Love Is Here to Stay

Album: An American in Paris (1951)
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Songfacts®:

  • George Gershwin's final song, the composer started writing this for The Goldwyn Follies shortly before he died of a brain tumor in 1937 at age 38. Composer Vernon Duke actually completed the melody after George's death with the help of Oscar Levant, who remembered the harmonies of the song from when when Gershwin played it at parties.
  • The song is a romantic ballad, proclaiming that "our love" is more durable than "the radio and the telephone and all the movies we know." Ira Gershwin wrote the words after his brother's death, giving the song a special poignancy.
  • This was sung by Kenny Baker in The Goldwyn Follies but was almost relegated to background music with the crooner's performance partly covered by dialogue. It went on to become a hit twice in 1938 with both Larry Clinton and His Orchestra and Red Norvo and His Orchestra taking it to the Top 20 of the pop charts. However, it was not until Gene Kelly sang it in the 1951 film An American in Paris that the song became a standard.
  • Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles Diana Ross, Eric Clapton and Dinah Washington are amongst the many artists who have covered this standard with the latter taking it to #89 on the Pop chart in 1961 under its earlier title of "Our Love is Here To Stay."
  • Nat King Cole's cover featured in a 2014 Apple commercial. The ad shows a young woman played by singer-songwriter Dana Williams finding an old recording her grandmother made of the song and transforming it into a duet using her laptop. She leaves it for her grandmother to hear on an iPad as a Christmas present.

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