We've come a fair way since Al Martino started this particular ball rolling through the good and the not so good, and all the while I've dropped the occasional comment about feeling like a bewildered stranger in a strange land looking for the yellow brick road the leads to the land of number one singles as I understand them to be. In other words, singles that sound like they were being bought by 'the kids' rather than their parents. And to that end, it's sobering that up until 1957, the only mention of 'Young' that we've come across is in the context of Jimmy, which isn't exactly what I ever had in mind. Written by Ric Cartey and Carole Joyner, 'Young Love' is the first instance of a song that specifically targets a younger generation. To date, all the love in the songs has been of the sophisticated grown up variety, fully formed and stiff with adult confidence. Cartey and Joyner's song captures that first love/first kiss moment where falling in love for the first time means, by definition, you haven't yet appreciated the hellish fallout when it all goes bad. Rife with a curious mix uncertainty and wide eyed wonder at an experience that's so good it has to be forever ("They say for every boy and girl, there's just one love in this whole world. And I know I've found mine") 'Young Love' is a song that 'grown ups' can only listen to in wistful remembrance or with a bitter and ironic 'HAH'! Which is fine, because it's not aimed at 'them', and so again, by definition, 'they' shouldn't be the ones singing it.
At 26, Hunter wasn't really qualified to be commenting on young love, being almost old enough to be the father of the person whose viewpoint he's meant to be giving voice to. Bad enough by itself, but the clincher in the wincing stakes is his chalk dry voice that sounds 26 going on 56. The song itself is an amiable lope with an underlying infectious 'tickety tick' percussion, but there's an arid, emotionless tinge to his vocal that ultimately simply crumbles into dust on the final "Ever in my heart" and "Love for you or for me" lines on each verse. If you take Donny Osmond's later version as comparison (but not a benchmark, for that look to Sonny James), then at least Donny's squeal has an adolescent 'you don't understand, it's not fair' edge to it whilst Hunter sounds paternally mocking and not a little bit patronising. That's not to detract from the song which remains a good one; any shortcomings here can be laid at Hunter's feet. He conveys the sentiment but not the emotion, but at least he puts me halfways onto the road I'm dying to follow.
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