Love Don't Come Easy

Album: Mane Attraction (1991)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Love Don't Come Easy" was the lead single to White Lion's 1991 album, Mane Attraction. The band, led by lead singer Mike Tramp and guitarist Vito Bratta, were signed to Atlantic Records, which released their breakthrough album Pride in 1987, with the hit ballads "Wait" and "When The Children Cry." They earned a reputation as one of the more musically minded hair metal bands, with thoughtful lyrics from Tramp and dazzling guitar work by Bratta. But it went downhill quickly: their next album, Big Game, didn't cover its bets, and Mane Attraction didn't move the needle. The group split in 1992.
  • Many White Lion songs deal with social or political issues, but others are about love, or the lack thereof. "Love Don't Come Easy" is in that latter category.

    "Well, it doesn't!" Mike Tramp told Songfacts. "Besides death, it's probably one of those things that everyone will go through one way or another. They will go in and out, and they will search, and some will never find it and some will. And then when they find someone, there will be trouble again. One person gets confused, one is happy, one doesn't want to go the way you want to."

    "Along the song, you're going through three verses," he added. "When you come to the third verse, you say, 'Girl, you better make up your mind now because I can't wait.' And then, we're back to the song I wrote in '86 called 'Wait.'"
  • White Lion relied on MTV for much of their airplay. They made a video for this song with an interesting concept: a guy walks into a theater where footage of a beautiful woman diving into water is projected. He figures out how to enter her universe, diving in himself to join her.

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