Bonnie Raitt: I Can't Make You Love Me

Bit O' Covers

Bonnie Raitt: I Can’t Make You Love Me

By Swapmeet Louie ⋅ November 30, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Filed Under Bonnie Raitt, Covers, denison witmer, george michael, nancy wilson, neal schon

A few years ago, my brother and I had a discussion about how vastly different our musical tastes are. He is a professor at NYU, and is totally into Broadway music. I, on the other hand… well, you know what my tastes are based on what this site is all about… anyhow, we talked for quite a while and couldn’t find any common ground until one of us mentioned Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” I forget who mentioned it first, but needless to say, we both said, “Yeah!” and felt content that we DO have something in common.

I remember my brother talking about this song as if he knew the composers. To be honest, I wouldn’t doubt that he DID know the composers… he’s kind of a big deal. His apartment smells of rich mahogany, and Merlin Olsen visits on occasion….

During Thanksgiving dinner this last Thursday, he told me of wonderful rendition of the song by Denison Witmer. I hadn’t heard of this version, so he let me hear it through his iPod. I was really impressed by Witmer’s performance, but felt compelled to go dig out Raitt’s original recording and spin it again… I haven’t listened to this song in a long time.

“I Can’t Make You Love Me” has got to be one of the most heartbreakiest songs ever written. Trying to “make” someone love you is a given in life… everyone feels and experiences it at some point about someone or something… and I’m not being blasphemous when I say that even GOD deals with this struggle on a daily basis. Let’s face it, God can’t MAKE us love Him. Either we do or we don’t… that’s what faith is.

Like many fans of this song, I first heard this song from Bonnie Raitt’s album Luck of the Draw. It’s perhaps my favorite song of hers, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Bruce Hornsby AND Benmont Tench hold keyboard duties in the song (well, maybe a little)… no, I love this song because of the pure emotion exhibited in not only Raitt’s vocals but the song itself. There’s a loneliness to this tune that has been unmatched, and no matter how many people cover it, Bonnie Raitt owns this song.

The seeds of this song are explained at Songfacts.com:

”This was written by songwriting team of Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin. Reid got the idea from a newspaper article about a guy who got drunk and shot up his girlfriend’s car. When the judge sentenced him and asked him what he had learned, he said, “You can’t make a woman love you if she don’t.”

The song was originally a fast tempo, bluegrass-style song. After slowing it down, though, the two writers realized this was the way to go and marketed the song that way.

According to an interview for 107.1 KGSR, Raitt remarked how she sang the vocal for “I Can’t Make You Love Me” just once in the studio. ONCE. Wow. “We’d try to do it again and I just said, “You know, this ain’t going to happen,’” she says.

This last Thursday night, my brother and I started talking about this song again… he focused on the lyric, “I will lay down my heard and I’ll feel the power / but you won’t, no you won’t.”

He thought that “Power” is such a great way to describe this feeling, that it is a sense of control that we GIVE to the one we “can’t make love us.” They don’t necessarily want it, but we give it to them, nonetheless. There’s really nothing we can do about it, nor is there anything they can do about it. Nobody wants this, it just is.

I told him, “Dude, that’s pretty deep.” And then we ate some pumpkin pie and laughed about the second Star Wars themed Robot Chicken.

The saddest part of the song is the fact that the protagonist is asking the one they love (but who doesn’t love them back) to be intimate with them.

Lay down with me, tell me no lies
Just hold me close, don’t patronize
Don’t patronize me

There is no doubt in their mind that they need to leave this situation, yet they remain. The second verse explains more of their plans for the future:

Morning will come and I’ll do what’s right
Just give me till then to give up this fight

Putting these two lines into context, I get the impression that they have said this to themselves time and time again, yet they still remain. The other person probably knows what is going on, but they still maintain the status quo because… well, it’s convenient, it’s a “sure thing,” and it IS a feeling of power.

A LOT of information is revealed between the two parties, and all the listener gets is one point of view. I totally dig it!

Rolling Stone magazine ranks “I Can’t Make You Love Me” at #331 in their Top 500 Greatest Songs of All The Universe and Beyond. It hit #18 on the Billboard pop singles chart and helped Raitt continue her rebirth in the early 80’s/late 90’s.

I’d like to thank my brother for the different cover versions of the song in the Dig-It section. They’re all fun to hear, but in my opinion, none can compare to Raitt’s. It’s interesting to note that (aside from Witmer’s acoustic recording) all these versions basically start the exact same way Raitt’s does. This just goes to show you how definitive her version is.

I’m glad my brother reminded me of this phenomenal song. It always gives us a subject to discuss that does NOT end up in an argument.

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