“What the World Needs Now is Love” (Jackie DeShannon)

Celebrating one full year of classic songs on this blog, today’s classic song of the day is “What the World Needs Now is Love” by Jackie DeShannon. Released in April of 1965, this song went to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and remains a favorite to this day.

I started the Classic Song of the Day blog on February 18, 2023. It was kind of an extension of what I’d been doing in my own personal Facebook feed, featuring some of my favorite songs with some interesting background details about how the song or the single came to be. My introductory post was about composer Burt Bacharach, who had passed away a few days earlier, and my first classic song featured was Mr. Bacharach’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” from the musical Promises, Promises, as recorded by Dionne Warwick.

It’s only fitting then, on this one-year anniversary, to feature another classic song by the legendary team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The interesting thing about this one is that it took an incredibly long time to write—and all because Mr. David couldn’t come up with the right lyrics for the opening verse. He told the story to American Songwriter, remembering that he would often get song ideas on the long commute from his home on Long Island to Famous Music’s offices in Manhattan:

“One day, I thought of the first two lines of this song:

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of

“Before I got to Manhattan I had the rest of the chorus set the way it is today. Then I needed the verse section. When I began to write the first verse, everything I thought about just seemed off: We don’t need a plane to fly faster, we don‘t need a submarine to go deeper…. I tried and tried, showed it to Burt, then put it away and went on to something else.

“In a month or two or three, I tried again. It was always the same thing. I needed something to compare it to and everything I thought about had nothing to do with the person I was talking to – God. It took more time to write these lyrics than any other. I realized that I needed to write the antithesis – what we didn’t need. One day, on the ride to New York, it came to me.

Lord, we don’t need another mountain,
There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb,
There are oceans and rivers enough to cross,
Enough to last till the end of time

“I knew that was it. I wrote about all of the things that had to do with nature and what God gives us. I gave the lyrics to Burt and he wrote a fabulous melody.“

According to Mr. Bacharach, it took his partner more like several years, not months, to finish the song. He said they had the main melody and chorus back in 1962 but it took another two years for Mr. David to finish the lyrics. Months or years, it was worth the effort.

Not surprisingly, the duo originally offered the song to Dionne Warwick, who was kind of the official interpreter of their songs at the time. She turned it down, however, saying it was “too preachy” for her tastes. They also offered it to Gene Pitney, but they couldn’t agree on the money. So they finally played it for Jackie DeShannon, a songwriter herself, who jumped at the opportunity.

The recording session for “What the World Needs Now is Love” was held on March 23, 1965, at New York’s Bell Sound Studios. As was the norm for him back then, Mr. Bacharach did the arranging, producing, and conducting. The result was something special, even for Bacharach and David, a hopeful, uplifting song that spoke to generations—especially that generation living through the tumult and turmoil of the 1960s.

“What the World Needs Now is Love” is a song that doesn’t get old. Its message is just as meaningful today as it was almost sixty years ago. It’s a great song to celebrate one year of classic songs on this blog, one I personally love and never tire of. Love, after all, is the only thing that there’s just too little of.

And thank you to all of you who’ve followed this blog over the past year. I appreciate your support—and there’s plenty more to come!