Leo Sayer – More Than I Can Say

Leo Sayer bought the record that afternoon and cut his version of “More Than I Can Say” that same night

Leo Sayer found the biggest American hit of his career in a television commercial. Looking for an older song to record for his eighth album, he caught an ad for a Bobby Vee greatest-hits collection, heard a few bars of a tune he half-remembered, and made up his mind on the spot. He walked into a record store that afternoon, bought the Vee album, and had More Than I Can Say recorded that same night. The whole decision took less time than most artists spend choosing a single.

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What Sayer picked up that day had a history older than Vee’s version. More Than I Can Say was written in 1959 by Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison, two members of the Crickets, in the raw months after Buddy Holly’s death in the plane crash that took their bandleader. The pair reportedly wrote it in about an hour. The famous part — the wordless “wo-wo, yay-yay” that opens and threads through the song — was never finished as a lyric. They left the placeholder in, and the placeholder became the hook everyone remembers.

The Crickets released their original in 1960, and it scraped the lower reaches of the British charts. Bobby Vee took it further the next year, carrying his 1961 recording to No. 4 in the UK and into the American charts. For nearly two decades the song sat as a solid oldie, well-liked and well-traveled, waiting for someone to make it enormous. Sayer, with producer Alan Tarney behind the glass, was the one who did.

From a dead man’s bandmates to a five-week smash

Tarney rebuilt the tune as gleaming early-’80s soft rock — bright guitar, clean drums, Sayer’s high, aching vocal riding over the top. Released as the lead single from Living in a Fantasy in the summer of 1980, it became the defining commercial moment of his career. On the American Billboard Hot 100 it climbed to No. 2 and stuck there for five straight weeks across December 1980 and into January 1981, held off the top only by Kenny Rogers’ Lady. It reached No. 2 in the UK as well, and spent three weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. In Australia it went all the way to the top. The RIAA certified it Gold.

The performance on this page comes from Dutch television — the Firato CD Show, broadcast on September 5, 1980, as the single was still climbing toward its peak. Sayer delivers it live, the falsetto intact, the wordless hook landing exactly where four different generations of listeners have expected it to land since Curtis and Allison left it unfinished in 1959. Sonny Curtis has said he considers it one of the most enduring things he ever wrote, and the proof is in how many singers kept reaching for it. Sayer reached the furthest.