Love in Its Most Unvarnished Form Lives at the Heart of I Like Love
“I Like Love” stands as one of Roy Orbison’s earliest recorded odes to romantic fervor, emerging in the crucible of 1950s rockabilly and rhythm and blues. Issued on January 1, 1957 by Sun Records, this track was paired with “Chicken Hearted” as a two‑sided single reflective of Orbison’s formative years with the label. While it did not chart prominently in the mainstream and remains outside the pantheon of his most commercially celebrated hits, its inclusion on early compilations and later Sun retrospective releases ensures its place within the tapestry of Orbison’s development as an artist.
In the broader arc of Orbison’s storied career, I Like Love represents a time before his signature melancholic balladry would define his public identity. Here, Orbison’s youthful tenor navigates an unabashed, almost buoyant celebration of love’s magnetic pull, framed in the upbeat rhythms and driving acoustic guitar of the rockabilly idiom that propelled the earliest iterations of rock and roll. The song’s composer, Jack Clement, was a notable figure in the Sun Records milieu, contributing to a sound that placed rhythm and emotion side by side and helped set the stage for Orbison’s later transitions into richer, more dramatic musical terrain.
Lyrically, the song is disarmingly direct. Its verses pivot around a simple declaration of affection repeated with near‑mantric insistence: love is here to stay, and the narrator likes it deeply, viscerally, without reservation. Lines such as “I like love and I like lovin’ you” are delivered without the lyrical ambivalence or heartbreak that would later haunt many of Orbison’s best‑known compositions. Instead, the refrain captures a youthful surrender to emotion, a recognition that love can be as disorienting as it is exhilarating.
Musically, I Like Love is anchored by a brisk tempo and rhythmic cadence that evoke both the rolling momentum of early rockabilly and the brash confidence of a young performer asserting his place within a rapidly evolving musical landscape. The instrumental break in the track underscores this energy, creating a buoyant counterpoint to the repeated lyrical affirmations. There is a raw quality here that underscores the era’s fascination with immediacy and feeling, privileging unmediated expression over nuanced reflection.
Viewed retrospectively, the song offers a fascinating prelude to the emotional complexity that would come to define Orbison’s later work. Before hits like “Only the Lonely” and “Crying” transformed him into an icon of heartache and introspection, I Like Love stands as a testament to an artist in formation, one who could embrace love with an unguarded passion and convey that openness through both vocal delivery and lyrical simplicity. The track is not merely a youthful artifact; it is a reminder of the roots from which a singular voice would emerge, one capable of expressing the many shades of love—its joys and its deep sorrows—with equal potency.