(Credits: Elvis Presley / Album Cover)
Sat 20 December 2025 5:00, UK
The 20th century was when the idea of modern pop music was invented, and sure, Mozart may well have been a proverbial chart topper in the 18th century and a pop star to the royal elite of the gallery, but music delivered with lyricism and centred around what we now know as a hook only really arrived in the last 100 years.Â
While the idea of pop slowly emerged through the weeds, piggybacking off the blues rock artists of the 1950s, it took one global superstar to pull it from the sludge and thrust it into the sunlight, and that person was, of course, Elvis Presley.Â
‘The King’ experienced parallel fame to The Beatles, who ultimately profited off his own music, but did so all on his own, and with the weight of the world’s expectation on his shoulders, he quickly became a musician imprisoned by his own status, but sadly, it resulted in the slow and steady decline of his artistry.
The architect of that was his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who upon the first sight of a young blues playing Presley, saw dollar signs in his eyes for this young man was ready-made to market to post-war America. His musical style was familiar enough to be accepted, yet rebellious enough to innovate, and his artistic talent was perfectly matched by his charm; hence, capitalising on that, Parker turned Elvis into a star of both the airwaves and silver screen, starring him in a string of relatively crap movies, whereby his voice would also act as a soundtrack.
It was a double-barrelled approach to commercialism that, yes, made Elvis the global superstar he was, but similarly prevented him from fulfilling his artistic potential.
It largely meant that whenever he did get the time to exclusively work in the studio or play gigs on stage, he would fall into the relative safety of cover songs, despite having the voice that was custom-made for songwriting of his own.
In that process, we got Elvis in the world of The Beatles, Little Richard and Frank Sinatra, which you would be forgiven for thinking was him putting his hand to songs that everybody knew, but according to BMI, there is one hit he covered that was actually the 20th century’s most well-known song, and it was on The Righteous Brothers’ ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.
The song was written by renowned producer Phil Spector, using his ‘Wall of Sound’ technique, along with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and it was rumoured that the band took nearly eight hours to lay down the vocals, which, upon listening, must have been for good reason, given how brilliant they are.
Ultimately, that is what made it a great cover choice for Presley, whose voice is allowed the freedom to rain all over this track. It is the sort of song that without the corrupt influence of Parker, could have become his, were he exposed to the best producers and songwriters of the 1960s, and in the cover below, you can see the glimpses of the artist Elvis could have been, were he lent the chance he so deserved.
Related Topics