Greatest Love Songs Ever: #20 “You Go To My Head”

By Tom Quiner, Board President, Pulse Life Advocates

Romantic love is simply intoxicating. It can make you feel dizzy, giddy, and even silly. The songwriting team of J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie captured this vibe in their 1938 love song, “You Go To My Head.”

I love Gillespie’s lyrics in the third verse:

“You go to my head,

With a smile that makes my temperature rise,

Like a summer with a thousand Julys,

You intoxicate my soul with your eyes.”

Most of us relished the idea of an endless summer when were were kids, or as the lyricist puts it, “like a summer with a thousand Julys.” Pure poetry!

This is a song I savor in July sitting on my patio nursing an endless gin and tonic.

The great music commentator, Ted Gioia, had this to say about “You Go To My Head:””

‘You Go to my Head’ is an intricately constructed affair with plenty of harmonic movement. The song starts in a major key, but from the second bar onward, Mr. Coots seems intent on creating a feverish dream quality tending more to the minor mode. The release builds on the drama, and the final restatement holds some surprises as well. The piece would be noteworthy even if it lacked such an exquisite coda, but those last eight bars convey a sense of resigned closure to the song that fittingly matches the resolution of the lyrics.”

Ultimately, the song takes you on a romantic journey in the hands of a good singer. So many greats have sung it, that it’s hard to pick a favorite version.

I’m giving top billing to Linda Ronstadt because she kind of put the song back on the map with her recording in 1986 with a wonderful arrangement by the great Nelson Riddle (one of Sinatra’s best arrangers).

But you can never go wrong with Diana Krall or Louis Armstrong (who leads with trumpet before the singing begins).

Diana Krall sings “You Go To My Head”

Louis Armstrong sings “You Go To My Head”

Love is the antidote to abortion. 

I’m writing this post just a few days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I grew up in the 60s, a decade notable for three assassinations. The anger I sense today dwarfs what I saw in the 60s. I don’t remember people cheering the deaths of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, or Bobby Kennedy on the mass scale we see today.

But within the past two years, we’ve seen people cheering Hamas’ butchering Israeli women and children; an insurance executive and family man who was gunned down; and now a young husband and dad who promoted dialogue to resolve conflict.

We need to slow down and soak in some love. Take some time and go back and listen to some of the previous love songs we’ve already highlighted in this series of the “52 Greatest Love Songs Ever.”

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to subscribe to this blog, because the music keeps getting better!

One last thing, and this is important: take a minute and support Pulse Life Advocates with your gift. Like Charlie Kirk, we promote a culture of life here in Iowa, and it takes money. Every dollar matters.