Baby Is It Love
(the Waltz)
Take Two: Sometimes a song can be written a couple of different ways...
Music by Michael Gould
Lyrics by Tom Lehrer
THE PLAYERS
Michael Gould — piano, vocal
THE COMMENTARY
LYRICS
baby is it love?
is it love?)
i see flashing strobes
and mirrored globes
and stereo merry-go-rounds
baby, is it love?
or is the dope?
a choir sings
and a thousand strings
make luxuriant, prurient sounds
baby, is it love?
or is it the dope?
you're, like --- beautiful
this is real, this is right, this is it!
you're, like --- beautiful
this is it, but i have to admit
though you’re hugging me
and there’s sunsets and rockets and thunder
something’s bugging me
and I think of tomorrow and wonder
some kind of magic has captured us
thrilled and enraptured us
but
is this emotion devotion, as deep as the ocean
or what?
was that a tender caress
or only a grope?
baby, is it love?
or is it the dope?
Behind the Song
The first version was disco/funk. But I imagine this is more what Tom Lehrer had in mind...
...After finishing the album, with Baby Is It Love in its disco/funk form, I began to be curious a) what it would be like to write and record the song more as Tom Lehrer might have imagined it, and b) what it would be like to write a significantly different song to the same lyric as another.
I took into account the suggestions Tom made to me after he listened to the disco/funk version, melodic turns, and his suggestion that perhaps we not leave the joke to the end but spell it out nearer the beginning of the song.
Thank you to Chuck Peden and especially to Jimi Fischer for being my ears and critics on this version. Jimi directed my singing, then mixed and mastered the song.
