This is the last day of Love Is In Da Blog 2023, and I want to thank Bee for inviting me to participate again this year. Today’s theme is "your choice," and I’ve chosen a song from 1968, "La La (Means I Love You)" by The Delfonics. It’s an early example of Philly Soul, and in fact was issued on Philly Soul Records and was written (with William Hart) and produced (with Stan Watson) by Philly soul legend Thom Bell. It reached #4 on the Hot 100 and #2 on the R&B/Soul chart in 1968, and reached #19 in the UK in 1971.
Today, Bee wants "An Alternative Love Song from your 50’s." I turned 50 in 2006, meaning I’m looking for a song from 2006 to 2015. Understand, I haven’t listened to a whole lot of current music since about 1995, and I wouldn’t know an "alternative" song if one bit me in the ass. Fortunately, I Ducked this page of "The 50 Best Alt-Rock Love Songs," and this was one of them. From 2010, Future Islands, “Walking Through That Door.”
Today is a "your choice" day, and I’m going with this lovely song by the Fab Four, from the soundtrack for the 1964 movie A Hard Day’s Night. John Lennon wrote it, although Paul McCartney insists that they worked on it together. "If I Fell" was the B side to "And I Love Her," and only reached #53 on the Hot 100.
Bee got today’s prompt from Jim: "A Love Song that includes a commitment or a promise." As I mentioned yesterday, I decided that this song was a much better fit for today.
I’m guessing that nearly everyone has seen the 1992 movie Sister Act which starred Whoopi Goldberg, Maggie Smith, and Harvey Keitel. The logline reads, "When a nightclub singer is forced to take refuge from the mob in a convent, she ends up turning the convent choir into a soulful chorus complete with a Motown repertoire, until the sudden celebrity of the choir jeopardizes her identity." One of the songs that Deloris (Whoopi’s character) teaches the nuns is "I Will Follow Him," a hit for Little Peggy March from 1963.
This was a stroke of genius for the writers, because that is exactly what nuns (more correctly religious Sisters) profess in their final vows, when they become "Brides of Christ": that they will go wherever they’re told to go, taking the orders of their Mother Superior as though the orders were from God Himself. It changes the whole sense of what the song means.
Here’s the final scene from the movie, in wnich they are performing for the Pope.
Bee wants a "spiritual love song" today. I decided that the one I was going to use today would fit better with tomorrow’s theme, so I looked to my favorite gospel singer of all time, the great Mahalia Jackson. Every song this wonderful, blessed woman sang was a love song to God, and her voice was a blessing to all who heard it. She had a five-minute TV show that WBKB-TV in Chicago would run every morning at 7:55. Sometimes she sang slow, deep spirituals, and other times she would rock the house. "My Lord And I" was the latter. From 1961…
The Sound of One Hand Typing 