“Can't Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley

"Can't Help Falling in Love" first reached the world on Elvis Presley's 1961 soundtrack to Blue Hawaii, but its melody is a couple of centuries older than rock and roll. Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore and George David Weiss built it on "Plaisir d'amour," a French love song Jean-Paul-Égide Martini composed in 1784, and they first wrote it for a woman to sing, as "Can't Help Falling in Love with Him," which is why a couple of its lines end on a word that doesn't rhyme.

The recording counted here is a 1974 release, with Elvis carried along by a wall of voices: J.D. Sumner & the Stamps, the Sweet Inspirations and Kathy Westmoreland. Rolling Stone later placed the song at No. 403 on its 2012 list of the greatest songs of all time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.