"From his eerie 1954 reading of “Blue Moon” up to 1976's “Hurt,” Elvis established himself as a pre-eminent ballad singer, something a lot of people forget in the flurry to hail his anarchic rock material. “It Hurts Me” from 1963 isn't the first great ballad of his career, but it's one of the finest. Recorded in Nashville at the same session which yielded his supple version of Chuck Berry's “Memphis, Tennessee,” “It Hurts Me” fuses Elvis' love for gospel melisma with the heartache of a lover forced to stand on the sidelines of a romance. He approaches the song — a forbearer of the Four Seasons' “Silence Is Golden” — at first delicately, as if he's afraid any force would snap the song's tension. By the second bar, the song is all tension, with the pain of watching the right woman with the wrong man becoming too much to bear. When the roaring finale comes sweeping through, its two minutes and some-odd seconds seem to have encompassed a lifetime of anguish."
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Actors from MississippiAmerican country singersSinger-songwriters from the United StatesGuitarists from the United StatesGospel singers
Original Language: English
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Elvis Presley
film actor, singer, composer
1935 – 1977 · United States
(8 January 1935 – 16 August 1977) was an American singer, musician, and actor. Popularly known by his first name as "Elvis," as "The King of Rock and Roll" or simply as "The King," he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century.
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