“Where Do I Begin?” — Andy Williams (Theme from “Love Story”)
I was too young to see “Love Story” in 1970 when the film first came out. But when I saw it for the first time many years later, I was captivated by the music.
Francis Lai won a well-deserved Best Original Score Oscar for his work on “Love Story”. Seldom has a film score captured and amplified the emotions on-screen as well as Francis Lai did on this occasion.
“Love Story” is a hugely emotional film in itself, of course, and there’s always a danger that the score for a very emotional film over-does the emotions, detracting from, rather than adding to the emotions we see playing out in front of our eyes.
Francis Lai didn’t do that, however. He amplified the emotions where they needed amplifying, complemented them when they needed a subtle counter-point, and faded to nothing when anything at all would have disrespected the story. It’s an exquisite piece of work.
However, the path to pairing a set of lyrics to the “Love Story” theme was a more tortured one.
The “Love Story” theme had originally been written with a set of lyrics to accompany Frances Lai’s music, but executives at Paramount Pictures decided they didn’t like them and released the film with just Francis Lai’s instrumental as the theme.
