Leo Sayer · 1980 · Behind the Songs
“More Than I Can Say” is a reminder that a great song does not belong to one era.
“More Than I Can Say” is a reminder that a great song does not belong to one era. Leo Sayer’s 1980 version took a song first made famous years earlier and made it sound brand new, not by reinventing it, but by singing it with complete sincerity.
Released in 1980 on the album Living in a Fantasy and as a single that year, the song was written by Jerry Allison and Sonny Curtis and had been a hit for Bobby Vee in 1961. Sayer’s version keeps the melody front and center and lets his voice do the emotional work. There is no irony in his performance, no distance. He sings about love that is too big for words, and he sounds as if he believes every syllable.
That directness is why the record connected so widely. In a year when pop was becoming slicker and more electronic, Sayer offered something warm and human. The arrangement is clean and uncluttered, the chorus is unforgettable, and the vocal has the same open-hearted quality that made “When I Need You” a hit.
It is a song about the limits of language, sung by a singer who never needed many words to make you feel something. Listen once, and you will understand why it became one of his defining hits.