The Real Truth About Negan And Lucille's Song In The Walking Dead
Between Supernatural and The Walking Dead, there's an argument to be made that Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the shot in the arm that keeps television shows going past the 10-year mark. For all his charisma, intensity, and bat-smashingness, though, his TWD character has been one of the program's least fleshed-out, despite half a decade's worth of episodes, a ubiquitous place in pop culture history, and what should have been, to many fans' eyes, a deeply expository appearance as a guest fighter in Tekken 7. Tekken is where stories happen.
With the debut of The Walking Dead's highly anticipated episode "Here's Negan," viewers finally got a glimpse into the life of the leader of the Saviors back before all the barbed wire and baseball bat attacks. His vaguely-worded previous testaments to having spent his life molding young people into stronger folks paid off in the form of his previous life as a gym teacher. Plus, a million nerdy little hearts went pitter-patter when said gym teacher was fired after he pounded on some dude for making noise while he and his wife Lucille were trying to listen to a song. That song, described by Negan as "probably the greatest love ballad ever written," is none other than Joe Cocker's "You Are So Beautiful."
A song worthy of The Walking Dead's greatest romance
"You Are So Beautiful" was originally penned by frequent collaborators Billy "The Fifth Beatle" Preston and Bruce Fisher and released as a track on Preston's The Kids & Me in 1974, per Second Hand Songs. It would go on to be covered by a cornucopia of musical talents, ranging from Kenny Rogers to Bonnie Tyler to that kid from the Little Rascals movie in the '90s. The song found its widest audience when it was covered by Joe Cocker for his album I Can Stand a Little Rain.
Another artist who recorded the number, Sam Moore of Sam & Dave, was friends with Billy Preston and had an interesting perspective on "You Are So Beautiful" and its romantic underpinnings in an interview with the BBC. He claimed that after using the song to woo dreamy-eyed fans during his heyday, Preston was flabbergasted — he hadn't written the song as a love ballad, but as a tribute to his own mother. Nobody tell Negan, he seems like he's going through some stuff right now.
On a side note, it's been a big year for "You Are So Beautiful." Season 2 of The Boys saw The Deep, the series' Aquaman analog, experiencing a hallucination in which his gills sang the song to him in the dulcet tones of Patton Oswalt. It makes your heart skip a beat, doesn't it?