Cover Me: Can’t Help Falling in Love

“I had a song we were gonna do, but in the end we didn’t learn it in time. I wanted to do–what’s the song from Blue Hawaii? It was his theme song, one which everyone relates to his Las Vegas period: ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.’ Which I think is a great song, but everyone relates to it as being Las Vegas-y, but I don’t think it is. I wanted to do that one, but we just didn’t get a chance to run it down before the show. — Bruce Springsteen to Ed Sciaky, August 19, 1978

In the 1961 film Blue Hawaii, Elvis presents his girlfriend’s grandmother (played by Flora K. Hayes, who actually wasn’t an actress but rather a congresswoman (fun fact #1)) with a music box that plays a “European love song.”

Of course, the European love song turns out to sound an awful lot like a pop hit in the making.

Fun fact #2: Elvis was actually right. That was a European love song.

Well, sort of. The lyrics are kind of a downer, but that music box was playing an 18th-century composition by Jean Paul-Egide Martini  called “Plaisir d’Amour” (Pleasing Love), adapted from the novel Celestine by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian.

The chorus of “Plaisir d’Amour” translates to…

Pleasure of love only lasts a moment
Heartache lasts a lifetime

…with verses like:

I gave up everything for the ungrateful Sylvia
She left me for another lover

So calling it a “European love song” might have been a bit of a stretch.

But there’s no doubt about the song that Elvis sang. Written by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is as romantic a ballad as they come. (Fun fact #3: it was originally written for a woman to sing, which is why there’s that odd non-rhyme (“would it be a sin”)–it was meant to rhyme with “I can’t help falling in love with him.”

Elvis released the song as a single and it became a smash hit, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and inspiring a carafe of covers in across just about every genre, from disco…

…to synth-pop…

…to reggae, in a version by UB40 that went all the way to #1 in 1993.

As for The King himself, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” made frequent appearances in his sets, often serving as his final number. (It was, in fact, the very last song he ever performed live.)

Over time, though, the song evolved far from its original arrangement, which explains Bruce’s “Las Vegas-y” remark in the pullquote at the top.

So when Bruce finally covered “Can’t Help Falling in Love” almost three years after he almost debuted it in Washington, DC, he went back to the original arrangement for inspiration.

Bruce’s reading of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is every bit as warm, tender, and sincere as Elvis’ original, and it benefits greatly from his solo acoustic arrangement.

Four years later, Bruce made it an encore staple on the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, this time with the E Street Band gently backing him.

“Can’t Help Falling Love” made frequent appearances on the Tunnel of Love Tour too, but by 1988 the arrangement had bloated a bit, becoming so synth-heavy that it sounds more dated than Elvis’ original.

Perhaps sensing that his version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was on the road to Las Vegas, Bruce retired the song after that tour, bringing it back only three times in the more than three decades since.

But when a fan requested it on the Working on a Dream Tour, Bruce and the band reclaimed it with a full-band arrangement that restored the romantic grandeur of the original while still allowing Bruce an opportunity for an impressively lush vocal.

It’s been more than a decade since Bruce last played “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” but a song that’s made 65 appearances across five separate tours can never be counted out.

Can’t Help Falling in Love
First performed: April 18, 1981 (Paris, France)
Last performed: November 10, 2009 (Cleveland, OH)