Songfacts®:

• With music composed by Richard Rodgers and lyrics written by Lorenz Hart, "Lover" was sung by Jeanette MacDonald in the 1932 musical film Love Me Tonight, directed by Rouben Mamoulian. MacDonald, who starred in the film alongside Maurice Chevalier, sings it not to him, but to a horse.
• "Lover" appears on the Love Me Tonight score with "Mimi" and "Isn't It Romantic?" All three songs went on to be considered American standards, with at least one ("Isn't It Romantic?") appearing in the Great American Songbook. Rodgers, who composed the score, is one of the few composers to ever have an entire chapter of the Great American Songbook dedicated to him.
• Les Paul recorded an instrumental version of the song that Capitol Records released a single in 1948 and later appeared on his album The New Sound. This recording was the first time separate parts of a song were recorded asynchronously: Paul would record a guitar part and then played along with it, recording new guitar lines on top. All told, the final song combined eight different guitar tracks layered on top of each other. This technique of "multitracking" later became common in the industry.
  
  In pioneering the multitracking recording process, Paul went through 500 acetate discs. He used the same technique for the single's B-side, "Brazil."
• Henry James recorded "Lover" live three times in the 1940s and '50s. Frank Sinatra recorded it twice, one time in 1950 and again in 1961. Peggy Lee released a version of the song in 1952; John Coltrane's rendition appears on his 1957 album The Last Trane.