About The Song
“Baby, We’re Really in Love” is a country song written and recorded by Hank Williams with His Drifting Cowboys and released as a single on MGM Records in 1951. The track was recorded at Castle Studio in Nashville on July 25, 1951, with Fred Rose producing. Issued with “I’d Still Want You” on the B-side, it became one of Williams’s many successful early-1950s releases and is generally classified as country & western, honky-tonk and country blues in style.
The recording session that produced “Baby, We’re Really in Love” used the same core band heard on several of Williams’s 1951 sides. Don Helms played steel guitar, Jerry Rivers was on fiddle, Sammy Pruett handled lead guitar, Howard Watts (also known as Cedric Rainwater) played bass and Jack Shook is usually credited as rhythm guitarist. The song runs about two and a half minutes and features a bright, up-tempo arrangement typical of Williams’s jukebox-oriented singles of the period, with a strong backbeat and prominent steel and fiddle fills supporting his vocal.
On the charts, “Baby, We’re Really in Love” gave Williams another Top 5 hit. Contemporary Billboard country listings and later discographies note that the single peaked at No. 4 on the country chart in 1951, making it his fourteenth Top 5 country single. While it did not reach No. 1 like “Cold, Cold Heart” or “Hey, Good Lookin’,” its performance confirmed the consistency of his commercial run at the turn of the decade, when nearly every new release charted strongly on the country & western best-seller and jukebox charts.
Lyrically, the song is much lighter in tone than many of Williams’s heartbreak ballads. The narrator reassures himself and his partner that if they both feel the same way—“If you’re lovin’ me like I’m lovin’ you, baby, we’re really in love”—then their relationship is real and solid. Verses describe how love makes him act “nutty as a fruitcake” and run around in circles, and how friends and family think he has gone crazy, but he insists that “there’s nothin’ wrong with me that weddin’ bells won’t cure.” The language is simple and playful, using repetition and rhyme to create a catchy, easily memorable hook.
Musically, “Baby, We’re Really in Love” is built on a driving, shuffle-influenced rhythm that blends honky-tonk with elements of swing. Helms’s steel guitar and Rivers’s fiddle exchange short fills between the vocal lines, while the rhythm section maintains a tight, danceable groove well suited to barrooms and jukeboxes. The tempo and overall feel place the track alongside other lively Hank Williams singles from the period, balancing his catalogue of darker ballads with more upbeat material aimed at live audiences and radio.
Although not as frequently cited as “Lovesick Blues,” “Cold, Cold Heart” or “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” the song has maintained a steady presence in the Hank Williams catalogue. It appears on major compilations such as 40 Greatest Hits and The Complete Hank Williams, and it is often mentioned in discussions of his influence on later songwriters. Bob Dylan, for example, has listed “Baby, We’re Really in Love” alongside “Honky Tonkin’” and “Lost Highway” as records he listened to repeatedly while studying Williams’s songwriting and phrasing, underlining the track’s importance as part of the core body of his work.
Several artists have recorded cover versions of “Baby, We’re Really in Love” over the decades. Don Gibson included it in a 1962 RCA session, Hank Williams Jr. cut an overdubbed duet version with his father’s vocal in 1965, and later honky-tonk and traditional-country acts such as Leona Williams and smaller roots bands have kept it in circulation. These covers, together with ongoing reissues and digital releases, have helped preserve the song as a representative example of Hank Williams’s more upbeat, good-humored side during his peak chart years.
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Lyric
If you’re lovin’ me like I’m lovin’ you
Baby, we’re really in love
If you’re happy with me like I’m happy with you
Old Cupid just gave us a shove
If you’re thinkin’ of me like I’m thinkin’ of you
Then I know what you’re thinkin’ of
If you’re lovin’ me like I’m lovin’ you
Baby, we’re really in love
I run around in circles
And turn in the fire alarms
I’m nutty as a fruitcake
When you’re not in my arms
If you’re meant for me like I’m meant for you
Baby, we fit like a glove
If you’re lovin’ me like I’m lovin’ you
Baby, we’re really in love
If you’re lovin’ me like I’m lovin’ you
Baby, we’re really in love
If you’re countin’ on me like I’m countin’ on you
Old Cupid just gave us a shove
If you’re dreamin’ of me like I’m dreamin’ of you
Then I know what you’re dreamin’ of
If you’re lovin’ me like I’m lovin’ you
Baby, we’re really in love
My folks think I’ve gone crazy
And I don’t feel too sure
And yet there’s nothin’ wrong with me
That weddin’ bells won’t cure
If you go for me like I go for you
Baby, we fit like a glove
If you’re lovin’ me like I’m lovin’ you
Baby, we’re really in love