About The Song
“If You Want a Love” sits in Buck Owens’s catalog like a confident aside—never the loudest song on the record, but one that rewards listeners who slow down and pay attention. It carries the kind of plainspoken wisdom Owens favored: not sermonizing, not theatrical, but the kind of conversation you might overhear at a diner booth at two in the morning. That conversational quality is exactly what makes the song linger; it feels familiar because it sounds like an experience someone else has already lived through.
There are a few small stories that follow songs of this temperament around the Bakersfield scene. Buck liked to say he collected lines from people more than he wrote them from scratch. After shows he would stand near the door, listening to regulars swap complaints about love, work and the small ways people let one another down. Band members remember him scribbling phrases on cigarette packs and napkins. “If You Want a Love” reads like one of those scraps given a melody—a shard of something real turned into a compact statement.
Studio time with Buck was practical and fast. The Buckaroos had a habit of catching a feeling quickly: Don Rich would find a harmony that answered a line, the rhythm would settle into a pocket, and Buck would sing as if he were telling the story to a friend across a bar. Engineers later admitted they often left in the little imperfections—the way a word landed a shade late, the tiny inhale—because those breathing spaces made the track sound human. That economy of approach is part of why the record still feels honest.
Onstage the song had a particular role. After a string of up-tempo numbers it would bring the room inward; people stopped dancing and listened. Regulars remembered those moments as a sort of mutual recognition, when Buck would sing something that sounded like their own private complaint and the room would hush as if in agreement. It wasn’t melodrama that gripped them, but a shared understanding: that love could be offered, earned, or withdrawn, and that most of the work lay in the daily choices between those options.
At a personal level the track reflects Buck’s practical view of relationships. He wasn’t a romantic idealist; his songs often respected real-world constraints—time on the road, pride, small betrayals. Friends recalled Buck as blunt but not cruel: he’d tell you the truth because he thought it kinder in the long run. That tone
Video
Lyric
If you want a love that never will die
A love that will always be by your side
If you want a heart that beats just for you
Well, that’s the kind that I have in mind
If you want my love
If you want a kiss that will never grow cold
If you want two arms to have and to hold
A tender caress when each day is through
Well, that’s the kind that I have in mind
If you want my love
— Instrumental —
If you want to spend your lifetime with me
If you want a love through eternity
If you want a home that’s made just for you
Well, that’s the kind that I have in mind
If you want my love…