“Love Me Tender”
by Sky Saxon's U.S.A.
1991 song
Sounding like nothing else on Flashback, Sky Saxon’s cover of the Elvis Presley classic "Love Me Tender" also doesn’t resemble much else in the man’s extensive catalog, before or after this 1991 recording. From the CD by Sky Saxon’s U.S.A., "Love Me Tender" is the final song in the great tradition of Sky Saxon final songs in that it differs from the rest of the album, introducing a new musical style that puts a capstone on the proceedings.
Gone are the bouncy synths and mid-1980s studio perfectionism of the other Flashback tunes; in their place is a quiet, barely-plucked guitar from Dana Smith and Sky’s deep Elvis-like croon. He hadn’t played it this straight since his earliest days, recording singles as Ritchie Marsh and hoping to become a teen idol.
He had in fact flirted with this vocal style before: the 1989 song "Wild Roses" featured a lower-register Sky Saxon humming melodramatically through his lines, but the words and melody were more complex there. On "Love Me Tender", the tune and the lyrics are so simple, so sweet, that it’s a surprise to hear the guy who screamed out things like "Evil Hoodoo" (and would again) sticking so closely to the spirit of the original.
Quiet and elegiac, "Love Me Tender" ends Flashback and leaves listeners wondering what exactly they just heard. Nothing on the album seems to fit into Sky’s world, but here it is for all the world to digest. You might even want to go back and listen to it again; there’s something oddly appealing in the aftertaste of this startling project.
