Songfacts®:

• Lenny Kravitz explained in a 1998 interview with Tracey Pepper: "When I did 'Let Love Rule,' everyone said what a naive piece of s--t it was. Journalists would ask, 'Don't you feel funny singing about that?' and I was like, If I were sitting here singing about the devil and raping children, then it'd be okay? God forbid you sing about love. It's a lost concept."
• This song is Kravitz' credo. "Love has to be the final outcome of every situation," he said.
• This is the title track from Lenny Kravitz' debut album, on which he provided almost all of the instrumental and vocal material himself. It aged very well, but when the album was released, many critics condemned him for being an out-of-date throwback to late '60s psychedelic rock.
• Lenny Kravitz's then-wife, Lisa Bonet, directed and appeared in the music video for this song.
• Lenny was persuaded by his style-star daughter, Zoe Kravitz, to develop a new line of shoes for Tom's. Among his designs, which debuted in 2012, were footwear printed with lyrics from this song.
• Kravitz and Bonet rented a loft in Lower Manhattan from a musician who used to play with Bob Marley. One day, in a fit of inspiration, Kravitz scrawled "Let Love Rule" on the wall next to the elevator on his floor. Seeing the phrase every day gave him the idea to turn it into a song. He told Rolling Stone: "I went into the apartment, grabbed a guitar and wrote it. It just hit me. Then I went to the studio the next day in Hoboken, New Jersey, and I cut it. It was just magical. It embodied everything about where I was musically. It had shades of gospel, R&B and psychedelic rock & roll. To me, that was the signature of the album. It was the beginning of my musical life. It was mine. It belonged to me."
• Stevie Wonder was a major influence on the album, particularly his 1973 classic, Innervisions. Kravitz told Q magazine in 1995: "I told my engineer I wanted to make an Innervisions-type record, meaning very intimate. You hear the room on that record. You can hear the walls. You can hear the reflections of Stevie's voice. There's nothing between you and Stevie."
• Lenny Kravitz's 2020 memoir reveals how he lets his life be steered by love. Naturally its title is Let Love Rule.