At Just 24, Van Morrison Wrote A Nearly Perfect Song That's Still A Wedding Staple Decades Later

By his mid-20s, Van Morrison had already led and left the garage rock band Them and completed three solo albums of soulful folk and rock. Around the time that he turned 24 in 1969, the singer-songwriter recorded the LP "Moondance," which included some of Morrison's most memorable tunes, including the title track, "Into the Mystic," and especially "Crazy Love." While Morrison is such a notoriously prickly '70s rocker that even fans never got used to his personality, his music speaks for itself, including the immaculate and quietly beautiful "Crazy Love." Not just a track on "Moondance," it also filled out the flip side of "Come Running," issued in 1970.

"Crazy Love" became a '70s B-side that outshone its lead single, eventually earning the status of a classic and favorite wedding song that will stir up nostalgia in boomers. And Morrison was surprisingly young when he wrote such a vulnerable and insightful song embraced by countless couples over the past 50-plus years. Here's how a rock star barely into his 20s conceived of a love song and wedding favorite for the ages.

"Crazy Love" is as nuanced as it is sweet and tender. The lyrics at first depict the subject as having a supernatural effect on the narrator and the world around them, such as how "the heavens open every time she smiles." But then "Crazy Love" never fully becomes a paean to Van Morrison's ideal mate, but rather a litany of the ways in which they make the narrator feel good. But perhaps all those sentiments bundled together are fine for an emotionally and romantically charged event like a wedding.

The honest and raw songs are the ones that resonate the most and become standards. "Crazy Love" is that kind of song, and it's been covered more than 130 times. In the 70s, stars like Rita Coolidge and Helen Reddy took a turn, while in the 1980s, rock crooner Bryan Ferry and reggae star Maxi Priest delivered their interpretations. Particularly affecting covers by Brian McKnight, Rod Stewart, and Michael Bublé might be as likely to be spun at a wedding as the Morrison original. 

The initial "Crazy Love" remains one of Morrison's most played songs on streaming services, indicating that it gets a lot of public listens, such as at weddings. And that's all for a song that was never a hit. Many people discovered this classic love song just by letting "Moondance" play through, or they found it on the B-side of "Come Running," barely a Top 40 hit in 1970.