“There Must Be More to Love Than This”
Jerry Lee Lewis
Written by Thomas LaVerne and Bill Taylor
Billboard
#1 (2 weeks)
September 5 – September 12, 1970
The historically oblivious rock fans who cry, “Why don’t they just call it the Music Hall of Fame” each time a country, pop, R&B, or hip-hop artist is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame would do well to study the early seventies, when quintessential rock legends like Elvis Presley and Brenda Lee who’d dominated across genres in their R&R days.
Jerry Lee Lewis had scored some No. 1 country hits before he raped his cousin, and country was the genre that gave him a redemption act. Whether his character warranted that opportunity is a conversation for another time and place. What’s undeniable is that he made some damn great country records during his comeback era.
“There Must Be More to Love Than This” is one of the best, a genuinely fresh take on a cheating song from the perspective of The Other Man. Saloon pianos and ass-kicking twang surround a hearty vocal performance from the Killer, making for a record that is grounded in traditional country roots but has a rock and roll attitude which kicks it up an extra notch.
I’d enjoy writing about it so much more if he’d held himself to the same standard he held his material.
“There Must Be More to Love Than This” gets an A.
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I know the other country singers of this time highly admired Jerry Lee, but I never really got it. I would give this song a “B-“. It’s a good song but I don’t think his vocals match the lyrics at all.
The thing about Jerry Lee Lewis’ country hits from 1968 to 1981 is that they were uniquely his. There was no way you could ever mistake The Killer for anybody else, which is why he didn’t really alienate his rock and roll audience with the country material he was doing. This was just one such example (IMHO).
Jerry Lee is the artist that challenges me the most from an ethical standpoint. Obviously a wretched character, but a musical genius who is my personal favorite of the Sun Records gang. I liked both his rock and roll and country quite a bit. To Erik’s point, Jerry Lee’s country was unique to him, while still very much tied to the genre’s conventions. This one’s a winner, as are most of his hits from this time.
“Jerry Lee Lewis had scored some No. 1 country hits before he raped his cousin ” – this is not an accurate statement as of the 1950s when marriages in places like Mississippi and Tennessee under the age of 14, while not that common, were allowed under some circumstances. Fortunately, movements to raise the age of consent and minimum marriage ages have largely succeeded.
Getting back to the music, there was about a five-year period when JLL’s records sounded very country, much more so than about 95% of the product Nashville was putting out at the time. this song is an “A” but it is far from being the best song Jerry would release in the 1970s
Jerry Lee Lewis was a rapist first and a musician second. Nothing he did on his piano will ever outweigh what he did to that child.
14-year-olds cannot consent, regardless of the laws of the land. Just like wives who were forced to have sex with their husbands were raped, even when the laws said that it was still okay.
Your characterization about age of consent and child marriage laws is incorrect. Over 300,000 kids were married under age between 2000 and 2018. Child marriage is only explicitly banned in 13 states and most of those laws have been passed just in the last couple of years, and right now there’s more political momentum for rolling those laws back than for expanding them.
Laws do not determine morality. They are a reflection of the morality of those who make the laws and in a democracy, the voters who support them. Everything Hitler did after his election was legal under German law. Would you like to argue that he did nothing wrong because what he did was technically legal?
Those who enslaved others were raping their slaves too, and are morally responsible for that, even though the law at the time said that these women were legally property, not people. That went on for hundreds of years in the colonies and then the USA. Would you like to argue that slaveowners did nothing wrong because it was legal?
And since we’re talking about laws in Mississippi, it is the only state in the union right now that allows a judge to waive any minimum age requirement – which is only age 15 for girls, but is age 17 for boys – as long as her parents say it’s OK:
So if Jerry Lee Lewis was around today, he could still marry his cousin in Mississippi in 2025. And it would still be rape.
Republicans in Missouri just blocked a law banning child marriage because it might allow raped children to get an abortion. They view a child being raped, and then forced to marry her rapist and raise a child with them to be morally superior to that rapist going to jail.
Even today, only 13 states prevent child marriage under the age of 18 without exceptions, and particularly in the south, statutory rape charges are still being evaded by rapists marrying their victim with the blessing of the victim’s parents. And courts are giving their blessing to these unions.
Jerry Lee Lewis raped his cousin and made her his child bride. No matter how impressive his musical accomplishments were, that truth cannot be denied and will not cancel out how he violently destroyed the life of a young girl.
I can respect his musical talent, the same way I do Michael Jackson’s musical talent. I don’t listen to either of them because there’s plenty of music out there by great artists who don’t rape children.
I’m an educator first and this site always takes a backseat to my day job.
But even if I wasn’t an educator, I’m pretty sure I’d still care more about protecting kids from rape than rehabilitating the reputation of a dead rapist who made some good music.
I listened to a great podcast from Hunter Kelly where he did a pod documentary with Naomi Judd and she said that she and Wynonna were brought to the studio with Jerry Lee Lewis and she felt uncomfortable and that there was no way that she was letting Wynonna be left alone with JLL for even a second the whole time they were there. I respected that. I would not allow my daughter to be near him either. What a creep. I can’t imagine that a man who would even be attracted to a child let alone marry one is someone worth defending or splitting hairs about defending.
You make zero sense.
As PWD noted, the relationship was not illegal, at the time.
If you feel that it was morally abhorent, anyway, and you can’t stomach it, then fine. Why don’t you just say “I refuse to listen to Jerry Lee Lewis’s music or to rate it.”
But you do listen to it and you rate it and give it an A, but throw in comments about him being a “rapist”. And you give us a pointless lecture about age-of-consent laws, which only confirms that PWD is right and your are wrong.
I love Jerry Lee’s country material and especially love the late 60’s early 70’s albums he released. Some of his performances blow away the original artist’s and these were major songs. That being said I never heard this song before and enjoyed it especially of course the piano.
Thanks for the introduction.
I despise pedophiles and I served on a jury back in the 1980s hearing a case concerning a pedophile and I was pushing for far harsher penalties than others on the jury (which did convict).
I never said that JLL wasn’t a crud as a human being, but moral, ethical and legal standards evolve over time. I do tend to not apply today’s standards to the past.
Slavery was always morally wrong, although it has existed for thousands of years. What I find incredibly infuriating is that no one seems to get too worked up about slavery today because it mostly is not white people enslaving black people (see restavek) https://www.definitions.net/definition/restavek
I was just remarking about the depth of discussion on another comment thread, and this one certainly doesn’t live up to what we’ve been fortunate to see lately.
It’s a catch-22 with a feature that is based upon *completion*: Exclude particular items or artists based on principle, and some folks will piss and moan about “woke” or whatever buzzword they’re using that day to justify dismissing a principled stance that they don’t agree with or don’t engage with. Include everything and evaluate it with as little bias as possible– but also maintain a clarity of principle– and folks will piss and moan about that, too.
As I’ve said many times, we’re truly blessed to live in a world that contains more meaningful art than we could ever hope to engage with or experience in a lifetime. Which means that people can and should make purposeful choices about what they do experience. This single, for instance, is one that I can recognize is pretty great on its own merits but is not something I’ll ever feel compelled to seek out again because I find Lewis to be absolutely abhorrent. It’s really just that simple, and it’s not something I’ll lose a minute of sleep over.
It’s like watching a Polanski or Woody Allen film: They have plenty of apologists and sycophants to celebrate them, and they don’t need me in their corner. Neither does Lewis.
“You have to separate the art from the artist!” some people will scream. And no, I don’t. I can and do choose to engage with the work of artists who aren’t perpetuating literal and indefensible harms like the rape of a child– which is what Lewis did, regardless of how the legal system at the time did or did not define it for the benefit of white men exactly like Lewis– instead. Other people can and do make different choices about that, and that’s their prerogative, but they should at least own the fact that defending Jerry Lee Lewis’ actions sends a very specific message about what they will actively or passively condone. It’s not about ideological purity in this case; he was quite literally a pedophile.
Since I’ve never heard this song before, I haven’t even felt the need to check it out, since he’s not somebody that I need nor want to actively listen to. To me, whether it was/is legal or not, it’s not okay to exploit a literal child in the way that he did. Full Stop! I have a 13-year-old daughter and I can tell you that whether or not she technically said yes, she is in no way capable of actually consenting to having sex with a man. It’s disgusting no matter how somebody wants to excuse it with an incredibly neglegent law.
You have the right to make your own decisions. For similar reasons I have refused to watch anything that involves “Hanoi” Jane Fonda
Is that Rodney Crowell I hear beneath all these comments acknowledging, “Life is messy/It’s starting to depress me?”
I want to acknowledge how risky and fraught it is for anyone to comment on this single and this artist in a public forum.
So how awkward is it to share Lewis sounds fabulous here? As much as I love listening to his boozy swagger and elastic vocals on his country material, I am aware of the challenges of promoting him as an artist or person.
I commend Kevin for walking a fair middle ground between an artist and their art in criticizing this single.
Retrospective work will always run up against changes that have happened between the past and the present just by the nature of the undertaking. Trying to accurately contextualize both historical spaces to understand events then and now is incredibly difficult to do so fairly.
I thank Country Universe for acknowledging Jerry Lee Lewis did chart a #1 country record record for two weeks with this single in 1970. It is equally as important to acknowledge this community is responding to that now 55 year-old single in 2025.
What Jerry Lee Lewis’s personal actions then mean to his country music legacy now is under consideration and debate.