one of the most heartfelt renditions of a song ever sung
it makes me weep to hear it

there is a beautiful story behind the song:

So perfectly did Flack inhabit the song’s intermingling of longing, lust and love that it was easy to imagine that the song was written either by her or specifically for her. In actuality, the song was fifteen years old by the time it reached the mega-popularity achieved in 1972. Ewan MacColl, one of the foremost figures of the British folk music scene, wrote the song for American folk singer Peggy Seeger to perform.

Seeger recalled in a recent interview with Mojo magazine that she and MacColl weren’t on the best of the terms at the time he wrote the towering love song. “We weren’t really getting along at the time,” she said. “After all he was married to someone else then.” The pair would eventually marry in the ’70s, and Seeger has recently come back around to the song after a long hiatus. “I couldn’t sing it for 15 years after Ewan died (in 1989) but now I love to.”

...While the lyrics are tender and heartfelt, the tune is what elevates the song, literally and figuratively. The melodic leap it takes in each verse mirrors that emotional surge that shakes the narrator to his core every time he shares a novel experience with this woman. MacColl might have known that this leap would perfectly suit Seeger’s vocal range when she performed it, but that soaring turn in the song was likely a manifestation of his feelings for her as well.