When I listened to an Elvis compilation album a few months ago I noticed something about "Love Me Tender." I finally got around to really looking into it.
All of the verses start the same way, with an imperative "Love me" followed by an adverb. However, since many of these adverbs are flat adverbs (shorn of their usual "-ly" endings, so that it's "Love me tender" instead of "Love me tenderly"), some could also function as vocatives. The first verse starts with "Love me tender, love me sweet," and the fifth has "Love me tender, love me dear." These could be flat adverbs (which could also be rendered as "Love me tenderly, love me sweetly" and "Love me tenderly, love me dearly"), or they could be vocatives ("Love me tender, love me, sweet" and "Love me tender, love me, dear"), directed to someone whom the singer/speaker is calling his "sweet" and his "dear." When heard, they could work either way.
I also found the last line of the third verse interesting in its ambiguity. It could be "we'll" or "will." So either "For it’s there [in your heart] that I belong / And will never part" or "For it's there that I belong / And we'll never part." It illustrates either the singer/speaker's dedication or the couple's devotion to each other.
When the lyrics are written, those ambiguities have to fall one way or the other because of spelling or punctuation, but audibly, the two senses are indistinguishable, which actually provides the song with more meaning since either sense could take precedence.
