“People have used it as their wedding song. I often think, ‘Hey, did you listen to the lyrics?’”: The classic number one hit with a sting in its tail

In 1981, Illinois-based rock band REO Speedwagon hit the top of the US chart with the power ballad Keep On Loving You. But if the sound of that song was smooth, it was a classic case of an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Keep On Loving You was written by singer Kevin Cronin, and as he recalled in an interview with Classic Rock, the rest of the band didn’t think much of the song on first listen.

“During rehearsals I started playing it on the piano,” he said, “and the guys looked at me like I was from a different planet. ‘What is that? What are you, Barry Manilow?’

“That’s what the song sounded like at first. But it was a really important song for me, very personal. I wasn’t about to let go of this song.”

It was when guitarist Gary Richrath got involved that Keep On Loving You turned into something more powerful.

“I kept playing it over and over,” Cronin said, “until one day Gary plugged in his Les Paul and hit these big chords. Honestly, I think he was just trying to drown me out. But I said, ‘Dude, that’s perfect!’

“The song had been a little too sweet. It needed that nasty guitar tone. And that’s when the lightbulb went on: Ah, that’s how we do this! Kevin writes a little folk song, Gary trashes it out, and then you got something. That’s where it all coalesced for us.”

REO Speedwagon - Keep on Loving You (Video Version) - YouTube

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Keep On Loving You knocked Dolly Parton’s 9 To 5 off the number one spot.

"After all those years of working at it, it was amazing to hear your song on the radio all the time,” Cronin said. “It was everything that I’d ever hoped for as a songwriter. But it was also the first song where I really exposed my life and my relationship to a certain degree. Maybe too much…”

The song’s lyrics are at times venomous: ‘You played dead/But you never bled/Instead you lay still in the grass/All coiled up and hissin’…’

As Cronin put it: “The chorus is very pretty but in the verses there’s some nasty stuff in there, man! It was kind of a taboo subject, but there are people that use Keep On Loving You as their wedding song. I often think, ‘Hey, did you listen to the lyrics?’ But what I learned with that song was that the more you expose of your life, the more people will relate to it. That’s what really hit the ball out of the park.”

The parent album Hi-Infidelity also hit the top. “We had the number one record when MTV started out, so that just fuelled the phenomenon even more,” Cronin said. “We weren’t prepared for the level of success and how quickly our lives changed.”

He also admitted that he and his bandmates didn’t know what to do with the money after years of struggling to get by.

“We all spent money on various stupid things,” he laughed. “Personally, I was okay. I had a business manager even before the Hi-Infidelity money started coming in. But as a band, we bought an oil well… in Southern Illinois! Why we thought there would be oil there is beyond me…”