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The Wedding Song That Wasn’t: How Kevin Cronin’s Heartbreak Wrote REO Speedwagon’s ‘Keep On Loving You’
The Wedding Song That Wasn’t: How Kevin Cronin’s Heartbreak Wrote REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You” It is one of the most-played wedding songs in American history. Couples have chosen it for their first dance for four decades. They sway to it, they cry to it, they call it “their song.” And Kevin Cronin, the…
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REO Speedwagon: The Heart Behind the Heartland Anthems
REO Speedwagon always sang about feelings too big to fight — love that would not quit, hearts that would not heal, engines that would not stop rolling. But the most powerful story the band ever lived was not in any lyric. It was the story of two men who made magic together, broke apart, and…
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How REO Speedwagon Created “Can’t Fight This Feeling”: The Story Behind the Masterpiece
Some songs are written. Others escape. “Can’t Fight This Feeling” — REO Speedwagon’s soaring, aching, three-weeks-at-number-one power ballad from 1985 — belongs firmly in the second category. Its writer carried it around unfinished for years, could not find a title for it, tried to hand it off to another songwriter, faked an illness to get…
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The Untold Story of REO Speedwagon: Fistfights, Firings, and the Ballad Nobody Wanted
They named themselves after a fire truck. Their first singer quit by climbing out of a moving car and vanishing into the night. Their second singer was fired mid-album, rehired years later, and then mocked by his own bandmates for writing the power ballad that made them superstars. REO Speedwagon sold forty million records on…