The No. 1 Song On August 17, 1993 Sounds Even More Charming Today

You can't go wrong covering Elvis, right? UB40 definitely knew this was the case when they covered "Can't Help Falling in Love" for 1993's trashterpiece tech-thriller, "Sliver." Their cover of a song made for a movie (Elvis' 1961 "Blue Hawaii") overwhelmed the pop cultural music world, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and staying there for seven weeks. And you know what? It sounds even more charming today.

On the surface, nothing about UB40 or their cover of "Can't Help Falling in Love" makes sense or seems likely to have succeeded. An easy-listening British reggae-pop troupe with synth elements and trumpet toots doing an uptempo rendition of an early '60s, post-military-stint Elvis love ballad for a sleezy follow-up to the Sharon Stone-led "Basic Instinct" tech-thriller? Not even Elvis' original reached No. 1, but peaked at No. 2. But somehow, someway, the gentlemen of UB40 orchestrated an irresistibly likeable version of "Can't Help Falling in Love," which granted them their second No. 1 song, the first of which was also a cover: 1984's "Red Red Wine," based on the 1967 Neil Diamond song that flopped on release. 

Call them unoriginal all you want, but UB40 definitely had a knack for reinterpreting older material. To this day, they have 9.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify, while their version of "Can't Help Falling in Love" has over 870 million listens. This success is no fluke, and boils down to nuts-and-bolts songwriting, musical soundscapes, and Ali Campbell's voice. 

We're reluctant to use the word "vibe" here, as it gets tossed around way too much nowadays to substitute for far more precise explanations, but it fits. UB40's cover of "Can't Help Falling in Love" has none of Elvis' brief, piano intro, but deposits the listener directly into an ethereal synth backdrop and singer Ali Campbell's highly reverbed voice. The song sounds instantly, well ... romantic.

Rather than blaring at the listener from the onset, "Can't Help Falling in Love" coaxes you in (like unforeseen love, we could say) and sets up an emotional landing that hits along with the beat, brass lines, and synth blasts. From that point, the song's core songwriting takes over and hooks the listener until the end. This stupendous songwriting comes from trio Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss, who took inspiration (especially in the melody's resolution) from the French standard, "Plaisir d'amour," that dates to 1784. Talk about timeless. Something about the sincerity and beauty of this original shines through all the way to UB40's version about 200 years later, and makes it stand head and shoulders above not only other love songs, but other covers of "Can't Help Falling in Love." The song has about 820 official covers, but none of them sound like UB40's.

Interestingly enough, UB40 had originally done the song for the 1992 romcom, "Honeymoon in Vegas," but producers instead chose to use a now-forgotten version from Bono. UB40's song got picked up for 1993's "Sliver," which also might explain why it doesn't fit the film. Misfit though it is, it still fits everyone's expectations of what love feels like.