“When A Man Loves a Woman” /
Percy Sledge

Another icon is gone. The great soul singer Percy Sledge died yesterday, after a long struggle with liver cancer.  R.I. P.

 

Ever since this song came out in 1966, I don't think it ever went out of rotation on radio playlists.  Even pre-teen me, head-over-heels in love with British beat bands, stopped whatever I was doing when this record came on.  I remember seeing Sledge sing it on Hullaballoo or Shindig or one of those shows, pouring his heart out on stage. I was way too young to have any idea what he was singing about, but I knew it was true.

 

This is the ultimate slow dance, slouching and grinding from beat to beat, each chord shift groaning toward resolution. I remember this song coming on during school dances – one round of dancing this song, and you practically felt knocked up. (Usually I’d wimp out and flee the dance floor.)

 

 

 

You have to go back to the 60s to find a song that believes in love like this song does. Not sweet and innocent love, not pure and noble love -- no, it's torment and sexual obsession he's singing about. The very first notes announce Major Emotion -- those blaring horns, the resonant organ, the ominous bass -- and then comes Percy Sledge's anguished vocal, elevating lust to epic heights. 

 

“When a ma-an loves a woman,” Sledge trumpets at the outset, flinging his voice into those high notes, pitched just over the key’s octave note. He's testifying, all right, testifying to the glory of love.  

But is love glorious?  Right away things start to disintegrate, slip-sliding down the scale, as he stuffs in the details – “Can't keep his mind on nothing else / He'll trade the world / For the good thing he's found.” The crap that besets this man seems inevitable (in other verses he turns his back on his best friend, spends his very last dime, sleeps out in the rain); but somehow all of it means nothing next to the fact that he’s loving with his whole heart. The stately, almost lazy tempo takes this all in stride; it’s the way of the world, and eternal as the pyramids.

For the first three verses it’s all theoretical; in verse four he confesses that he’s singing from his own experience: “Well, this man loves a woman / I gave you everything I had / Tryin' to hold on to your precious love / Baby, please don't treat me bad.” He’s not accusing her, not exactly, but he does have a sickening sense that he’s going to get the shaft.

He goes back to the third person, but it’s pretty clear he’s raging about his own situation: “She can bring him such misery / If she plays him for a fool / He's the last one to know / Lovin' eyes can't ever see.” Is she cheating on him? Or, in the final verse, is he the one cheating: “When a man loves a woman / He can do no wrong / He can never own some other girl.” We don’t know; probably even he doesn’t know – that’s how muddled up you get when you’re in love.

Whatever’s going on, there’s pain and heartache here, that’s for sure. But as Percy Sledge sings it, there’s not one minute of blame or regret. He knew coming in that the path of true love wouldn’t be smooth – but it’s still the most glorious thing in the world. And if you can’t get that, then you don’t deserve to be in love.

Reverb Thursday

“When A Man Loves a Woman” / Percy Sledge

You have to go back to the early 60s to find a song that believes in love like this song does. Sure, it's not pure and noble love he's talking about -- more like sexual obsessions -- but the sweeping melody, not to mention Percy Sledge's soulful delivery, elevates lust to epic heights.

 

 

 

You know you’re in for monumental emotion from the very first notes, with their blaring horns, resonant organ, and ponderous bass. This is the ultimate slow dance, slouching and grinding from beat to beat, each chord shift groaning toward resolution. I remember this song coming on during school dances – one round of dancing this song, and you practically felt knocked up. (Usually I’d wimp out and flee the dance floor.)

“When a ma-an loves a woman,” Sledge trumpets grandly at the outset, flinging his voice into those high notes, pitched just over the key’s octave note. It’s pretty ballsy, how he claims to have the definitive word on love between a woman and a man, on a universal basis, but he’s sure got my ear.

That commanding opener is evanescent, though; right away things start to disintegrate, slip-sliding down the scale, as he stuffs in the details – “Can't keep his mind on nothing else / He'll trade the world / For the good thing he's found.” The rest of that stuff – the crap that besets this man – is inevitable (in other verses he turns his back on his best friend, spends his very last dime, sleeps out in the rain); but somehow all of it means nothing next to the fact that he’s loving with his whole heart. The stately, almost lazy tempo takes this all in stride; it’s the way of the world, and eternal as the pyramids.

For the first three verses it’s all theoretical; in verse four he confesses that he’s singing from his own experience: “Well, this man loves a woman / I gave you everything I had / Tryin' to hold on to your precious love / Baby, please don't treat me bad.” He’s not accusing her, not exactly, but he does have a sickening sense that he’s going to get the shaft.

But (emotionally speaking -- not musically!) it's all downhill from there. Now that he's opened that door, even though he reverts to the third person, it’s clear he’s dwelling on his own situation: “She can bring him such misery / If she plays him for a fool / He's the last one to know / Lovin' eyes can't ever see.” Is she cheating on him? Or, in the final verse, is he the one cheating: “When a man loves a woman / He can do no wrong / He can never own some other girl.” We don’t know; probably even he doesn’t know – that’s how muddled up you get when you’re in love.

Whatever’s going on, there’s pain and heartache here, that’s for sure. But as Percy Sledge sings it, there’s not one minute of blame or regret. He knew coming in that the path of true love wouldn’t be smooth – but it’s still the most glorious thing in the world. And if you can’t get that, then you don’t deserve to be in love.

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 96-100

THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS!

I'm going to start at the bottom of the list and work my way up, five songs a day. Down here at the end of the list, I'll admit, guilty pleasures rule -- they're on here as much for nostalgia as anything else. But before I hang my head in shame, I ask you, if you're really being honest -- What's on your list?

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

96. "Spinning Wheel" / Blood, Sweat & Tears (1969)
In 1969, both Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago hit the airwaves, a jolt of contrast to the reigning vibes of acid rock. Instinctively I knew they weren't my kind of music -- I loved the funky horns and riddling lyrics, but their sound was too big and glossy for me. (I see an arc here leading directly to the Eagles.) But on this second album, their big breakthrough, the musical genius of the recently departed Al Kooper still invigorated BS&T, now sweetened with David Clayton Thomas's juicy vocals, and for a season -- when it was being played everywhere -- I couldn't help succumbing to this song's slouchy beat -- "What goes up must come down / Spinning wheel got to turn round." How did I know that Clayton-Thomas's lyrics were meant as a put-down of psychedelic rock? In short order, BS&T churned out more hits -- we'd already had the ingratiating "You Make Me So Very Happy," to be followed soon by the faux-folk "And When I Die" and an overbaked rendition of "God Bless The Child," both of which horrified me later when I discovered the Laura Nyro and Billie Holiday originals. In the course of one album, the band had already jumped the shark for me. But could I leave "Spinning Wheel" off this list? I could not.

97. "When A Man Loves A Woman" / Percy Sledge (1966) No special stories here, just a vintage soul classic that's too great to be denied a spot on my list.

98. "Losing My Religion" / R.E.M. (1991)
Another band that eventually jumped the shark for me, as their songs became too samey and were grossly overplayed, not just on radio but on MTV as well. And yet, and yet, and yet . . . in the 1980s R.E.M. were the standard-bearers for that endangered species, intelligent rock music, with their oddball blend of hooky Southern rock and cryptic New Wave lyrics, and I can't deny I was seduced. In 1991 I couldn't take my eyes off this video, set in a gauzy side-lit bare room, Peter Buck plucking a winsome mandolin while Stipe sat morosely on a hard-backed chair, pining for love. What a poetic figure he cut, in that white linen shirt, sleeves rolled up, long arms crossed, the fine-boned hands drooping. (Despite all the shots of falling angels and stigmata, we could tell this song had nothing do with actual religion, although of course the Catholic Church protested like crazy.) "That's me in the corner / That's me in the spotlight, I'm / Losing my religion" -- it's like an updated version of "Tears of A Clown," only ten times more neurotic. Obsessive, vacillating, self-conscious, despairing -- here was a love song all us losers could relate to. "Oh no, I've said too much," Stipe agonizes; or, wait, "I haven't said enough." And then Stipe starts to dance, all spastic and geeky -- somehow that endeared him to me even more.

99. "Show Me The Way" / Peter Frampton (1976) My ultimate guilty pleasure.

100. "Different Drum" / Stone Poneys (1967)
Okay, so Linda Ronstadt squeaks onto my list. I'll confess, I was an early Ronstadt fan, snapping up this 1967 hit single from her original band, an L.A.-area folk-rock trio called the Stone Poneys (mid-60s cute misspelling and all). The Stone Poneys weren't long for this world, as the record execs were already pushing her bandmates out the door to highlight the girl singer, with her bold, expressive contralto. Linda was a great popularizer of other people's songs (how I wore out my audiocassette of Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits until I discovered the original artists' versions!), and this one's no exception. It was written by Mike Nesmith, who'd become famous a nanosecond later when The Monkees blazed onto television. But when a guy sings about needing his freedom, it's not the same as when a girl says the same thing. "Don't get me wrong, it's not that I knock it, / It's just that I am not in the market / For a boy who wants to love only me" -- that was practically radical feminism in 1967 pop music, and something about it plugged right into my little pre-teen heart. "Yes, and I ain't saying you ain't pretty / All I'm saying is I'm not ready / For any person place or thing / To try and pull the reins in on me." Reins, get it? Stone Poneys? I really thought that was clever. And who knows, maybe the girl-power oomph of this song is what eventually sprung me out of Indianapolis years later. We are the music we've listened to, and when all's told, even "Different Drum" accounts for at least a few sinews and corpuscles.

“When A Man Loves a Woman” / Percy Sledge

28 DAYS OF LOVE SONGS

Now here it is, the big day, Valentine’s Day itself – so let’s pull out all the stops, with this headlong flight of passion, courtesy of Mr. Percy Sledge. You have to go back to the early 60s to find a song that believes in love like this song does. Sure, it’s not pure and noble love he’s talking about – more like sexual obsession – but the sweeping melody, not to mention Percy Sledge’s soulful delivery, elevates lust to epic heights.

You know you’re in for monumental emotion from the very first notes, with their blaring horns, resonant organ, and ponderous bass. This is the ultimate slow dance, slouching and grinding from beat to beat, each chord shift groaning toward resolution. I remember this song coming on during school dances – one round of dancing this song, and you practically felt knocked up. (Usually I’d wimp out and flee the dance floor.)

“When a ma-an loves a woman,” Sledge trumpets grandly at the outset, flinging his voice into those high notes, pitched just over the key’s octave note. It’s pretty ballsy, how he claims to have the definitive word on love between a woman and a man, on a universal basis, but he’s sure got my ear.

That commanding opener is evanescent, though; right away things start to disintegrate, slip-sliding down the scale, as he stuffs in the details – “Can't keep his mind on nothing else / He'll trade the world / For the good thing he's found.” The rest of that stuff – the crap that besets this man – is inevitable (in other verses he turns his back on his best friend, spends his very last dime, sleeps out in the rain); but somehow all of it means nothing next to the fact that he’s loving with his whole heart. The stately, almost lazy tempo takes this all in stride; it’s the way of the world, and eternal as the pyramids.

For the first three verses it’s all theoretical; in verse four he confesses that he’s singing from his own experience: “Well, this man loves a woman / I gave you everything I had / Tryin' to hold on to your precious love / Baby, please don't treat me bad.” He’s not accusing her, not exactly, but he does have a sickening sense that he’s going to get the shaft.

From then on, even though he reverts to the third person, it’s pretty clear he’s laying out his own situation: “She can bring him such misery / If she plays him for a fool / He's the last one to know / Lovin' eyes can't ever see.” Is she cheating on him? Or, in the final verse, is he the one cheating: “When a man loves a woman / He can do no wrong / He can never own some other girl.” We don’t know; probably even he doesn’t know – that’s how muddled up you get when you’re in love.

Whatever’s going on, there’s pain and heartache here, that’s for sure. But as Percy Sledge sings it, there’s not one minute of blame or regret. He knew coming in that the path of true love wouldn’t be smooth – but it’s still the most glorious thing in the world. And if you can’t get that, then you don’t deserve to be in love.

When a Man Loves a Woman sample