BuAYYY-BuAAehh
THE ZOMBIES, “Can’t Nobody Love You” | Begin Here, 1965
Solomon Burke was the first to record and release this James Mitchell song in 1963, and that version is a sweet and sultry country tune riding Burke’s almost-too-good, trumpet-like pining. Burke’s “babies,” as pretty as they can be, aren’t quite believable — perhaps because true love isn’t always pretty. The Moody Blues, too, covered the song in their 1965 debut, The Magnificent Moodies, but singer Denny Laine’s slower, harmonica-laced translation feels overwrought (though he enunciates a few good-to-excellent “babies”). The same year as Moodies, it’s The Zombies’s version of “Can’t Nobody Love You” — on their debut album, Begin Here — that stands out. Released in the boon of the British Invasion, the album is uneven — both remarkable and uninspired, depending on the song. Some Zombies connoisseurs remain disappointed that Begin Here contained so many covers — nods to their R&B influences. The originals on the album, including “She’s Not There” and “The Way I Feel Inside,” certainly hold up today. But with their cover of “Can’t Nobody Love You,” they do what a band is supposed to do with a cover — imbue it with their character and sound to create something that becomes their own.
With his bandmates laying down what sounds like a mid-tempo waltz, lead singer Colin Blunstone’s performance conveys a spiked, early-punk aesthetic as well as a rustic and rolling land of farm houses and open windows and two lovers engaged in bed-headed appreciation of each other. Mitchell’s lyrics get altered a bit by Blunstone, maybe on the fly and in the moment, and even for the better. But the message is the same. The arrangements build in improbable claims, from impossibly simple (“Can’t nobody love you like I’m loving you,” “Can’t nobody kiss you like I’m kissing you”) to a hollering proclamation that previous admirers stand no chance (“Sam bought you cake and ice cream / Called you cherry pie / Ray Charles called you his sunshine / But you're the apple, apple of my eye, oh”). (Side-side note: Any interpretation of this song has to leave the listener wondering who the lover was that Mitchell was referring to — with the clues being that she previously won the hearts of both Sam Cooke and Ray Charles.)
Unlike the Burke and Moody Blues versions, Blunstone only sings one “baby,” at just six seconds into the song. It feels plain, authentic, and it has a loving, complex lilt to it — it climbs over a little hill of uncertainty into an assured resolution. It’s sung in a ragged voice that only comes at 5 a.m. after a night of sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking. It’s a little untidy, like the unmade bed of two lovers.
