Thursday Inspiration #168 I’d Love You to Want Me

Respond to this challenge, by either by using the prompt word want, or going with the above picture, or by means of the song ‘I’d Love You to Want Me’, or by going with another song by Lobo, or anything else that you think fits.  Roland Kent Lavoie is much better known as Lobo (meaning wolf in Spanish) was an individual artist, although many people thought of him as a group.  ‘I’d Love You to Want Me’ was his most successful song, which got to #2 in the US on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a #1 hit on the Easy Listening adult contemporary chart.  It was released on his 1972 second album Of a Simple Man, and the single went to #5 in the UK.  Lobo wrote every song on this album, and he played all the instruments on this song.  Rock & Roll Hall of Fame songwriter and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Ellie Greenwich who cowrote mostly with her partner Jeff Barry was a background singer on this album, but not this song.

From 1971-1979, he charted eight times on Billboard, and his first big hit came in 1971 with the song ‘Me And You And A Dog Named Boo’, which peaked at #5 on the Billboard pop charts.  This song is about two hippies and a dog taking a cross-country road trip in an old car, and Lobo actually had a German Shepard named Boo.  He was born in Tallahassee and grew up in Winter Haven, Florida.  When he was in high school, he got into a band with Gram Parsons who was in the Byrds, and the Flying Burrito Brothers and Jim Stafford famed for novelty songs like ‘Spiders and Snakes’ called The Rumours.

Lobo had a really pretty art teacher in his high school who became the inspiration for this song.  He was a high school senior, and his teacher was 22, and when they looked at each other, he felt a connection.  This was a forbidden love, and the teacher has an obligation not to get involved with her students, so maybe this love was just in his mind, as this was a love he couldn’t have.  He sees this love in her eyes and even though it is totally normal for a High School student to crush hard on his teacher, he was a world away from actually being with her.

Baby
I’d Love You to Want Me
The way that I want you
The way that it should be