Song of the Day 8/3: Hüsker Dü, “Love Is All Around” (Mary Tyler Moore theme)

Back in the days of punk rock, a lot of bands would emulate the Ramones by covering familiar songs at a breakneck tempo — think of the Clash covering “I Fought the Law,” or the Ataris’ take on Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer.” Part of the fun was choosing songs totally incongruous with punk aesthetics, and few scored higher by that measure than Hüsker Dü’s rave-up of the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song.

When Mary Tyler Moore died in 2017, a journalist asked Bob Mould about his motivation in recording “Love Is All Around” (the track was released on the band’s “Make No Sense at All” maxi-single in 1984). “The original version was recorded in earnest,” he said. “It’s a great song, and it was a nice tribute to the band’s hometown.” For the video the band naturally recreated a few of the scenes from the show’s opening sequence, though the Dayton’s department store in the background of the opening shot was actually catercorner from the Donaldson’s in the sitcom, which burned down in 1982.

The song was written by Sonny Curtis, whose music-industry roots stretch back to Buddy Holly — he was a member of the Crickets, and he wrote the aforementioned “I Fought the Law” (take note of Mould’s opening chords — they could be the introduction to that Clash version). It came about when a friend told him about the pilot for a new sitcom and asked if he was interested in writing a theme song for it. As Curtis recounts,

At noon, during his lunch break, he dropped off a four-page format that described the show. It wasn’t a script, just a description. I’ve always thought that was kinda lucky, because they didn’t give me a lot of information. It just said, “A girl from the Midwest moves to Minneapolis.” She got jilted I believe. [The character was initially a divorcee, but test audiences were appalled that she would divorce a nice guy like Dick van Dyke.] “Gets a job at a newsroom, gets an apartment she has a hard time affording.” You know, that kinda stuff.

So I sat down and started thinkin’ about what to write. By about 2 p.m. I had one verse. I called and said, ‘Who do I sing this to?’ He sent me over to Studio City, not far from my house, to the CBS soundstage to see [show creator] James L. Brooks. There was this huge room that had no furniture in it. We met in that room, and he was rather cold to me. He said, ‘I’ll listen to what you’ve got, but we’re not near this stage yet of choosing a theme song.’ So I said, ‘Well, okay.’

I sat down and sang him the song, the one verse, which is all that’s on the show. There was a phone sitting on the floor, and he got on the wire and called somebody and said, “Come down and listen to this.” Before I left, I had sung it about 10 times and the whole room was filled with people lined up all around the walls. … It was a one-day deal from start to finish.

The producers intended to have someone else sing it, but Curtis successfully lobbied to have his own vocals used. He also recorded it as a single the year the program debuted. Most people forget that the first season’s theme song had different lyrics — the first line is, “How will you make it on your own?” Curtis rewrote them for the version everybody remembers, which was used in seasons 2 through 7.

In 1980 Curtis re-recorded the tune in a more country style.

“Love Is All Around” has been covered by many artists, from Sammy Davis Jr. to Joan Jett, whose version is an uninspired rip-off of the Hüskers’. Bob Mould still includes the song in his solo concerts as an “uplifting” encore. “People always respond well when I play it,” he said.