“All She Wants To Do Is Love Me”
Song by Ray Charles
“All She Wants To Do Is Love Me” starts off Ray Charles’ 1996 CD Strong Love Affair with an energetic if synthesized bang. Despite the large group of human musicians on the track, machine beeps and synthetic-sounding percussion sparkle and dominate throughout.
Ray had been using synthesizers for years, often at the expense of using any other instrument, as on much of 1990’s feisty Would You Believe? album. For Strong Love Affair and “All She Wants To Do Is Love Me”, he continues the theme, and sounds all the more energized for it. Having explored all a piano and an electric keyboard could do in his lengthy career, he was really enjoying experiencing how his finely-aged old voice sounded with the flashy sounds of youth music.
“All She Wants To Do Is Love Me” was written especially for Ray by Richard Niles, who arranged it and plays keyboards, and Phil Spalding, who contributes bass guitar. The musicians were recorded in London and in Paris, while Ray did his vocals at his own studio in Los Angeles.
The lyrics of this song are a man’s disbelieving description of his own good fortune: he is spending his time with a rich, glamorous woman who could be anywhere doing anything, but has chosen to stay here with him:
I can’t explain it
She can have the whole world
But she’s got her arms around me tight
The crux of the lyrics lies in the fanciful list of examples of what this woman could be doing with her time: going to a party with the Prince of Wales, spending time at her loft in Soho, riding her Harley, or wearing Versace at the beach. A curious and comical mix of what the high life might look like.
Amid some forceful but pretty horn lines, Ray’s vocals are frisky (he still loved women) and knowing (he was wealthy himself), and as usual he peppers his performance with “ows” and “unghs” and other righteous-sounding asides. Above all, perhaps, Ray Charles demonstrates his effortless sense of timing, hitting the beats of the percussion right on the money every time.
One of the very few Ray Charles songs never released on vinyl, “All She Wants To Do Is Love Me” can be found as the first track on CD versions of Strong Love Affair. To hear old Ray pulsing with this much life force and reveling in his new modern sounds is a treat, and this song sets the tone for the rest of the album with impressive gusto.
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