A while back, I spent an entire review of a previous Presley single offering him advice that he no doubt didn't want and certainly never asked for. I stand by all of it though I must admit that there's one that has now led me to eat my words. In my defense, I hadn't considered this one at first and only ended up including it in a subsequent entry. Cease and desist with the ballads, they suck.
Yeah, about that. Elvis Presley's slow songs used to sound like pleasant bits of nothing when held up against whichever rocker happened to be on the other side of basically any random single he had released between 1955 and well into his stint in the American armed forces. The girls (and, I daresay, a few of the guys) may have swooned over the weepies but it was the fast-paced dancefloor fillers that kept him in business - and rightly so. With "Love Me Tender" being the major exception, Presley's uptempo numbers always got the prominent A-side while the so-called ballads would languish on the flip. But now
As Tom Breihan points out, the spoken-word section sounds like Elvis "improvised it mid-take" even though it had been a part of the song from the get go. It could be the way he extends the the letter F on "I wonder if...you're lonesome tonight" which makes it seem like he's organizing his thoughts as he speaks, rather than trying to conjure up the next bit he was supposed to memorize. Breihan uses this passage as proof that The King could have been a far greater actor than the bulk of his movies ever suggested. (I think this is what Jason Alexander's character in Curb Your Enthusiasm meant by 'Acting Without Acting')
The spoken bit also has one of the most unintentionally funny lines you're likely to come across. "You know someone said that, 'the world's a stage," The King informs us. That someone would be this guy called Shakespeare who was sort of a big deal in his day and is even known to some in modern times. I suppose if you happen to be Elvis then even the Bard can just be this "someone" who once said something of note. But there's also something sweet about this. I'm old enough to remember when everyone used to think they were quoting Churchill. For example, I'm quite sure the old fart never actually said to the female parliamentarian who accused him of being drunk, "yes, and you, ma'am, are ugly - but in the morning I shall be sober". You'd quote Churchill just as you'd recite lines from The Simpsons: in order to pretend to be funny. But here, Elvis is intent on making a point and not out to prove what a clever bugger he is by quoting Shakespeare.
As post-army Elvis goes, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" is about as good as he gets. I'm not entirely convinced the composition is particularly brilliant but Presley gets everything out of it. The whole thing seems like a romantic gesture until the malice slowly reveals itself. Elvis sounds as gooey at song's end as at he did at the beginning which makes the spiteful lyrics even more hard hitting. And no one can convince me otherwise that he tweaked the final line to "tell me dear, are you loathsome tonight?"
It all works so well especially considering that it is one of those tunes that feels as if it has existed forever. I seldom hear it yet it's as familiar to me as "Yesterday". If I don't quite love it to pieces, then at least I greatly admire the gravitas that Elvis managed to give it. As always, however, my spirits are dampened considerably by "I Gotta Know" which is probably his most forgettable B-side to date. While his flip sides weren't always among his finest works, I can certainly imagine young fans wishing to give them a listen every so often. But in this instance it's clearly a case of 'play it once and never again'. As Neil Tennant someone said, people buy singles for the B-sides but I seriously doubt there was much interest in them coming from The King.
Score: 7
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