Alec Wilder in his book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 says, “‘This Can’t Be Love’ is a splendid song, a great illustration of control, direction, choice, and what I might call essence…. The song has that glow about it which suggests great fun in the writing of it.”
He then explains Rodgers’ structuring of the tune: “The verse of ‘This Can’t Be Love’ moves about in chromatic sinuosities, but carefully stops in time to prepare the listener, by means of whole notes, for the more straightforward diatonic half and quarter note line of the chorus.”
Hollywood turned The Boys from Syracuse into a film in 1940 and a new production was made for TV in 1986. A new show was mounted on Broadway in 1963 and produced a cast album. Cyd Charisse danced to “This Can’t Be Love” in Words and Music, the 1948 fictionalized film biography of Rodgers and Hart, and Doris Day sang it in the 1962 movie Jumbo.
“This Can’t Be Love” remains a favorite of vocalists from Chris Connor, Shirley Horn, Abbey Lincoln, Nat Cole, and the Four Freshmen to Ernestine Anderson, Rebecca Kilgore, Mary Stallings, and Diana Krall. Violinist Johnny Frigo has recorded it as well as saxophonists Cannonball Adderley and Paul Desmond, pianists Gene Harris and Adam Makowicz, and guitarists Howard Alden and Bireli Lagrene
