The Greatest Heartbreaking, Break Up Song Ever?

Is this Bonnie Raitt hit THE MOST POWERFUL break up song ever recorded?

Born 77 years ago, November 8th, 1949, Bonny Raitt is a trailblazer, performer, writer, gifted singer, slide guitarist and session player.

I Can’t Make You Love Me offers a profound emotion we all share—the ache of not being loved by someone we love. For some people, this is a memory, even a longing. For others, it’s the story of their life.

Raitt embodies this song, and from its opening lines (with the incredible Bruce Hornsby on piano), there is no denying its clarity and power.

Then comes the second verse…

I’ll close my eyes / then I won’t see / the love you don’t feel when you’re holding me / morning will come and I’ll do what’s right / just give me ’til then to give up this fight / and I will give up this fight

'Cause I can't make you love me If you don't

You can't make your heart feel Something it won't

Here in the dark In these final hours

I will lay down my heart And I'll feel the power

But you won’t / No, you won't

'Cause I can't make you love me If you don’t

Every time I sing this song, the second verse into the chorus, I get teary…

Written by songwriters Mike Reid (a former Cincinnati Bengal defensive tackle!) and Allen Shamblin—the ache builds and then lifts harder like a beautiful yet resilient broken heart into an exquisitely painful chorus—refusing to resolve...

Reid said the title line came from a news story where a guy ‘got himself in trouble,’ lost his wife and his family and said, ‘Well, you can’t make a woman love you if she don’t.’

In Bonnie's own words: “I mean, 'I Can't Make You Love Me' is no picnic. I love that song, so does the audience. So it's almost a sacred moment when you share that, that depth of pain with your audience. Because they get really quiet, and I have to summon ... some other place in order to honor that space.”

So I honour the song here—and the shared, sacred human emotion.

And now I'll offer an opinion: we are loved.

The Rumble in The Jungle

On this day October 30th, 1974, one of the most electrifying fights in history took place: The Rumble in the Jungle.

Muhammad Ali vs World Heavyweight Champion George Foreman

The stage was worldwide. Kinshasa, Zaire. Hot. Sweaty. Alive. The bout was presented (mostly by Don King) as an African-American, back to Africa vibe—with a brutal dictator running Zaire. The irony remains. An estimated one billion people tuned in.

The great George Foreman told me, in Facing Ali: “I figured I’m just gonna walk in and win this fight in maybe one, two, three rounds. Knock him out. The most confident I’d ever been in a boxing match.”

It’s hard to express how dominant George Foreman was at that time: 40-0 with 37 knockouts—and he'd destroyed Frazier and Norton inside of two rounds.

Ali was a 4-1 underdog and considered past his prime in his post-exile years, with a loss to Joe Frazier and an unknown Ken Norton.

The general public often describes the fight as Foreman pounding Ali for seven rounds and, having punched himself out, gets knocked out. This is inaccurate.

Yes, the Rope-a-Dope was amazing and shocking.

But Ali peppered George from the opening bell with insulting overhand rights, and staggered George in the fifth. Yes, Ali took some big shots, but was ahead on all three judging cards at the end: 68–66, 70–67, and 69–66.

I was nine years old and Ali was, in his own words and in my eyes, “the greatest.” This shocking victory elevated Ali’s aura to mythic proportions. Yes, he defeated Smokin’ Joe in Manila a year later, with courage, but this was Muhammad Ali’s last brilliant performance.

George told me: "[Muhammad] found something to fight for other than money and championship belts. And when that person finds something like that, you can't hardly beat them."

In a perfect world, Muhammad Ali would have walked away from the sport.

This is not a perfect world. And boxing is a brutal sport.

check out the novel Understanding Ken.

I Woke Up Next To Dolly Parton

My book—Hey, Songwriter—woke up in the best possible creative company this morning.

Dolly Parton. 

Seeing her stand next to me, so to speak, made me teary.

Dolly was a once-in-a-lifetime entertainer and talent. A brilliant songwriter. A fantastic storyteller. 

I can add, without envy, that I would love to have had a tiny fraction of her songwriting success.

But if given the choice between a fraction of Dolly's songwriting success and embodying a fraction of her glowing spirit, kindness and wisdom? No contest.

Have I ever witnessed anyone in the public eye who could defuse rudeness, gawking, bigotry or any other negative impulse more consistently, skilfully, charismatically, lovingly, generously or with more humour, than Dolly Parton? I don’t think so. Have you? Just watch her deal with, say, Barbara Walters’ questions about being a hillbilly or the way she dressed…

Dolly had a gift—a genius. Her awareness of who she was, the talent she had, and what she believed in, was publicly clear, unblinking and unflappable—and comedically brilliant. It was a kind of down-home verbal kung fu—or maybe a sweet kiss after a firm talking to.

Dolly was tough, too. In 1974, Elvis Presley—the King—wanted to record I Will Always Love You. Dolly was over the moon. Then Elvis’s notorious manager Colonel Parker called up and told Dolly she would have to give up 50% of the song’s publishing rights for Elvis to record the song. For Dolly, the publishing rights of her songs were for her family after her death. Parker wouldn’t budge. Dolly cried all night and said no. Elvis never recorded I Will Always Love You.

Eighteen years later, for the soundtrack to the movie The Bodyguard, Whitney Houston lifted Dolly’s song to celestial heights with a jaw-dropping vocal performance. Whitney’s version became, at the time, the best-selling single by a female artist in music history. Dolly still owned all the publishing, making enough money, she joked, “to buy Graceland.” And Dolly never criticized Elvis’s manager.

Where did this genius come from? 

Dolly was born into dirt-floor poverty—she said her first doll was a corncob!—and old-time faith. From her twelve-kid upbringing in a two-room shack at the base of the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, it seems Dolly—through some kind of miraculous celestial inhalation—instinctively absorbed Jesus’ most spiritually exacting teachings from the Sermon on the Mount. 

Humility. Generosity of spirit. Treating all others as she wished to be treated. Do not judge. Love your enemies. Crack jokes and laugh whenever possible (Dolly added that to the sermon).

And from there—through the sticky trappings of show biz, fame, poverty, wealth, adoration and bigotry—she seemed to give those teachings back to the world through a gorgeous Southern twang, sparkling rhinestones, acrylic nails, body-hugging clothes and skyscraper wigs that would make Louis XIV and Marge Simpson blush. 

The irony! The contradiction! The wonder! She is the Dolly Lama.

The 5’1” Dolly in spiritual heels instinctively, beautifully stood tall for the vulnerable—for example, providing hundreds of millions of books to kids who didn’t have access to books. Dolly the librarian! Talk about a storyteller believing in storytelling.

Dolly was a country artist who explicitly loved her gay fans (and family members) when loving gay fans was not favourable to a country singer’s reputation or career. She didn’t counterpunch, she deflected—not with silence but with kind, razor-sharp, self-aware, intuitive humour and country wisdom.

When asked if she ever wished she was a man, she said no, but if she had been, she would’ve been a drag queen. And if she had been gay, she said she would’ve come running out of the closet!

As sure as Jesus ate with social outcasts, Dolly credited the inspiration for her look to the “town trash whore” (as little Dolly heard her called) who lived in the “city” closest to her holler. 

“I didn't know what any of that meant and I would just see this woman with yellow hair piled on her head, her bright red lipstick, red nails, high-heeled shoes. And I thought she was the prettiest I'd ever seen.”

In her 1991 song, Family, Dolly sang: 

Some are preachers / some are gay / some are addicts / some are strays / but not a one is turned away / when it's family

Dolly wrote 3,000 songs, from little ditties to heartbreakers to mega-hits 9 to 5, Jolene and I Will Always Love You. She was undeniably, supremely talented. But I swear that isn’t her greatest gift. It seems with every chance she got, to quote the Sermon on the Mount, she let her “light shine before others”—with that smile, those quick lines, her love, and her actions. 

What an example.

I can’t say for sure if the Sermon on the Mount was the creation of a human or a Greater Intelligence Who loves us all. I hope the latter. 

But was Dolly the creation of a higher intelligence? That’s so easy. Yes. A God with a fantastic sense of humour Who, after She was finished, gazed but didn’t ogle Her creation. She said, “It is good. Very, very good.” And it was. 

Then maybe God ogled. She couldn’t help Herself.

And Dolly, well aware of her charms, said something witty back—and we all laughed in the warmth and wisdom of her light.