“Can You Love Me Like That”

The sparkling energy that Ray Charles summoned on the song “Can You Love Me Like That” from the 2002 CD Thanks For Bringing Love Around Again is infectious and fun – if the world didn’t know Ray still had this much spunk in him it sure learned after hearing this!

“Can You Love Me Like That” was written, as was much of the album, by Ray’s friend Billy Osborne, and is basically a duet between Ray and Brenda Lee Egar, who is also overdubbed to create a chorus of Brendas on the choruses. Over a bedrock of funky, synthetic drums and complex, cross-faded keyboard stabs and breezy musical washes, Ray and Brenda go over, in turns, a list of famous couples of the past, and promise one another that their love will be equally as legendary.

John F. Kennedy and Jackie Onassis, Bill and Camille Cosby, and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz make up some of the real-life couples; Tarzan and Jane, and Superman and Lois Lane, also get shout-outs in the lyrics. The chorus, repeated often throughout the song, finds the woman demanding her relationship be the equal of these famous couples:

Can you love me like that?
That’s the way that I want it, or you got to go

Billy Osborne may have written “Can You Love Me Like That” but I’m sure that that threat of these lyrics, thrown into the mix just to spice things up, helped endear the song to Ray. Love is great, of course; love with some drama added is exciting. Ray would always choose the latter.

Speaking of Ray, while this is most assuredly a duet and he only gets about fifty percent of the attention (and the vocals), this isn’t just a back-and-forth between a man and a woman – it’s a back-and-forth between a woman and Ray Charles specifically. The woman’s individual identity isn’t important – she’s the girl of the hour. Today’s news, tomorrow’s has-been, perhaps?

The lyrics printed in the CD booklet of Thanks For Bringing Love Around Again label the verses as being sung by “Ray” and “Woman”. Poor Brenda doesn’t even get a mention by name. (This, despite the fact that she has the deference to ad-lib the line “You know you satisfy me” as “Ray Charles, you satisfy me”!) Furthermore, “woman” promises that this won’t be a tale like Samson and Delilah; she just wants to “do the things to you make you come home every day,” not “take your power away”.

So, she is just “some woman” while Ray is Ray. Well, it is a Ray Charles album, so I guess he gets to call the shots. Besides, what greater compliment could any woman get than Ray Charles telling her he loves her “more than the blues I sing”?

“Can You Love Me Like That” is infused throughout with cheerful synth notes and a steady, good-natured electronic rhythm. Ray Charles adds a freaky-sounding keyboard solo towards the end, and vocally exults in agreeing to her demands (and in matching them with his own).

The first track on Thanks For Bringing Love Around Again is an electronic re-make of Ray’s legendary “What’d I Say”, and “Can You Love Me Like That” gets the honor of following it: it would be the first new Ray song the public would hear in several years, the first since 1996’s Strong Love Affair CD.

Thanks For Bringing Love Around Again was not released on vinyl, so to hear old Ray growl and gloat and strut and pose on “Can You Love Me Like That”, you’ll have to track down a copy of the CD. Used and new copies are pretty easy to find and should be very affordable. And very recommended; songs like this are what make the final solo album of Ray Charles’ lifetime so engaging and irresistible.

Listen to “Can You Love Me Like That”

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