“What Love Can Do” was the first song written for Working on a Dream, and the fourth single released from that album. Yet it labors in obscurity, buried deep within an underappreciated album and performed live exactly once.
What’s to explain the ambivalence from both fans and artist?
Heck if I know. It’s a great pop song–light in substance, dense in orchestration, and uplifting in spirit. It doesn’t carry the heft of Bruce’s more ambitious work, but like much of Working on a Dream, it isn’t meant to.
Working on a Dream is an interesting animal. Lyrically, it’s a meditation on aging, and the wisdom acquired through life experience. Musically, it’s an homage to the lush arrangements of California sixties pop, which was originally the domain of the young.
Maybe that’s why most fans didn’t know what to make of it. Regardless, “What Love Can Do” is a perfect example of the album’s aspirations and achievements.
The song is ultimately a moral lesson, a pep talk for the disheartened–or as Bruce called it at the time, “a sort of ‘love in the time of Bush’ meditation.”
When Bruce waxes moralistic, he tends to go biblical in the process. He wastes no time doing so here:
There’s a pillar in the temple where I carved your name
There’s a soul sitting sad and blue
Now the remedies you’ve taken are all in vain
Let me show you what love can do
Let me show you what love can do
The “pillar in the temple” is a promise of eternal faith, loyalty, service, and love. (Bruce will contrast it with another eternal mark in the final verse.)
And it sounds like it’s sorely needed, because whoever Bruce is singing to is dejected and despondent. She’s done everything she could, tried every measure, to no avail. The singer’s declaration must strike her (as it does us) as naïve and hollow. But Bruce knows that, too–which is why he qualifies it:
Darling I can’t stop the rain
Or turn your black sky blue
Well let me show you what love can do
Let me show you what love can do
And that’s the message of the song right there. In many of Bruce’s songs, the payoff comes at the end, but nothing’s hidden here. There are no plot twists.
In an age where the deck seems stacked against us, in a world where hard work can’t earn us a fair shake, where hate and fear are allowed to take root and score points, love alone can’t fix things. But it can give us the strength and support we need to keep fighting.
Well now our truth lay shattered, you stood at world’s end
As the dead sun rose in view
Well if any of this matters, with a kiss my friend
Let me show you what love can do
Let me show you what love can do
Darling we can’t stop this train
When it comes crashing through
But let me show you what love can do
Let me show you what love can do
Our narrator humbly sings “if any of this matters,” but he knows it does. Love can’t stop a train but it can keep you from being knocked down by the force of it.
When the bed you lie on is nails and rust
And the love you’ve given’s turned to ashes and dust
When the hope you’ve gathered’s drifted to the wind
It’s you and I my friend (you and I my friend)
You and I now friend
Here our memory lay corrupted and our city lay dry
Let me make this vow to you
Here where it’s blood for blood and an eye for an eye
Let me show you what love can do
Make no mistake: while the song is written as an intimate conversation, Bruce isn’t speaking to one person–he’s speaking to his country. “What Love Can Do” was written and recorded before Magic was even released, and politics were certainly on his mind as he wrote it.
The timing is important: especially with the “hope” reference, it’s easy to view “What Love Can Do” as after-the-fact testimony, given that the song debuted after Barack Obama’s election. But the song was written and recorded before anyone knew that was in the cards, which makes Bruce’s faith and resolution much more remarkable. We tend to forget a decade on just how bleak the world seemed back then.
Bruce bookends the song with another biblical reference to eternal remembrance, this time noting that none of us are without sin, none of us perfect–but despite that we can still choose at any time to embrace our better nature:
Here we bear the mark of Cain
We’ll let the light shine through
Let me show you what love can do
Let me show you what love can do
Given the turn of events in the world these past few years, as nations shift rightward after years of progress, one might accuse Bruce of being naive in releasing this song when he did.
I choose to believe he was simply early.
“What Love Can Do” is more timely now than it was when it was written, and it cries out for an airing on Bruce’s next tour.
For now, though, enjoy the one and only time Bruce performed the song live–in Philadelphia, late in the Working on a Dream Tour.
Bonus: Here’s some brief footage of Bruce playing an acoustic “What Love Can Do” from the Working on a Dream recording sessions.
What Love Can Do
Recorded: mid-2007
Released: Working on a Dream (2009)
First performed: October 14, 2009
Last performed: October 14, 2009
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