“More Than Words” by Extreme

The words, “I love you” can mean completely nothing when it’s been said over thousand of times, without any further action, in hopes to make everything right between loved ones.

Let’s say you and your significant other are in an embroilment that leaves you broken hearted. To simply stop fighting, your partner tells you they love you. While it’s a nice sentiment, it doesn’t help solve the issue that’s on hand. What could help the situation would be providing loving and respectable comfort in way of actions and healthy discussions.

With that said, Extreme’s “More Than Words” simply focuses on how saying those three words (“I love you”) are not sufficient. They want their partners to show them their love instead of just saying words. As we all know, actions speaks louder than words.

When was “More Than Words” released?

“More Than Words” was released on 23^rd March, 1991 via A&M Records. It is one of the 5 singles that appear on Extreme’s second album, “Extreme II: Pornograffitti”.

Who Wrote “More Than Words”?

These members of Extreme are acknowledged as the song’s official writers:

• lead vocalist Gary Cherone
• lead guitarist Nuno Bettencourt

How the song was Birthed

While enjoying a day on the porch, Bettencourt started strumming a melody and penned down “More than words is all you have to do” before showing to Cherone. Sparked by those few words, both of them combined their creative energies into the completion of “More Than Words” that very day.

“More Than Words” becomes a Global Hit

This tune is a perfect example of an acoustic rock song. You see, during the late 80s and early 90s, such acoustic songs wasn’t really popular in the rock music community. Owing to this, rock radio stations usually didn’t give them enough raid airplay. Even labels weren’t to keen on releasing such songs as singles. By virtue of this, Extreme had a tough time marketing “More Than Words”. However, Extreme were able to surmount all the hurdles in their path to get this song released as a single and played on the radio.

At the end of the day, “More Than Words” was surprisingly swiftly embraced by fans of Extreme and the music community around the world. This translated into the song becoming a significant hit around the world.

This song was a number 1 hit in at least 5 countries, including Canada and the United States.

Adding to the above success, it scored a Top-10 hit in places such as the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany and Ireland.

Popular Usage/Covers

Over the years, this hit by Extreme has been covered and parodied so many times. Below are some famous examples:

• “Weird Al” Yankovic parodied the song’s music video for his 1992 track “You Don’t Love Me Anymore”.
• Westlife released their rendition of this hit on 1^st November 1999 as part of their self-titled album.
• Mexican-American singer Frankie J released his cover version in 2005.
• For The Voice Season 17 promo, coaches Kelly Clarkson, John Legend, Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani performed their version of the song.
• 2012 American musical comedy movie “Rock of Ages” featured a mash-up of Extreme’s “More Than Words” and Warrant’s “Heaven” that was performed by Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta.
• 2008 American rom-com movie “The Love Guru” featured “More Than Words” that was covered by The Guru Pitka (Mike Myers) and Rajneesh (Manu Narayan).
• Bettencourt teamed up with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fame to perform this song live at the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Concert. The concert was held in Oslo, Norway.