Words of Love

Buddy Holly recorded Words of Love in a single take, but it wasn’t just any session: on April 8, 1957, at the Norman Petty Recording Studios in Clovis, New Mexico, the musician locked himself in to experiment with vocals. Holly had no one else to harmonize with, so he layered his own recordings on tape, creating multiple tracks of Buddy Holly singing in different registers. The result is a song that sounds like a duet but was made by one person. The jangle pop guitar and that vocal play make it stand out among recordings of the era, where the norm was to record everything live with the band. Here, the technical detail—the doubled voice—gave it an intimate and sophisticated air for a 1957 single.

The song hit the market on June 20 of that same year, under the Coral label, but it wasn’t an immediate hit. However, its structure—two minutes and fifty-six seconds long—made it a recurring track in later compilations of Holly’s work. Thirty-six years later, in 1993, a British compilation album titled Words of Love reached number one on the charts and earned a gold disc. Earlier, in 1957, another version—by The Diamonds—had climbed to position thirteen on the Billboard Hot 100, though as a composer Holly, not as a performer. The Beatles also included it in their repertoire: they recorded it on October 18, 1964, for Beatles for Sale, staying true to the original style with harmonies close to Holly’s. For them, it was a tribute to an artist they admired, and they did it in just two takes, with vocal doubling that reinforced the sound.