“May This Be Love” is a late-night prayer set to electric haze—Emmylou Harris stepping into Jimi Hendrix’s gentlest dream and letting it glow, bruised and beautiful, like a porch light seen through rain.
The most important coordinates first: “May This Be Love” is Emmylou Harris’s cover of the Jimi Hendrix ballad, released on her career-turning 1995 album Wrecking Ball (released September 26, 1995)—the record where she left the familiar porch-swing swing of traditional country and walked into something more atmospheric, nocturnal, and daring with producer Daniel Lanois. The album’s commercial footprint was modest but clearly documented: it debuted and peaked at No. 94 on the Billboard 200 (chart dated October 14, 1995). And yet the industry’s deeper recognition followed: Wrecking Ball won the 1996 GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Folk Recording / Album (the category name is often cited in slightly different wording, but the win is consistent across official references).
Now—what does it mean that Emmylou chose this Hendrix song?
In Hendrix’s own world, “May This Be Love” (from Are You Experienced, 1967) is the soft-focus corner of a revolutionary album: romantic, pastoral, almost fragile in its hope. It’s a love song that doesn’t boast. It asks. It wonders. It tries to bless the thing it’s feeling—may this be love—as if love is not guaranteed, as if it must be gently called into existence and protected from the rough hands of the world.
When Emmylou Harris brings that song into Wrecking Ball, it stops being a youthful wonder and becomes something else: a mature, weathered kind of tenderness—love not as fireworks, but as refuge. By 1995, Harris had already lived through eras, scenes, losses, and reinventions; and Wrecking Ball is often described as a deliberate artistic pivot, steeped in Lanois’ spacious, haunted sonics and an emotional palette that favors twilight over noon. That matters, because “May This Be Love” on this album feels less like a cover and more like a confession whispered through reverb.
The “story behind” the recording is really the story behind the album: Daniel Lanois building an environment where songs behave like memories—half-lit, floating, stubbornly alive. Wikipedia’s session credits and personnel show Lanois not merely producing but playing—a hands-on presence throughout the record—and the album’s guest list reads like a quiet summit: Neil Young, Lucinda Williams, Larry Mullen Jr., and others drifting in and out of Harris’ orbit. For “May This Be Love” specifically, documentation notes a performance credit that highlights Larry Mullen Jr. as part of the studio track’s lineup—a detail that underlines how far Harris had traveled from “genre” expectations into a broader, borderless sound.
Musically, the effect is almost cinematic. The song opens like mist rising from warm ground, then the guitars begin to shimmer and coil—less “solo” than weather. Critics have often singled out this track as one of the album’s peaks, describing it as a kind of psychedelic storm within the record’s broader hush. Yet the heart of it is still Harris’ voice: calm, unshowy, unwavering. She sings as though she’s learned that the deepest feelings don’t always arrive with drama—sometimes they arrive with quiet, and the quiet is what makes them sacred.
The meaning of “May This Be Love” in Harris’ hands is, finally, about permission. The lyric imagines troubles melting away “like lemon drops,” and in the original, that sweetness has a young, hopeful glow. With Harris, the same sweetness feels earned—almost hard-won—because it’s sung by someone who knows troubles don’t always evaporate. Sometimes they remain, and you learn to live beside them. In that light, the line isn’t naive; it’s brave. It’s the sound of someone choosing gentleness anyway, choosing love not because it’s easy, but because it’s the only thing that makes the night feel survivable.
And there is a final, quietly moving irony: Wrecking Ball didn’t conquer the charts, but it conquered time. It’s the kind of record people return to when they’ve grown tired of loud certainty—when they want music that understands shadows, and still offers light. In that return, “May This Be Love” becomes what its title always promised: not a declaration, but a wish—kept alive by the tremble of guitars, the steadying of rhythm, and Emmylou Harris singing as if tenderness itself were an act of grace.
