Bye Bye Love (The Everly Brothers song)

Simon & Garfunkel version

Simon & Garfunkel included a live performance of "Bye Bye Love" on their 1970 album Bridge over Troubled Water. The recording came from a concert in Ames, Iowa, after the end of filming of Catch-22 in October. The audience's hand clapping during the song intrigued the duo; they attempted it twice, and the second try was used on the album. Peter Ames Carlin praised the version for its "close harmony pleasures."

George Harrison version

George Harrison recorded "Bye Bye, Love" for his 1974 album Dark Horse, inserting a comma in the title and writing additional lyrics with a radically different melody. Chris Ingham described it as "recomposed in a minor key and featuring pointedly customised lyrics." The new words referenced his wife Pattie Boyd leaving him for their mutual friend Eric Clapton; one verse states Harrison has "got tired of ladies that plot and shove me" and dismisses the affair as "our lady ... out on a spree."

Rumours that Clapton played guitar or Boyd sang backing vocals were false, though their names appeared in the inner sleeve notes; an assistant later added a standard acknowledgment crediting Clapton through RSO Records. The song also credited "Rhythm Ace," which Tom Scott explained was an electronic rhythm machine. Harrison played all instruments himself at his Friar Park home studio: two 12-string acoustic guitars, drums, Moog bass, bass guitar, three electric guitar parts, electric piano, bongos, lead vocal, and backing vocals.

Harrison later called it "just a little joke" in a 1977 interview. Critics responded unfavorably upon Dark Horse's release in December 1974; Peter Doggett noted that gossip columnists "lapped up" the disclosed information. Richard Ginell of AllMusic called it a "slipshod rewrite," Alan Clayson referred to Harrison's "blatant ... liberty-taking," and Simon Leng deemed it "one track on Dark Horse that seriously fails the quality-control test ... a desperately bad offering," adding that it was a "classic 1970s period piece" from when rock stars used music to settle personal scores, a mistake Harrison made only once.

Other cover versions

Webb Pierce, a major country star at the time, put out his own version of the song while the Everly Brothers were riding high. It landed at number seven on Billboard's Most Played C&W by Jockeys chart and number eight on the C&W Best Selling in Stores chart, sharing the ranking with its B-side "Missing You." Roy Orbison recorded it for his 1961 album Lonely and Blue. Ray Charles included it on his 1962 album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and sang it live, once on television with Glen Campbell.

The Beatles worked on it during their Let It Be sessions in 1969. A reworked version called "Bye Bye Life," performed by Ben Vereen and Roy Scheider, closes out the 1979 film All That Jazz. Lacy J. Dalton covered it on her 1992 album Chains on the Wind, reaching number 69 on Canada's RPM Country Tracks chart. A parody used in a late-2000s Sea-Bond denture adhesive commercial became a warning inside the music business. Bob Gaudio said he had to turn it off if it popped up on YouTube, calling it "terrible."