When news broke of Bunny Wailer’s passing, it prompted a revisit to a timeless classic: “Is This Love.” This iconic track, the opener and a standout favorite from the legendary Legend album – the best-selling reggae album ever – is so deeply ingrained in popular culture that its structural ingenuity often goes unnoticed. You can probably hum the infectious hook right now, but did you realize this earworm only appears twice in the entire song, occupying a mere fraction of its total runtime? Astonishingly, the main verse sections dominate over half the song’s length, including the entire outro. Suggesting such an unconventional structure to most songwriters might be met with disbelief, yet Bob Marley and the Wailers crafted pure magic with it.
Delving deeper, the verse itself presents an unusual 19-bar phrase length. Imagine tasking a musician with writing a 19-bar verse – the typical approach would likely involve familiar four-bar phrases with some form of extension technique. Many popular songs employ this method. However, Marley subtly introduces a three-bar mini-phrase right at the beginning, before settling into a sequence of four standard four-bar phrases. It’s a masterclass in structural subtlety; most listeners, myself included, would never consciously register anything unusual until actually counting the bars. This is precisely what makes it such a brilliant example of musical sleight of hand. For another fascinating example of this technique, explore The Beatles’ “Yesterday.”
The harmony in “Is This Love Song” adds another layer of intrigue. While the song begins and ends in F# minor – seemingly establishing it as the home key – there’s a persistent pull towards A major. This creates a harmonic tension, almost as if each return to F# minor is a V-vi cadence interruption. Consider the main verse progression: F#m-D-A-E/G#. Notice how the D-A progression sounds harmonically resolved and purposeful, while the E/G#-F#m progression, leading into each new four-bar section, feels more like a harmonic detour. The section “I am willing and able / So I throw my cards on your table” amplifies this pull towards A major. It culminates in a powerful descending sequence – E-D-C#m-Bm – that strongly suggests a resolution to A, hinting at the start of a new section in that key. But instead, the bass drops its downbeat – the only instance of this in the song – and subtly shifts back to F# minor for the subsequent verse. This harmonic push and pull, this yearning for the major key that remains just out of reach, beautifully underscores the lyrical uncertainty inherent in the song’s central question: “Is this love that I’m feeling?”
Furthermore, Aston Barrett’s bassline in “Is This Love song” deserves recognition as one of pop music’s greatest. It’s so melodically significant that the track could easily be considered a duet between Marley and Barrett. The prominent hemiola woven into each verse pattern is an arrangement stroke of genius. This rhythmic device cleverly foreshadows the song’s hook rhythm, contributing significantly to the hook’s memorability, especially considering its infrequent appearances. A personal highlight is the moment just before the verse hemiola, where Barrett anticipates the fourth bar’s harmony by firmly placing his A root note a beat early, on the last beat of bar three. It’s a move that defies conventional music theory – anticipating a chord’s root in the bass can often weaken its impact. Yet, here, it works seamlessly, feeling utterly natural and indispensable to the song’s groove.
If this analysis has piqued your interest in revisiting “Is This Love song,” a word of caution: numerous “improved” versions of this reggae anthem have emerged, a sadly common trend with classic tracks. Stephen Marley’s remix of the “original session recordings” on 2018’s Kaya 40 particularly stands out for the wrong reasons. Upon comparing the percussion timing in the Kaya 40 version (around 0:11) with the 2013 Kaya remaster (at 0:13) or the 2002 Legend compilation rerelease (at 0:14), a clear discrepancy emerges. The woodblock sound in the left channel on Kaya 40 noticeably lags. In fact, the entire percussion panorama seems delayed relative to the drums.
This tampering is deeply problematic. Rhythmic groove is paramount in reggae music. This remix isn’t merely a sonic upgrade; it fundamentally alters the music’s core appeal for no justifiable aesthetic purpose. Even if it were an unintentional error during mixing – a misplaced audio file – the lack of quality control in production and mastering is alarming. More disturbingly, closer examination suggests it’s not a simple offset issue, raising the possibility of deliberate rhythmic vandalism of this musical heritage.
Therefore, steer clear of the Kaya 40 version of “Is This Love song.” The 2013 remaster, with its overly bright “smile curve” EQ that diminishes midrange detail, is also less than ideal. For the definitive listening experience, stick to the original 1984 Legend compilation or the 2002 remaster.
Finally, a delightful tidbit: the official music video for “Is This Love song” features a seven-year-old Naomi Campbell among the children.
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Published on April 16, 2021.
