the inspiration for one of the most memorable love songs of the 60s not in lissome co-star Joan Blackman, but in a sexagenarian stand-in for his beloved mother who had died three years earlier in 1958. Elvis fans often claim that this scene was a mistake (see article linked above), that he should have sung the song to Blackman. But Blue Hawaii was going to be weak under any circumstances; Elvis crooning to a 22-year old ingenue in a Beach Blanket Bingo setting wouldn't have improved the film and might well have weakened his performance of the song. And it's the song, not the movie, that we remember.

"Can't Help Falling in Love" has an unusual background. Adapted from an 18th Century French love song (arranged by Hector Berlioz!), it was written by a collaborative of three songwriters with over a hundred years of experience between them. George David Weiss' credits included the Gidget movies and such forgotten Broadway musicals as First Impressions (with Sammy Davis, Jr. and based on, of all things, Pride and Prejudice), while Luigi Creatore and Hugo Peretti wrote songs for Valerie Carr and produced artists from Perry Como to Sam Cooke to Jimmie Rodgers. Together, they composed a simple two-minute love song that Elvis Presley interpreted for the ages.

Elvis almost always sang to someone. He never peered down from on high like, say, Pete Townshend did (albeit precariously). He never disguised his message in oblique symbols and images a la Dylan, and he was anything but a confessional singer seeking isolate himself and his sins in a cocoon with an individual listener. Nor, in his recordings, was there a marked distance between him and his audience. Whether he rocked or crooned, Elvis at his best sang to us as individuals and as a community of which he was a member.

At the end of the day, Elvis was one of us, the commoner as king, except that he had an unparalleled gift and an unequaled taste in and feel for songs. One hopes that, as he embarked on what he must have guessed would be an gantlet of uninspired movies, he smiled when he saw the score for "Can't Help Falling In Love" and thought of his beloved mother.

LYRICS
Wise men say only fools rush in
But I can't help falling in love with you
Shall I stay
Would it be a sin
If I can't help falling in love with you

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand, take my whole life too
For I can't help falling in love with you

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand, take my whole life too
For I can't help falling in love with you
For I can't help falling in love with you

They didn't call him The King for nothing:


Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger show that "Can't Help Falling in Love" is a folk song, too:


UB40 reached #1 in 1993: