There is a moment in the history of British pop—a flashpoint in the mid-sixties—when the raw, driving energy of the beat groups began to meet the sophisticated polish of Tin Pan Alley. The intersection was less a clash than a seamless blending, often facilitated by a small, dedicated cadre of songwriters and session musicians who understood the geometry of a perfect three-minute song. This is where we find The Ivy League, and this is precisely the world that frames their pivotal 1965 single, “Funny How Love Can Be.”
I first encountered this piece of music on a slightly warped compilation cassette, years ago, in a borrowed car on a cross-country drive. The sun was setting, bleeding across the windshield, and the simple, confident sound felt like a transmission from a cleaner, less self-conscious era. It wasn’t the sound of rebellion; it was the sound of professional, elegant craft. It hit a unique, almost melancholic-yet-optimistic spot, confirming that even amidst the revolutionary noise of their peers, a beautifully constructed pop song could still hold its own, charting in the UK’s Top 10 shortly after its release.
The Architect’s Blueprint: Context and Craft
To understand this song is to understand its creators, John Carter and Ken Lewis. The Ivy League, in its original and most vital iteration, was essentially a vehicle for the songwriting and vocal precision of Carter, Lewis, and Perry Ford. Before even releasing their own debut single, the trio had already made a name for themselves as elite session singers, most famously providing the distinctive high-register backing vocals on The Who’s breakthrough, “I Can’t Explain.” That professional dexterity—a mastery of harmony and impeccable timing—is the foundation of The Ivy League’s sound.
“Funny How Love Can Be” arrived in early 1965, following a debut single that barely registered. It was a career-defining moment, a testament to the fact that their craft could deliver commercial success on a massive scale. The song was quickly included on their debut album, This Is the Ivy League, released the same year on the Piccadilly label (a subsidiary of Pye Records). Unlike many of their guitar-slinging peers, the power of The Ivy League lay not in their live grit, but in the studio’s laboratory. While a specific, consistent producer is not widely documented across their early work, many sources note that figures like Terry Kennedy oversaw sessions for the original single releases. The true production signature, however, belonged to Carter and Lewis’s composition, an architecture built for vocal shimmer. This meticulous home audio clarity is exactly what allowed the song’s harmonies to cut through the often murky AM radio airwaves of the era.
The Sonic Landscape: A Study in Restraint
The instrumentation of “Funny How Love Can Be” is a remarkable exercise in knowing when to step forward and when to recede. The opening is instantly arresting: a chiming guitar figure that is clean, bright, and slightly compressed, setting a deceptively simple, major-key motif. This is not the heavy, distorted aggression of contemporary rock; it’s a polite, ringing declaration.
The rhythm section is crisp and unfussy, driven by a tight drumming pattern that favours the high-hat and a snare sound with a surprising, dry snap. The bassline is agile but never dominates, providing a warm, melodic anchor below the increasingly complex vocal tapestry. But the song’s true melodic counterpoint, the element that elevates it from a mere beat number to a piece of polished pop orchestration, is the piano. It enters with simple block chords, providing harmonic support, but quickly transitions into subtle, perfectly placed fills—short, bright figures that dart around the vocal lines, adding buoyancy and harmonic depth. It’s a masterclass in how to use the keyboard not just as a rhythm instrument, but as a textural brush.
The arrangement is dynamic without being bombastic. It builds to the chorus not through volume, but through the glorious, layered three-part harmony of Carter, Lewis, and Ford. This is the premium audio payoff: their voices are perfectly blended, tight enough to sound like one massive, impossibly smooth instrument, yet distinct enough that you can hear the individual timbres. The lead vocal line is strong, but it is the instantly recognizable, ascending ‘ooh-ooh-ooh’ backing melody that is the song’s signature, a moment of vocal choreography that feels both sophisticated and utterly joyous. The compression applied to the final mix is judicious, lending a bright, forward presence that made it sound massive on transistor radios, yet still retains a warm, intimate feel.
The Emotional Narrative: Glazed Melancholy
The lyrical content, penned by Carter and Lewis, is standard-fare heartbreak for the era, detailing the slow, dawning realization that a relationship is over. Yet, the music elevates the mundane sorrow into something almost grand. The title itself—Funny How Love Can Be—suggests a resignation tinged with amazement, a philosophical acceptance of love’s often cruel mechanics.
The shift into the bridge is particularly cinematic. The pace seems to slow just for a moment, the harmonics become richer, and the vocal delivery adopts a touch more vulnerability before exploding back into the transcendent, harmonized chorus. It is this moment of brief, contained catharsis that makes the song resonate, providing a micro-story of heartbreak processed and refined into something beautiful. This is sophisticated pop, acknowledging sadness but choosing melody as the ultimate response. The song is short—a perfectly engineered missile of emotion and craft—and it ends abruptly, leaving the listener hanging in the bright, sustained reverb of the final chord. It suggests that while the song may be over, the feeling lingers.
“The Ivy League understood that the studio was not just a place to record a song, but an instrument itself, capable of weaving gossamer threads of vocal harmony into a structure of pop perfection.”
The career arc of The Ivy League is fascinating precisely because they were so successful behind the scenes. Following the success of this song and its follow-up, “Tossing and Turning,” Carter and Lewis departed to focus on their songwriting and production work, leading to massive hits for other groups, most famously with The Flower Pot Men’s “Let’s Go to San Francisco.” “Funny How Love Can Be” thus stands as a foundational moment, the first major chart success that demonstrated the sheer potential of the Carter-Lewis songwriting partnership. It is the purest distillation of their vocal and melodic aesthetic, a song built to last, perfectly bridging the British beat era with the dawning sophistication of orchestral pop. It’s a song for driving late, for sitting in a café on a rainy Sunday, or simply for appreciating the sublime mathematics of popular composition. It’s a testament to the skill that requires more than just raw talent; it requires hours of dedication, the kind that might lead someone to invest in guitar lessons or vocal coaching to chase that elusive, perfect blend.
The Critic’s Re-Listen: Adjacent Moods
For those who appreciate the exquisite vocal arrangement and the melodic craftsmanship of “Funny How Love Can Be,” here are a few tracks from adjacent eras and moods that share its DNA:
- The New Vaudeville Band – Winchester Cathedral: Shares the same Pye Records orbit and a similar sophisticated, often multi-tracked vocal texture, though with a distinct novelty theme.
- The Hollies – Bus Stop: Exhibits the perfect blend of folk-rock sensibility with soaring, technically precise three-part harmony, driven by an equally crisp rhythm section.
- The Turtles – Happy Together: Captures a similar sense of ecstatic, slightly manic pop joy built on an instantly memorable, high-reaching chord progression and layered vocals.
- Herman’s Hermits – No Milk Today: Features the same lightly melancholic lyrical theme married to a gentle, piano-and-guitar driven arrangement and a feeling of resigned contemplation.
- The Searchers – Needles and Pins: Known for its distinct, ringing guitar sound and a powerful vocal melody that channels the slightly wistful, sophisticated side of the British Invasion.
- The Zombies – She’s Not There: A crucial comparison for the interplay between the electric guitar and the bright, jazz-tinged piano, proving that complexity could still sound commercially smooth.