I Love You (The Zombies Song) - History

History

"I Love You" was written by Chris White, who indicated: "The thing that came first was the riff. That was the root of writing that one. In actual fact I think I nicked it off Tommy Roe". It was recorded by the British pop band The Zombies on 8 July 1965 at Decca Studios. It was released in August 1965 as the B-side to "Whenever You're Ready" in the UK (Decca 45 F 12225), USA (Parrot 45-PAR 9786), Japan (London HIT-547), Holland (1968: Decca AT 15106), Italy (Decca F 12225), Sweden (Decca F 12225), Turkey (London F 12225), Japan (1967: London TOP 1167), and the Philippines (London F 12225). The single failed to make the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and the UK Singles Chart and achieved only limited chart success in other countries. Daniel Williams speculates that: "Perhaps, as happened to sixties groups desperately looking to rediscover a magic formula, some fatal hesitancy was exhibited about which side of a single was which; ‘I Love You’’s structural inversion of chorus and verse makes it both a dramatic and memorably harmonic B side, trumping ‘Whenever You’re Ready’’s more traditional delights and wig-out organ".

In 1966 "I Love You" was included in an album that is now known as the I Love You album that was only released in Holland and Japan. After the popularity of "I Love You" and two other Zombies songs in the Philippines, The Zombies sold out 10 concerts at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, near Manila, in March 1967. Soon after their return from the Philippines, their contract with Decca lapsed and, although they recorded a further LP, Odessey and Oracle, for their new record label CBS in the summer of 1967, the band disbanded once that album was finished (and before its 1968 release in the UK and US). However, after the chart success of the cover version of "I Love You" by American band People!, in mid-June 1968 Decca reissued The Zombies' original version in the UK, backed with "The Way I Feel Inside" (Decca F12798). However, it again failed to chart.

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