If you went into Bushwick, Silverlake or Allston at any point last year and asked the first half-bearded hipster whether he (or she) likes Bruce Hornsby, you could pretty much guarantee that you’d get a derisive snort and some talk about Flying Lotus. This was not a world for overly-honest, jazz infused piano playing or the people who trade in those sounds.
Bon Iver changed all that. When Justin Vernon came on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and talked about his voice and its resemblance to Hootie, or the need for Hornsby’s gentle touch on profoundly affecting closer “Beth/Rest,” it was a moment of remarkable honesty onto which dishonest people latch. Then he played it, the greatest Hornsby song of all time. From Leon Russell’s mournful tour lament straight into an oft-forgotten classic, Vernon sprung forth Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”
Released in 1991, the song has ascended to a level of such stratospheric fame that it became something of an unironic, uncool pop song. The 12-year-old me hated it when my father would insist it was one of the greatest songs ever written. MOJO would agree with him (eighth on their list of greatest songs), but the pure spring of emotion that is so soulfully dribbled forth is something of a marvel. Adult contemporary music, which this is, has always been fantastic in expressing the idylls of love and the circumstances of an intimate love affair in ways that very few other genres can (jazz is the only one I can think of). But what is heartbreaking about Raitt is the unorthodox lyrical bent she takes to an apparent love song—this tryst is lost on everyone but her. She will close her eyes and imagine being loved by someone she loves so much. It is a complex emotion, filled with pangs of pain (“and I will give up this fight”) rarely catalogued in pop music so rawly which, of course, is why it was so ignored and snorted at by youth.
These are no emotions used on the young—“I Can’t Make You Love Me” is a mature pop song, played by mature individuals channeling a feeling so complex that it could only be wrought through a lifetime of loves lost.
Raitt said in 2002 that performing the song, because of its ultra-devoted following, was almost a “sacred moment,” sharing “a depth of pain with your audience.” It’s true. There is such a communion with oneself to listen to “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and feel it, a sort of reckoning with inner pain, much like the character does in the song. Raitt’s lyrics, so vividly and beautifully sung, are as much about bringing forth such strong emotions in such a public way as much as they are telling a tale. The miracle of the musicianship is that Hornsby keeps up with her, matching vocal and lyrical heartbreak with complex variations on classic ballad chord structure. Again, just like the song itself, each individual element tells a powerful and affecting story without harkening to something that existed before this.
It is telling that Bon Iver would choose such an intimate and direct song for their first live performance supporting Bon Iver, one of the more complex albums of the year. But this is the final testament to Bonnie Raitt’s classic, and how it’s deceptively simple thesis is impossible to reduce or expand. There is a story to tell about what happens after the song’s protagonist ends her tryst, and countless songs describing the preamble. But only this one pinpoints exactly that moment with (positively) tear-jerking honesty and clear-headedness. In an age of confounding your emotions, that Raitt is experiencing a small resurgence is a lasting testament to “I Can’t Make You Love Me” being a singular, perfect pop song.
