Song Analysis - Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough)

 Love sure isn't easy, but it's definitely hard enough!  

Today's song is a bit of a playful one, featuring some back and forth vocals between Bjorn and Benny, and Agnetha and Frida. This song is basically about a love that's sort of gone stale.  Bjorn and Benny start of the song with "Do you remember the first time and all of your sweet, sweet talk ain’t heard it a lot since then, love," in a way accusing the main character of the song's partner of being the one to let the relationship get boring, only for the partner to refute his claim by responding, "now look at that guy! he’s making me cry! He leaves every morning and he hardly says goodbye," indicating that he too has allowed the relationship to sort of crumble.  But then all four members sing, "but if I would have to choose I wouldn’t let you go.  Just give it some more time and you will see our love will grow, darling, I know."

I think the chorus of the song perfectly describes what it means to be in love.  "We gotta have patience, love isn’t just a sensation some of the time it gets rough.  Love isn’t easy but it sure is hard enough."  Even if things start to get boring, there's still room to grow and get over this rough patch.  Love will always prevail. 

In a way, this is a theme that is explored in a later ABBA song, from a good 4 years later - One Man, One Woman.  With lines such as "No smiles, not a single word at the breakfast table, though I would have liked to begin.  So much that I wanna say, but I feel unable.  You leave and slam the door like you've done many times before, and I cry and I feel so helpless" and in the third verse, "You smile and I realise that we need a shake-up.  Our love is a precious thing worth the pain and the suffering, and it's never too late for changing, "One Man, One Woman is almost like Love Isn't Easy (But It Sure Is Hard Enough) but with a bit of a grown up, more mature version.  Like, Love Isn't Easy has this young, innocence to it, with a playful touch to the song.  

Both songs still have a very important meaning, that if you want a relationship to last, both partners need to put in the work to reignite things, because love is a very precious thing that requires patience. 

I've always really loved Love Isn't Easy, especially because I can still recall the first time I ever heard the song.  Back in 2011 or so, my ways of discovering new ABBA songs were very limited.  I grew up in a household that originally despised YouTube, so the only way to listen to new ABBA songs were CDs, or the 30 second samples on Amazon.  Luckily, I had access to the library, and though their ABBA selection was extremely limited, I was able to get my hands on The Definitive Collection.  Listening to the first CD for the first time was extremely thrilling.  All I had really heard in full from ABBA until that point were the songs from ABBA Gold, the only CD my family owned, and those songs are ABBA's most popular tracks, a lot of them being from what I consider ABBA's peak, from 1975-1980.  By that point in ABBA's history, they'd already established a sound for themselves, which in their earlier songs that I've been talking about these last couple of weeks, they were still sort of discovering. 

Of course I fell in love with each and every song from the Definitive Collection, but when I first heard that guitar intro to Track 4, followed by Bjorn and Benny's vocals which for some reason sound really sweet and soft in this song, I realized that there is even more to ABBA then I had thought.  Yes, People Need Love and He Is Your Brother also have Bjorn and Benny singing on them, but there was something about Love Isn't Easy that just stood out to me.  And still when I listen to this song, I remember my initial thoughts hearing this song and it's always amazing to me.

Judging by pictures of ABBA's 1973 performances, I'm sure Love Isn't Easy was performed live, but of all those performances, we only have one video from when ABBA were in Denmark.  Judging by the photos of their live performances, they would put on a bit of a playful act, and thankfully this single video performance also captures that playfulness.  It's an extremely lovely performance and I'm so grateful we have an early performance like this available to watch.