Elvis Presley – Burning Love

I’m on the second Peter Guralnick book about Elvis and I’m in the year of 1972…the jumpsuit, karate, Vegas Elvis. Though it had obvious hit potential, Elvis had just separated from his wife, Priscilla, and was not in the mood for a Rock n Roll number, so he wasn’t excited to record it. Elvis’ producer Felton Jarvis had to persuade him that the song was worth trying, and after 6 attempts, he recorded a suitable take. The song is great and Elvis’s performance is on the mark.

This song would peak at #2 in the Billboard 100 in 1972. Burning Love would his last top ten Billboard hit. The song was also released on an album titled Burning Love and Hits from his Movies: Volume 2… an album with this song and the rest very forgettable movie songs. This was another Colonel Tom Parker special. It was released on RCA’s budget label. 

Album Covers… Elvis’s album packaging in the 1970s was just bland to me. Elvis…on stage…in the jumpsuit…in a karate pose and holding a mic. Since the sixties, album covers had been an important part of representing the artist. His covers were unmemorable and were put out cheaply to make a quick buck…very shortsighted and very Colonel Parker. The only one I remember well was the Aloha from Hawaii album with the satellite but it still didn’t compete with Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and every other major act at the time. His album covers were interchangeable with each other for the most part. I’m not downing Elvis’s music but I just wish more thought would have been put into designing and marketing.

I’m not saying they had to be all works of art but a little more distinguishable.

When you see Abbey Road, Led Zeppelin II, Who’s Next, Dark Side of the Moon you know what songs are on them by just looking at them…Elvis albums?

Image result for elvis presley 1970s album coversRelated imageImage result for elvis presley 1970s burning love album

Related imageImage result for elvis presley 1970s album covers

From Songfacts

This was Elvis’ biggest hit single Stateside since “Suspicious Minds” in 1969 and his last Top 10 hit in the American Hot 100 or pop charts.

This song about the breakdown of a relationship had already featured on the self-titled 1972 album by Country-Soul pioneer Arthur Alexander. 

In addition to making the original commercial recording of a song later covered by Elvis, Arthur Alexander has the claim of being the only songwriter in history to have his songs sung by The Beatles (“Anna (Go to Him))”), the Rolling Stones (“You’d Better Move On”) and Bob Dylan (“Sally Sue Brown”).

Dennis Linde, who wrote this song and also provided the guitar intro, was reclusive by nature and was at one time tagged “Nashville’s best-kept songwriting secret.” Apart from “Burning Love,” most of the successful songs he wrote were for Country stars, including,Roger Miller (“Tom Green County Fair” – 1970), Garth Brooks (“Callin’ Baton Rouge” – 1993) and The Dixie Chicks (“Goodbye Earl” – 1999.) In Britain, Welsh Rock and Roll revivalist Shakin’ Stevens recorded a #10 hit with his version of Linde’s “A Letter to You” in 1984.

In 2005, an Australian woman, who was evidently not a fan of this song, stabbed her partner in the back, thigh, and shoulder with a pair of scissors because “he played the song too many times.”

As part of a series of re-releases of Elvis songs in the UK in 2007 this re-entered the UK chart at #13.

Burning Love

Lord Almighty,
I feel my temperature rising
Higher higher
It’s burning through to my soul

Girl, girl, girl
You gonna set me on fire
My brain is flaming
I don’t know which way to go

Your kisses lift me higher
Like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky
With burning love

Ooh, ooh, ooh,
I feel my temperature rising
Help me, I’m flaming
I must be a hundred and nine
Burning, burning, burning
And nothing can cool me
I just might turn into smoke
But I feel fine

‘Cause your kisses lift me higher
Like a sweet song of a choir
And you light my morning sky
With burning love

It’s coming closer
The flames are reaching my body
Please won’t you help me
I feel like I’m slipping away
It’s hard to breath
And my chest is a-heaving

Lord have mercy,
I’m burning a hole where I lay
‘Cause your kisses lift me higher
Like the sweet song of a choir
You light my morning sky
With burning love
With burning love
Ah, ah, burning love
I’m just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love
Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

58 thoughts on “Elvis Presley – Burning Love”

  2. You hit the nail on the head and as I read this, I thought, “Yeah, those covers are kinda generic and bland”.

    He was so much more than he was represented on those album covers.

    From the opening guitar lick, this song really is a good one. One of my favorite Elvis songs.

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  4. Good song and the only Elvis one I remember hearing when it was a hit, not already an oldie. Yep- his covers could have been better. I made the point years ago that part of the reason REM’s “New Adventures in Hi-fi” dropped off in sales from their previous trio was that the cover was boring to most people (B&W scenic taken from a bus). I remembered seeing posters and promos all over record stores for months for “Monster”- the bright orange one with the bear head that looked like it was on TV- whereas almost none put up NAHF promo material. Figured that would’ve played a role in guiding people who came in to store without one specific album in mind… see the poster, think “Oh yeah- I like that. Maybe I’ll buy it”. I miss great album art, now almost irrelevant with streaming and downloads being so much of the biz.

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    1. It is truly a lost art. A lot of time was put in making an album cover…it was important. Now they have become iconic. I just had to rant about it when I read his manager just put some bad movie songs and this song on to release an album.
      He said before he didn’t care about the songs or cover because it would sell anyway…that is so short term thinking.

      It is a good song though.

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    1. You couldn’t tell one album from another…

      Off topic but I’ve been meaning to tell you that I saw the Quentin Tarantino trailer…looks really good right up my alley…I’m looking forward to it.

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    1. He could sing anything for sure. No one could snarl like the big E.
      Promised Land is probably my favorite late song of him… he was starting to spiral by this song.

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  8. I had thought Burning Love was an older song than that. Interesting how time gets things mixed up. The album covers are indeed bland. They sort of relegated him to the Adult listening genre, as opposed to being part of the young and up and coming community of artists.

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    1. Yes it probably wasn’t fair comparing him to the groups but…they could have been more creative to make the albums their own.

      One album called “Having Fun With Elvis” was just is patter between songs…The Colonel didn’t miss a trick.

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      1. I think it’s a fair comparison. He was only a few years older than the Beatles, etc. He could have joined that genre, but separated himself instead. They were creating, and he was just performing.

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      2. No need to be sorry…you are right…I should have given credit for that one. The ONLY one I know in the seventies is Aloha from Hawaii…becausse of the satellite.

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  10. Yikes on the stabbing. I’m not all that fond of this song. It SOUNDS like it took him six takes and I can HEAR that he doesn’t like it. His mood is coming thru.

    I prefer his earlier stuff…Jailhouse Rock, Devil in Disguise… Fat Elvis was a caricature of himself. He was a powerhouse in his younger years. He was the same age as my maternal uncle, my mom’s older brother. That was a whole different era.

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    1. He was untouchable for about 3-4 years… his fifties stuff is great. When he joined the army he was never the same.

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      7. I’m an idiot…I think I found his blog but can’t find it…can you send me a link whenever you go there again?

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      13. He has one about frozen pizza I love. He mixes it up quite well.

        The ones who read mine I met mostly at Hans blog. I went a good 6 months with no one until I found his blog and commented.
        How long did it take you to get people to read? I didn’t know what to do when I started. This is the only social media I do.

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      14. Oh, honey. I was here in the days before the *Likes* and the *Follows* showed up. That is WP trying to act like FB. Over a decade ago, you knew you had readers by blog hits. That was all. There was no liking posts. There was no following. If an outsider liked your blog, they followed it by showing up. There was no *Reader* or *Newsfeed*. That is all WP copying FB.

        The blogs that I saw that had commenters were folks that had been blogging for years. Blogger STILL doesn’t have a follow option or likes. Here is a good example of what WP *used* to look like:
        http://mausersandmuffins.blogspot.com/

        This chick has been around since 2005.

        And, if you had blogs you liked, you put them in your Blogroll to share with your readers. That’s how folks found out about OTHER blogs. My blog is still very ‘old school’. I have a blogroll and I decorate with pictures on the sides, which you can’t see unless you scroll ALL the way down on a stupidphone and you can’t see it in the reader (which is where most people are).

        Blogging predates FB. This is how people shared themselves with family and friends, like a giant diary. It’s why making a blog private is still a feature, with only access to certain people. Blogger has been around since 1999 and is programmed in Python. WP, like FB, is programmed in PHP, hence the similarities.

        It wasn’t until I started posting in 2018 that I noticed the likes & the follows. Prior to that, I hadn’t posted since 2014 and it was sporadic. My first blog, blog hits, only.

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      15. Yep in the Spam… That looks really cool. I use likes as a bookmark. I do like the follow option.
        That makes sense on making a blog private. I never was into FB and did it for one day…that was enough. Thanks for the info that is very interesting. I’ve never known much about them at all. I’m not the most social person…but it’s nice finding people with the same likes… that is hard sometimes to find in real life.

        I still do newsgroups…I’ve always liked them. That was the extent of my social online dealings.

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      16. You sound a lot like me…an introvert geek.

        I WISH I had never gotten on FB. I was on & off for a decade. Never was my idea. Classmates…family members… Now, I have a placeholder so I can use Messenger. That is it.

        CIA/NSA Op, anyway.

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      17. Addendum:
        You could get blog posts via email OR by following a feed which, if you had a feed reader plug-in on your browser, acted as your newsfeed. I forgot to mention those. Those are very old school ways of getting your blog followed/following a blog. And, I don’t know of a way to track feeder readers (like Feedburner or NewsFox) but, you could usually find how many folks signed up for emails.

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      18. I need to look at the plugins. All I do is go to the WP reader and pick “followed sites.”

        I’m starting to have more fun with it. When I started I would worry about how many people visited but now I don’t hardly look…. I also want to make an index of the stuff I’ve done…just to do it.

        I get more comments on old posts than I do new ones most days…I think because of the widget I have that lists all of my old posts… Ramble on…that is what I”m doing.

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      23. Yes you do…I’m on the premium plan and I’m not going to business. I need to explore it more and do more things. I haven’t really sit down and played with it.
        My next move is to make an index.

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