“Everlasting Love” is a well-known song that has been covered many times by artists like Gloria Estefan, U2, Love Affair, and Carl Carlton. The song was originally a hit for Robert Knight, who recorded it in Nashville. It was released in 1967 and peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.
When speaking about the song, Rebeat Mag reported that Knight said, “Buzz and Mac [the songwriters] were country artists, and I was R&B, and so I had to make it more of an R&B song. I practiced and practiced on it — it was a hard song to sing because, at the time, it was hard to sing a fast song slow. I didn’t sing it the way they had written it. I made some changes to fit my voice, and I didn’t do it note-for-note. They had the melody going too fast, and it was jamming, it wasn’t doing right, it wasn’t sounding right. So I started what you call a steady step. I start singing a beat and a half: ‘hearts-go-a-stray’ — like that. It wasn’t like that in the beginning, and I think that’s what got ‘Everlasting Love’ off the ground.”
Mac Gayden, who co-wrote the song, told Songwriting Magazine why he believes it was so popular. “It was definitely written to be catchy and singable – when we came to write the chorus, I had in mind for it to be almost like a chant. It was one of the first songs to have one of those repetitious, R&B-style chants.”
He also explained that he first came up with the melody when he was only five. “When I was just five years old, I used to play on my grandmother’s piano, and I came up with this simple little melody, almost like a lullaby, and that’s the melody that the horns and the Farfisa organ play on ‘Everlasting Love.’ I’d always known I’d use that melody somewhere along the line!”
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Although “Everlasting Love” was Knight’s biggest hit, he had other popular songs like “Love on a Mountain Top” and “Free Me.”
Knight died in 2017 at the age of 72.
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