Greatest Love Songs Ever: #8 “When I Fall in Love”
By Tom Quiner, Board President, Pulse Life Advocates
We live in a restless world.
Just this past week, a famous Hollywood actor and his wife had their throats slashed in their own home, allegedly murdered by their own son.
A Palestinian father and son went on a rampage in Australia killing 15 Jews celebrating Hanukkah.
And by the time this post publishes, 57,000 babies will have been aborted just this month.
We live in a restless world.
YEAR END APPEAL: Donate to Pulse’s pro-life outreach today
“When I Fall in Love” addresses just how precarious our lives are:
“In a restless world like this is,
Love is over before it’s begun.”
Edward Heyman wasn’t thinking of the Rob Reiner homicide or the anti-semitic rage unleashed in Australia or the mindless and unrelenting killing of our posterity when he penned these lyrics in 1952.
But he grasped the same idea that St. Augustine grasped 1500 years earlier, that it is only through the power of love that we can find peace in this world.
Augustine put it this way:
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Heyman expresses the same idea from a secular perspective:
“When I give my heart,
It will be completely.”
YEAR END APPEAL: Donate to Pulse’s pro-life outreach today
The world doesn’t offer us peace, but God does, and God is love. He created for us the beautiful sacrament of marriage to offer us a shelter from the storms that roil this world day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute.
“When I Fall in Love” is a worthy entry to our list of the 52 Greatest Love Songs Ever because it offers a glowing rebuke to the hook-up culture that celebrates promiscuity and impermanence in relationships.
When I Fall in Love celebrates permanence, because love eternal. This song expresses it beautifully in its riveting opening line:
“When I Fall in Love,
It will be forever.”
Yes.
YEAR END APPEAL: Donate to Pulse’s pro-life outreach today
Credit also belongs to Victor Young for composing such a lovely, romantic melody, and the timeless Nat King Cole (above) for his signature presentation of this classic.
This song is so tender, so romantic, that you can find dozens, probably hundreds of covers of this song. But Nat’s is so good, that 48 million people have listened to it on Spotify.
Worthy contenders include Doris Day and Michael Bublé,
Doris Day sings “When I Fall in Love”
Michael Bublé sings “When I Fall in Love”
You’ll note my repetitive sub-headlines asking you to donate to Pulse. It’s that time of year, the season for giving. Your gift matter far more than you realize. Pulse relies on financial support from individual donors like you to plan our budgets and implement these plans for 2026.
We offer this series on the greatest love songs ever, because we believe that love is the antidote to abortion. So we operate within a cultural environment as well as a political one. Please give.
Next week’s entry is the most devastating, gut-wrenching song on the entire list. It evokes such powerful emotions that it’s hard for me to get through it without a lump in my throat. See you then.
[Make your tax-deductible gift by check, credit card, stock, grain, Venmo, or Crypto today.]
