‘All You Need Is Love’is a charming little song by California. It’s a song that brings a smile to your face as you listen to it, except it’s not a little song but a cover, if you will, of the iconic song by The Beatles from 1967.
The original is about a minute longer than the California version, which has, according to the artist, ‘the overdub of Loretta Pieper Fradkin on top of that track’.
Of course, one has to listen to the original to have more to say on the cover. The songs deceive you into believing that it’s one song, but in the original, John Lennon sounds more subdued, whereas the California version has deeper vocals, with the instrumentation perhaps sounding more gruff. In effect, the song is not an exact copy of the original, and in my books, that’s a good thing.
But if listening to the California version is charming, the original has more fun in it, which is to say it has more sounds than just the singing. Listen to it, and you get a carnival feel to it. The downside with the California version is that it ends abruptly, whereas the original seems to end without friction.
The song comes from the last California album, Postcard from London.
SCORE/Good: It’s a good thing for an iconic song to be brought back to life, if you will. For this song, my opinion is that it’s hard to review a cover of an iconic song like ‘All You Need Is Love’. It’s hard not to fall into the trap of seeing the original and more iconic song as better, but I should say that while the lightness in the original is amazing, the deepishness of the California version gets some good loving from me!
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