Corinne Bailey Rae / The Love E.P. / 2010
Is This Love?
warm, hopeful, tinged with disbelief
This is Corinne Bailey Rae's reggae-rooted cover of Bob Marley's classic, rendered with her signature breathy, intimate vocal style. The song is a tender, almost disbelieving meditation on the arrival of a simple, domestic kind of love, where the speaker keeps circling back to the question of whether what she feels has a name.
romantic devotion domestic simplicity uncertainty and wonder faith and providence vulnerability
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addresses a lover directly, proposing a shared life. The voice is sincere and open rather than performative, more wondering aloud than declaring with certainty.
What happens
The song moves from a direct offer of devotion and shared shelter, into a repeated, almost rhetorical questioning of whether this feeling qualifies as love, then into an image of total emotional exposure, before closing with an even more pleading, communal version of the same question, as if inviting the listener to confirm what the speaker can't fully name alone.
How it's built
Built on Marley's original skeletal reggae structure: short declarative verses followed by a title-phrase chorus that repeats the central question four times per cycle. The repetition is the engine of the song rather than a bridge or twist; the one real shift comes in the final section, where the single-voice question becomes a plural, almost choral appeal for confirmation.
Section by section
Opening verse
The speaker states her intention plainly, offering devotion framed in terms of daily ritual and physical shelter rather than metaphor. This grounds the song's idea of love in practical commitment before the chorus introduces doubt.sym
First chorus
“Is this love that I'm feelin'”
The question arrives abruptly after such a confident verse, creating a tension between stated certainty and felt uncertainty. The repetition suggests the speaker is testing the word against the feeling rather than simply performing a catchy refrain.
Middle verse
“I lay my cards on your table”
This image marks the emotional high point of vulnerability in the song, a gesture of full disclosure that follows directly from declaring readiness. It reframes the domestic imagery as an act of risk, not just comfort.
Second verse
The return to the roof-and-bed imagery, now including a reference to divine provision, widens the scope of the devotion from romantic partnership to something closer to a blessed or fated union, adding a spiritual register to the song's otherwise earthbound concerns.
Closing section
The question becomes more urgent and communal, shifting from an internal wondering to an outward plea for someone else to name the feeling. This ending resists resolution; the song never answers its own title, leaving the emotional state open rather than confirmed.
Craft
- rhetorical repetition
- The title question recurs insistently across the song, turning what could be a simple hook into an act of genuine uncertainty, as though repeating it might produce an answer.
- domestic imagery
- Images of a shared roof, a single bed, and provided bread render love in terms of material security and everyday closeness rather than grand romantic abstraction.
- synecdoche
- The image of laying cards on a table stands in for total emotional honesty and willingness to be vulnerable.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a portrait of love experienced before it can be fully trusted or labeled, where domestic commitment outpaces emotional certainty. An alternative reading, closer to the reggae tradition this cover draws from, hears the repeated question as rhetorical reassurance rather than genuine doubt, a call-and-response device meant to invite the listener into shared joy. Both readings can coexist, since the song's structure allows the same repeated line to carry either sincere uncertainty or celebratory affirmation depending on delivery.
Context
This track is a cover of Bob Marley and the Wailers' 1978 song of the same name, and Corinne Bailey Rae's version appeared on her 2010 release The Love E.P. Her interpretation softens the original's bouncier reggae bounce into something more hushed and intimate, which shifts the emotional weight of the title question from celebratory to tentative, though this is my reading of the arrangement choices rather than confirmed biographical intent.
Listen for
- the shift in vocal texture between the confident verses and the more searching delivery of the chorus
- the way the single-bed and shared-room imagery builds across verses toward communal provision
- the pluralizing of the plea in the final section, moving from private question to shared appeal
- how the repeated title phrase changes emotional weight with small shifts in phrasing and emphasis
About Corinne Bailey Rae
Corinne Jacqueline Bailey Rae is a British singer and songwriter. She is best known for her 2006 single "Put Your Records On".
b. 1979 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue