#64: Love Over And Over by Kate and Anna McGarrigle

City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CFRA
Peak Month: July 1982
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ did not chart
YouTube: “Love Over And Over”
Lyrics: “Love Over And Over”

Anna McGarrigle was born in Montreal in 1944, with her sister Kate born there two years later. In the 1960s, in Montreal, while Kate was studying chemical engineering at McGill University and Anna art at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal, they began performing in public and writing their own songs. From 1963 to 1967 they teamed up with Jack Nissenson and Peter Weldon to form the folk group Mountain City Four. Their songs have been covered by a variety of artists including Linda Rondstadt, Emmylou Harris, Judy Collins, and others. These covers led to the McGarrigles getting their first recording contract in 1974. They released their debut album Kate & Anna McGarrigle in 1976. It charted into the Top 30 on the pop album chart that year in Sweden. A track from the album, “Complainte pour Ste. Catherine” charted in the UK.

In 1977, they released their second studio album Dancer With the Bruised Knees. It climbed to #35 on the UK pop album chart. In 1978, they released their third album titled Pronto Monto. Although associated with Quebec’s anglophone community, they also recorded and performed many songs in French. Their fourth album, Entre la jeunesse et la sagesse (1980) and their ninth album La vache qui pleure (2003), are entirely in French.

In 1982, the sisters released their fifth studio album titled Love Over And Over. The title track was released as a single.

“Love Over And Over” was co-written by the McGarrigle sisters. The song ponders what can anyone write or sing about love? They observe that “Emily, Anne and Charlotte poured their hearts out.” Emily, Anne and Charlotte were the Bronte sisters who each wrote novels about love and romance. The McGarrigle sisters state “I’ve walked upon the moors on many misguided tours.” At the root, love is complicated and difficult to describe and write about, once you look past couples smiling for the cameras. People can sing and write about love and say “I love you,” or call each other “baby, baby, baby.” But, it can all become meaningless, like a habit that gets in the way of clarity and deep wisdom.

Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre in 1847. In the novel, after facing much adversity Jane Eyre is offered a proposal of marriage to a pious and cold clergyman who suggests they marry not out of love but out of duty. Jane Eyre eventually marries Rochester who is homely and blind. Emily Bronte, published Wuthering Heights in 1847. The tale of Heathcliff and Catherine explores more tragedy, adversity, repression, and suffering in the context of a relationship. While Anne Bronte wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (where the phrase “tied to the apron strings” first appeared in writing) and Agnes Grey. In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall  Helen, a young woman with romantic notions of love, accepts a proposal of marriage from a Arthur who is not only handsome, but discovers he is defiant, brutish, unfaithful, absent and an alcoholic. She leaves the marriage with her only child in hopes of supporting herself by selling paintings.

“Love Over And Over” climbed to #3 in Ottawa, #7 in Sydney (NS), #9 in Halifax (NS), and Edmonton (AB), #15 in Kingston (ON), and #20 in Sherbrooke (PQ). It also charted in Hamilton (ON), Toronto and Vancouver.

In 1990, the McGarrigle sisters released their first album in eight years titled Heartbeats Accelerating. A track from the album, I Eat Dinner (When the Hunger’s Gone)”, was covered by Kate McGarrigle’s son Rufus Wainwright. He recorded the song for the 2004 movie Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. 

In 1996 Kate & Anna McGarrigle released Matapédia. It earned them a Juno Award in 1997 for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year – Group. They won another Juno Award in the same category in 1999 for their eighth studio album The McGarrigle Hour. Of their second album in French, the Montreal Gazette noted “La Vache qui pleure, like most McGarrigles albums, feels like it exists out of time. Some songs sound like they could have been recorded in the 1940s or yesterday.”

The McGarrigle sisters have been in the recording studio with other musicians on their albums. These include Joan Baez, Loudon Wainwright, Maria Muldaur, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, The Chieftains, Nick Cave, Martha Wainwright, and Marianne Faithfull. In 1993, Kate & Anna McGarrigle were appointed members of the Order of Canada.

Kate McGarrigle died in 2010, aged 63, of sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. Kate & Anna McGarrigle released their fifteenth album in 2022 titled Tant Le Monde: Live in Bremen, Germany, 2005. 

October 8, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
“About: Kate & Anna McGarrigle,” mcgarrigles.com.
“Kate McGarrigle: Obituary,” Guardian, January 19, 2010.
“Kate McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright’s mother, dies,” Reuters, January 19, 2010.
“Anne Brontë’s Preface To The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall,” Annebronte.org, August 19, 2018.
Wuthering Heights, Trailer, MGM, 1939.

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CFRA 580-AM Ottawa Top Ten | July 2, 1982