Blue Hawaii Review

Commercially this was a triumph, sitting at the top of the American chart for twenty weeks and outselling almost everything he ever made. Artistically it is where the rot sets in. The songs were written to fit scenes in a travelogue, the arrangements lean on steel guitar and ukulele for local flavour, and the lyrics are travel brochure copy set to melody. He sings it beautifully, because he could not do otherwise, and Can't Help Falling in Love is a genuinely great record, a Neapolitan melody sung with total restraint that has outlasted every other song here by fifty years.

Rock a Hula Baby is the low point and it was a single. The rest is pleasant, weightless and interchangeable. The tragedy is what it proved to his management: that a soundtrack with a beach on the cover would outsell the finest singing of his career. That lesson shaped everything until the Memphis sessions rescued him.