Elvis Presley’s ‘Burning Love’ Should Have Been More Controversial

Elvis Presley‘s “Burning Love” didn’t seem to offend people in the 1970s. It should have raised eyebrows in religious circles. Despite this, the popular perception of the “Hound Dog” singer probably made it seem more innocuous.

Elvis Presley’s ‘Burning Love’ is a little hellish

Mixing sexuality with religion is not new. The Romans worshipped lust deities, such as Venus and her son, Cupid. However, Christianity is traditionally averse to combining the erotic with the religious. Since the United States is a majority Christian nation, combining its iconography with sex can be inflammatory.

For example, The Da Vinci Code and its film adaptation were condemned by numerous Christians for portraying Jesus Christ as a married man. Madonna’s video for “Like a Prayer” shocked the world by depicting the Queen of Pop getting intimate with a saint. Lil Nas X raised eyebrows for playing a sexualized Christ figure in his video for “Montero (Call Me by Your Name).”

Before all that, Elvis gave us 1972’s “Burning Love.” Nobody sees this song as blasphemy, but it discusses lust in Christian terms. The “All Shook Up” singer opens the song with the immortal lines “Lord Almighty / Feel my temperature rising / Higher, higher / It’s burning through to my soul.” This is a desire on a biblical level! 

Elvis continues the theme with “Your kisses lift me higher / Like the sweet song of a choir / You light my morning sky / With burning love.” Choirs are an essential part of Christian music, but the mention of the “morning sky” is curious here. Isaiah 14:12 famously associated Lucifer with the morning. That, combined with the song’s theme of fire, makes Elvis’ love seem a little like heaven and a little like hell.

Elvis Presley didn’t seem like the sort of singer to offend Christians

So why wasn’t “Burning Love” the “Like a Prayer” of the 1970s? Why didn’t it engender the same anger from Christians? Well, for starters, “Burning Love” never inspired a racy music video. However, it might have been easy to take Elvis’ quasi-blasphemous love song with a grain of salt. By the time Elvis recorded “Burning Love,” he had already recorded plenty of gospel songs — his album How Great Thou Art was a towering classic of the subgenre. 

Also, many fans probably assumed Elvis was a devout, orthodox Christian because he was one of the most famous celebrities from the American South. In her 1985 book Elvis and Me, Priscilla Presley paints her former husband as a spiritual seeker who was interested in many faiths, including Hinduism and New Thought. However, that book wasn’t published until years after Elvis’ death in 1977. Nevertheless, when “Burning Love” came out, it was easy to miss its heretical undercurrents.

‘Burning Love”s performance was a travesty

“Burning Love” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. It stayed on the chart for 15 weeks. That record appeared on the album Burning Love and Hits from His Movies, Volume 2. That title is odd, considering that “Burning Love” was not from one of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s films. That record reached No. 22 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for 25 weeks. Considering how good the song is, that chart placement is a musical crime against humanity. 

Regardless of how you interpret it, “Burning Love” lights the sky every time it plays.