‘All You Need Is Love’ Goes Top Ten Again

John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s ‘All You Need Is Love’ is back in the top ten of a Billboard chart for the first time since the Beatles’ own version in 1967 — and the all-star cast on the new rendition features Stevie Wonder and Johnny Mathis.

Saxophonist Dave Koz’s new album for the Concord Music Group. ‘Dave Koz & Friends: The 25th of December,’ is a Christmas record all but for the Beatles cover. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Contemporary Jazz Albums chart earlier this month, his 15th top ten title on that survey over a 23-year span.

Explains Koz of the Beatles cover: “It was important to me, as an artist, to say, ‘Here [is] a song that you’ve never heard before that we’re going to throw into the [festive] mix’.” The remake, which casts the song in a slow, easy listening jazz groove, culminates in Wonder’s vocal and ever-distinctive harmonica, before which it features Mathis, Eric Benét, Gloria Estefan, Heather Hadley, Richard Marx, Jonathan Butler, Maysa and BeBe Winans. Here’s the lyric video:

‘All You Need Is Love’ has, of course, been covered endlessly over the years, by everyone from the 5th Dimension to Flaming Lips. As Billboard reports, Koz has been to the Beatles’ well before: last year, his version of ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ topped Smooth Jazz Songs, with contributions from Gerald Albright, Mindi Abair and Richard Eliot.

Format: UK English