About The Song
“A Love Song” is a country ballad recorded by Kenny Rogers and released as a single in October 1982. Written by American country singer Lee Greenwood, the track appears on Rogers’ thirteenth studio album, Love Will Turn You Around, issued on Liberty Records earlier that year. The single, backed with “The Fool in Me,” runs a little over three minutes and was produced by Rogers himself. It became a substantial country hit at the beginning of his 1980s crossover period and is often grouped with his early-’80s romantic material.
The song began its life on Lee Greenwood’s 1982 album Inside Out, where it appears as the opening track. Greenwood wrote and first recorded “A Love Song” for that project, released in the spring of 1982, giving the piece a contemporary Nashville setting before Rogers picked it up later the same year. Greenwood’s version remained an album cut, but the song’s structure—a concise, mid-tempo reflection on why love songs move people so deeply—made it a natural candidate for another artist with strong adult-contemporary appeal.
Rogers cut his version while assembling Love Will Turn You Around, an album recorded between Nashville’s Creative Workshop and studios in Los Angeles. The LP, released in 1982, followed the Lionel Richie–produced success of Share Your Love and maintained Rogers’ position in both the country and pop markets. The title track was issued as the first single, reaching No. 1 on U.S. and Canadian country charts and the adult-contemporary listings, as well as the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. “A Love Song” was chosen as the follow-up single, giving the album a second strong radio presence and helping it reach the Top 40 of the Billboard 200 before ultimately being certified platinum in the United States and Canada.
Session information compiled from musician credits shows that Rogers surrounded himself with high-end studio players for “A Love Song.” The recording features bass by Nathan East, drums from Leon “Ndugu” Chancler and Paul Leim, acoustic guitars and mandolin by Billy Joe Walker Jr., additional guitar by Fred Tackett and Fender Rhodes electric piano by Joel Scott. Backing vocals were supplied by Herb Pedersen and Joey Scarbury. Rogers took the producer’s role, shaping an arrangement that blends soft country instrumentation with smooth pop touches tailored to early-1980s adult-contemporary radio.
Lyrically, “A Love Song” is about the emotional impact of love songs themselves. The narrator asks why people cry when they hear the word “goodbye” in a love song and notes that tears “are sure to fall” when listeners sense that the singers have given everything to the relationship they describe. Subsequent lines talk about how, in a love song, two people who have faced difficulties can still find a “beautiful romance” and a second chance. Rather than telling a detailed story with named characters, the lyric reflects on familiar situations—breakups, reconciliations, hopes for lasting affection—and suggests that the power of such songs comes from how closely they mirror real life.
On the charts, Rogers’ recording performed strongly across several formats. In the United States, “A Love Song” reached No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart and climbed to No. 10 on the Adult Contemporary chart, while also peaking at No. 47 on the Billboard Hot 100. Trade-paper data from the period indicates that it spent multiple weeks at No. 1 on the country chart in the industry publication Radio & Records. In Canada, the single topped the RPM Country Tracks chart and reached the Top 10 on the RPM Adult Contemporary chart, confirming its appeal with country and pop-leaning audiences alike.
Over time, “A Love Song” has remained a regular feature in compilations of Rogers’ work. It appears on best-of collections and themed sets such as A Love Song Collection, where it sits alongside other romantic hits including “Love Will Turn You Around,” “Through the Years” and “You Decorated My Life.” Because the track originated with Lee Greenwood but found its widest audience through Rogers, it is frequently cited in overviews of Greenwood’s songwriting career and of Rogers’ early-’80s catalogue, standing as an example of how a thoughtfully crafted ballad could travel from one artist to another and succeed on country and adult-contemporary radio.
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Lyric
Why do people cry
When they hear the word goodbye
In a love song?
Tears are sure to fall
When you know they gave it all
In a love song.
Somehow two lovers get a chance
At a beautiful romance
And you wish it could be you.
‘Cause everybody’s needing
What the singers all are singing
In a love song.
It can tear you apart
‘Cause a word can break a heart
In a love song.
They say all the things you feel
And they make it sound so real
In a love song.
It seems that everything they say
Is said in such a way
That we believe it’s true.
‘Cause everybody’s needing
What the singers all are singing
In a love song.
Each of us know
There’s no guarantee
We’ll ever find love.
And in the songs that we share
The heartache is there
To remind us.
New love brings a thrill
And we know it always will
In a love song.
Happiness can leave
But it helps if we believe
In a love song.
There’s a part of you and me
In every memory
That tells us who we are.
And everybody’s needing
What the singers all are singing
In a love song.