Tunes on Tuesday: When I Fall In Love

Why this tune?

Victor Young and Edward Heyman wrote “When I Fall In Love” for an unsuccessful 1952 film “One Minute to Zero,” where it featured in the soundtrack as an instrumental. Doris Day made it a hit with record later that year, where she sings it in a lush orchestral setting. Nat King Cole recorded his own hit version in 1956, and over 600 versions have followed, with and without Heyman’s lovely lyrics.

Like many of the songs that are now standards, the lyrics include a verse which few people sing (Day and Cole left it out of their hit recordings). In the verse of this song, which you can hear in Janine Gilbert-Carter’s recording, the singer admits she “may be living in the past,” but knows “my first love will be my last.” That leads to the lyrics we know, where the singer promises to resist the “restless world like this is.”