It almost feels disrespectful to dissect this song to figure out what makes it so great. It's the totality of the lyrics and Bonnie Raitt's voice and Bruce Hornsby's (of course it's Bruce Hornsby) piano, all wadded into something that's beautiful and sad, but also detached, which almost makes it feel even sadder.
I've thought about it, and what I like most about "I Can't Make You Love Me" is that it approaches love in a way that is 100 percent realistic and 100 percent opposed to how we're conditioned to approach it in pop culture. Music and movies portray love as, well, a burnin' thing that makes a fiery ring. It's supposed to be inexorable and unconquerable when so often it's completely not. It comes and goes in odd moments and fades over time, and sometimes one person stops loving another for no good reason at all. Love is portrayed as something to be pursued, rather that something that happens or is cultivated between two people. How manyyoung people men have done awful things because they've been told that you can make someone love you back just by sheer force of will?
But sometimes--most times--you don't get loved back, either at all or anymore, and there's not really anything you can do about it. And it sucks, but the only thing you can ask for is the truth, and acknowledgement of your disappointment.
You don't hear songs about that very often, perhaps because it's not as sensational as the other thing, or perhaps because now that we've got this one we don't need others. This song was co-written by a 44-year-old for a 41-year-old singer, and I don't think this plays if you pitch it to Mariah Carey in 1995, or LeAnn Rimes in 1999, or Kelly Clarkson in 2005--I just don't think teenagers would believe in it.
Beyond the thesis of the song, which I love, the density of the lyrics is on another level from your ordinary pop ballad. There are, for all intents and purposes, only 14 lines in this song, and every single one of them is memorable. I love movies--though not in the "I spend 8 hours a week at the indie theater and own every Criterion Collection DVD" way that people mean when they say that--but I am that way about movie titles and movie trailers. A while back, I became aware of an Australian film called These Final Hours, which is a phenomenal title. In addition to the poetry of the words themselves, it sets up a particular melancholy tone that I wish wasn't wasted on a movie that, upon reading the synopsis, I'd never in my life want to see.
And it is a particular melancholy, because Adele covered this song and didn't really get it. Neither, at the risk of being struck down by God for blaspheming against His most perfect creation, did George Michael. The only cover of "I Can't Make You Love Me" that really delivers, so far as I know, is the Bon Iver version, because it's just a dude in his living room with a piano. This is a song that loses its credibility when you try to make it slick--it's got to be sort low-fi, or rough, or rocky in order to avoid coming off as slightly Uncanny Valley. That's for the same reason that CW teen dramas don't feel all that much like high school--the lighting's too good, the people are too pretty, the conflicts too black-and-white. Which you don't really care that much about until it's placed in contrast with something that feels more real.
This song feels more real.
I've thought about it, and what I like most about "I Can't Make You Love Me" is that it approaches love in a way that is 100 percent realistic and 100 percent opposed to how we're conditioned to approach it in pop culture. Music and movies portray love as, well, a burnin' thing that makes a fiery ring. It's supposed to be inexorable and unconquerable when so often it's completely not. It comes and goes in odd moments and fades over time, and sometimes one person stops loving another for no good reason at all. Love is portrayed as something to be pursued, rather that something that happens or is cultivated between two people. How many
But sometimes--most times--you don't get loved back, either at all or anymore, and there's not really anything you can do about it. And it sucks, but the only thing you can ask for is the truth, and acknowledgement of your disappointment.
You don't hear songs about that very often, perhaps because it's not as sensational as the other thing, or perhaps because now that we've got this one we don't need others. This song was co-written by a 44-year-old for a 41-year-old singer, and I don't think this plays if you pitch it to Mariah Carey in 1995, or LeAnn Rimes in 1999, or Kelly Clarkson in 2005--I just don't think teenagers would believe in it.
Beyond the thesis of the song, which I love, the density of the lyrics is on another level from your ordinary pop ballad. There are, for all intents and purposes, only 14 lines in this song, and every single one of them is memorable. I love movies--though not in the "I spend 8 hours a week at the indie theater and own every Criterion Collection DVD" way that people mean when they say that--but I am that way about movie titles and movie trailers. A while back, I became aware of an Australian film called These Final Hours, which is a phenomenal title. In addition to the poetry of the words themselves, it sets up a particular melancholy tone that I wish wasn't wasted on a movie that, upon reading the synopsis, I'd never in my life want to see.
And it is a particular melancholy, because Adele covered this song and didn't really get it. Neither, at the risk of being struck down by God for blaspheming against His most perfect creation, did George Michael. The only cover of "I Can't Make You Love Me" that really delivers, so far as I know, is the Bon Iver version, because it's just a dude in his living room with a piano. This is a song that loses its credibility when you try to make it slick--it's got to be sort low-fi, or rough, or rocky in order to avoid coming off as slightly Uncanny Valley. That's for the same reason that CW teen dramas don't feel all that much like high school--the lighting's too good, the people are too pretty, the conflicts too black-and-white. Which you don't really care that much about until it's placed in contrast with something that feels more real.
This song feels more real.
