Elvis Presley Didn’t Want to Sing “Burning Love” — Then It Became His Last Top 10 Pop Hit

Elvis Presley almost walked away from the song that would become the final Top 10 pop hit of his career. In 1972, “Burning Love” was placed in front of a singer whose life and music were moving in a completely different direction. Elvis was dealing with the collapse of his marriage to Priscilla, recording emotionally heavy material, and seemingly had little interest in a fast, fiery song about desire.

Yet somehow, the song he wasn’t in the mood to sing became one of the defining recordings of his final years.

And the story behind it is stranger than most fans realize.

“Burning Love” began not with Elvis, but with Nashville songwriter Dennis Linde. In 1971, Linde had recently purchased a set of drums and was teaching himself to play. While experimenting at home, he developed a melody and lyrics. He recorded every instrument and his own vocal on a four-track machine, reportedly finishing the entire demo in roughly 20 minutes.

The title had a simple inspiration. Linde was newly married, and “Burning Love” struck him as an appropriate title for that period of his life.

The song eventually reached Arthur Alexander, the influential Alabama singer whose career was deeply connected to the roots of the British rock explosion. Alexander had already written songs recorded by artists including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. In late 1971, he recorded “Burning Love” at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals.

But Alexander’s version went nowhere.

When it was released in 1972, the single failed to make the chart. A song that would eventually become one of Elvis’s biggest late-career hits had already been overlooked once.

Then Elvis heard it.

The timing was almost bizarre.

Early 1972 was an emotionally difficult period for Elvis. Priscilla had left him in February, and the material surrounding him increasingly reflected a darker, more reflective mood. Against that backdrop, “Burning Love” was almost the opposite of what he seemed to be feeling.

It was loud.

It was energetic.

It was driven by rhythm, guitars, horns and gospel-style backing vocals.

And according to recollections from people around Elvis, he simply wasn’t in the mood to sing it.

But his producer Felton Jarvis believed the song deserved a chance. His musicians also understood that Elvis needed something that could bring energy back into his singles. His previous major pop smash, “Suspicious Minds,” had come nearly three years earlier.

So Elvis agreed to try.

On March 28, 1972, at RCA’s Studio C in Hollywood, Elvis recorded “Burning Love.” J.D. Sumner and the Stamps provided backing vocals, helping give the performance the explosive sound the song demanded.

The first attempts didn’t immediately work.

Then came take six.

Something changed.

The hesitation disappeared, the energy arrived, and Elvis suddenly sounded like the song belonged to him.

The session eventually produced the performance that became Elvis’s master recording.

A month later, additional work was completed in Nashville. Session drummer Jerry Carrigan added the distinctive cowbell, while Dennis Linde himself contributed the opening guitar figure.

Think about that for a moment.

The songwriter who had created the original demo alone in his home ended up playing the recognizable guitar introduction on Elvis Presley’s hit recording.

When “Burning Love” was released on August 1, 1972, nobody could have known just how important it would become.

The song climbed rapidly.

By October, it had reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

Almost.

It stopped at No. 2.

Above Elvis was one of the strangest chart-toppers of the era: Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-Ling,” a live novelty recording that many American radio stations were reluctant to play because of its suggestive lyrics.

On Billboard’s Hot 100, Chuck Berry was No. 1 and Elvis Presley was No. 2.

But there is an important detail that sometimes gets lost in retellings.

On the Cashbox chart, “Burning Love” reached No. 1 in November 1972.

So was “Burning Love” a No. 1?

The accurate answer is: yes on Cashbox, but No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

Either way, the song represented a remarkable comeback.

It was Elvis’s highest-peaking Billboard pop single since “Suspicious Minds” in 1969.

And it would also become something much more significant.

It was his last American pop Top 10 hit.

Elvis still had almost five years left to live.

He would release more singles. He would continue performing enormous shows. He would achieve success on country charts and international charts. “Moody Blue,” for example, eventually reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart in 1977, while “Way Down” became a major posthumous success in Britain.

But on the Billboard Hot 100, Elvis never returned to the Top 10 after “Burning Love.”

That makes the song’s history feel almost haunting in retrospect.

And Elvis wasn’t finished with it.

During the filming of Elvis on Tour in 1972, cameras captured him performing the song live while it was still brand new. In some performances, Elvis was still familiarizing himself with the lyrics.

Yet the audience responded.

The song had gone from something Elvis reportedly didn’t want to sing to one of the most energetic moments of his live repertoire.

Then came January 1973.

Elvis performed “Burning Love” during the period surrounding his legendary Aloha from Hawaii performances, the enormous international television event that would become one of the most famous shows of his career.

Over the years, stories have circulated claiming Elvis needed lyric cards for “Burning Love.” But some of those stories have been repeated more confidently than the surviving documentation allows. What can be established is that the song remained part of his performance repertoire and had become a major crowd-pleaser.

There is another remarkable twist.

Instead of immediately building a major new studio album around Elvis’s biggest pop single in years, RCA placed “Burning Love” on a budget Camden release titled Burning Love and Hits from His Movies.

The album combined the current hit with older material from Elvis’s movie years — the very period he had spent years trying to move beyond.

In an almost ironic way, the new hit was now helping sell the old Elvis.

And that tells us something about the strange business of Elvis Presley in the early 1970s.

The singer was still capable of producing a record powerful enough to reach the very top of the American charts. But the machinery surrounding him was increasingly recycling his past while Elvis himself was trying to define what came next.

“Burning Love” therefore stands at an unusual crossroads in his career.

It was modern enough to sound urgent.

It was energetic enough to remind listeners of the younger Elvis.

But it was also the final Billboard pop Top 10 appearance of his life.

The people connected to the song also followed very different paths.

Dennis Linde remained largely behind the scenes in Nashville and continued writing songs for other performers. Arthur Alexander, whose own recording of “Burning Love” had failed commercially, eventually stepped away from the music business before returning decades later. He died in 1993, only days after performing with his new band.

And Elvis?

He walked into the studio in 1972 not particularly interested in singing “Burning Love.”

Six takes later, he had created a record that climbed to No. 2 on Billboard and No. 1 on Cashbox.

More importantly, it became the 40th and final Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 hit of his career, a run that had begun with “Heartbreak Hotel” back in 1956.

That’s the part of the story that makes “Burning Love” so fascinating.

The song wasn’t supposed to become a farewell.

Nobody knew it was a farewell.

Elvis didn’t know.

The record company didn’t know.

The fans certainly didn’t know.

At the time, it was simply another Elvis single — a powerful, sweaty, explosive performance from a singer who still had plenty of life and music ahead of him.

But history gave it a different meaning.

The song Elvis almost didn’t want became the last time the American pop charts placed him among their biggest stars.

And for one extraordinary week in 1972, Chuck Berry was at No. 1, Elvis Presley was at No. 2, and two architects of rock and roll stood side by side near the top of America’s pop chart.

Elvis would never return to that position again.

The song he wasn’t in the mood for had quietly become the final chapter of one of the greatest Top 10 runs in popular music history.

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