♫ A Lover’s Concerto ♫ (Redux)

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Tonight, after ranting and thoroughly wrecking my psyche over things I cannot control, I went in search of a fun song … you know, something that just gets the feet tapping and makes you wanna move!  Just for fun.  I did not intend to redux a song, but thought that the least I could do was come up with an original, but … try though I might, I guess my heart just wasn’t into it and every song I seized on was a downer.  So, I went back to my archives and found this song that I haven’t played since August 2018 … and best of all … it is a fun, toe-tapping song!

A Lover’s Concerto is a pop song written by American songwriters Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, who wrote some of the Four Seasons’ biggest hits, and recorded in 1965 by the Toys. A Lover’s Concerto sold more than two million copies and was awarded gold record certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Critic Dave Thompson wrote of the Toys’ version, “Few records are this perfect. Riding across one of the most deceptively hook-laden melodies ever conceived …”  I don’t know that I would go that far, but it is a pretty decent song.

The melody was adapted from Minuet In G,  a composition written by Christian Petzold. Minuet In G is often thought to be by Johann Sebastian Bach because it was included in a book of sheet music kept by Bach’s wife Anna Magdalena.

As re the origins of the song, Denny Randell explains …

“In those days, I used to see a lot young girls, and they would like to write poetry of sorts. So I wanted this to be basically a romantic poem, and I came up with the title, which also reflected the classical background of ‘A Lover’s Concerto.’ I just felt that it could work, I just had this feeling about it, even though it is not generally the way you write songs and hooks. The title was the combination of the feeling of both the lyric and the music. And it worked.”

And it did work … the song hit #1 in both the U.S. and Canada, and #5 in the UK.

A Lover’s Concerto
The Toys

How gentle is the rain, that falls softly on the meadow;
Birds high upon the trees serenade the flow’rs with their melodies.

Oh, see there beyond the hill, the bright colors of the rainbow;
Some magic from above made this day for us, just to fall in love.
How gentle is the rain, that falls gently on the meadow;
Birds high upon the trees serenade the flow’rs with their melodies.

Oh, see there beyond the hill, the bright colors of the rainbow;
Some magic from above made this day for us, just to fall in love.
You’ll hold me in your arms, and say once again you love me;
And if your love is true, ev’rything will be just as wonderful.
You’ll hold me in your arms, and say once again you love me;

Songwriters: Sandy Linzer / Denny Randell
A Lover’s Concerto lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

17 thoughts on “♫ A Lover’s Concerto ♫ (Redux)”

  1. When this first came out I could not understand a word of it. The pitch or something was too high. It sounded like cats fighting. Somewhere along the line I finally started to make out the words, and it got better for me. No idea what I said in 2018, if anything, but it got played so often I hated it. Very hard on the ears then.

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  5. Well, I haven’t thought about this one in many years. You’re right, it’s a bit of a toe-tapper. . Doesn’t help an old man with a foggy memory trying to follow the lyrics though when they don’t follow the order as printed. Someone was slacking that day.
    Cwtch

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  7. A lovely song that brings back memories of the last summer before I became a teenager, and received my first transistor radio for my birthday. The pirate radio stations played this one a lot, so I heard it often.

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      • It was Radio Luxembourg or the pirates for us, but the same scenario! We didn’t get Wolfman Jack but we’d heard of him, of course. From his appearance in the American Graffiti movie he seemed quite a character!

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