This is a bit random... but it's late at night, and the house is quiet and I've been sucked into a youtube/wikipedia vortex. And this... this is just so gorgeous.
"I Can't Make You Love Me" is a 1991 popular song, written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin and recorded by Bonnie Raitt on her Luck of the Draw album from that year. In August 2000, Mojo magazine voted "I Can't Make You Love Me" #8 on its The 100 Greatest Songs Of All Time list. The idea for the song came to Reid while reading an article about a man arrested for getting drunk and shooting at his girlfriend's car. The judge asked him if he had learned anything, to which he replied, "I learned, Your Honor, that you can't make a woman love you if she don't." Reid and Shamblin were both country music songwriters, who according to some accounts originally wrote the song as a fast, bluegrass number. Upon slowing down the tempo considerably, they realized the song gained considerable power. It then made its way to Raitt.
Raitt recorded the vocal in just one take in the studio, later saying that it was so sad a song that she could not recapture the emotion: "We'd try to do it again and I just said, 'You know, this ain't going to happen.'"
How awesome is that little backstory? I love it so much.
The Bon Iver version is also really paired down and lovely. Ahhh... And now I'm ready for bed.
xo
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