Showing posts with label You Really Gotta Hold on Me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label You Really Gotta Hold on Me. Show all posts

Monday, July 13, 2015

She & Him's "Never Wanted Your Love"

I don't remember when I first noticed this, but She & Him's "Never Wanted Your Love" from Volume Three seems to take some influence from Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' "You've Really Got a Hold on Me."

In "Never Wanted Your Love," there's a recurring section where the lines "I never wanted your love / But I needed it all" are repeated a few times.  It bears more than a little resemblance to Robinson's "I don’t like you, but I love you" or even "I don’t want you, but I need you," which employs the same verbs (albeit with a slightly different negation and in a different tense).

I'm more confident in venturing this influence than I would some others because She & Him covered "You're Really Got a Hold on Me" (with a slightly different title: "You Really Gotta Hold on Me") on their first album Volume One.  Whether the lyrical resemblance between "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" and "Never Wanted Your Love" was intentional or not, "You Really Gotta Hold on Me" proves that She & Him are familiar with Robinson's song.