“Damned If This Ain’t Love” is the instant pride finally loosens its grip—when a guarded heart admits, almost with a laugh and a sigh, that it’s fallen for someone anyway.
“Damned If This Ain’t Love” sits near the very front of David Cassidy’s 1976 album Home Is Where the Heart Is—track 2, placed like a private truth spoken early, before the rest of the record has time to dress itself up. The album was released in March 1976, recorded at Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado, and co-produced by Cassidy with Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys—a pairing that tells you, immediately, this was not a “poster-and-screams” era so much as a “let’s make a real record” era.
Here’s the chart reality, stated plainly because accuracy matters: Home Is Where the Heart Is did not chart in any country, and the album’s singles “made nary a dent on the charts,” according to contemporaneous catalog commentary. “Damned If This Ain’t Love” itself was not selected as a single in the album’s main campaign. However, it did find a small “release-life” in at least one territory: German discography listings show it as the B-side to “January” on an RCA Victor 7-inch (PB 9139) dated January 30, 1977. If you’re looking for a debut ranking, then, the honest answer is: no major chart peak is recorded for the song at release, and its legacy is more about artistry than numbers.
But the story behind it is richer than a chart position could ever be. By the mid-’70s, Cassidy was deliberately stepping away from the role the world had assigned him. After a difficult period in 1974, he retreated from the spotlight and returned in 1975 with a new RCA contract and a more mature sound, leaning into studio craft and songwriting. Home Is Where the Heart Is was described as his most personal yet, with most of it written or co-written by Cassidy—music that feels like an adult trying to be heard over the echo of his own fame.
That context changes how “Damned If This Ain’t Love” lands. The title phrase is a wonderfully human contradiction: a “curse” that’s actually a confession. It’s the sound of someone who tried to stay cool—maybe even tried to stay cynical—only to discover that love has walked right through the defenses and sat down like it belongs there. The hook has a wink to it, but the emotion underneath isn’t joking. It’s resignation, yes, but also relief: the relief of finally saying what you feel without negotiating with your ego first.
Musically, the track fits the album’s drift into blue-eyed soul-pop territory, where melody is clean, harmonies are plush, and the groove doesn’t need to shout to feel alive. And the behind-the-scenes details are a little treasure for anyone who loves the hidden fingerprints in classic recordings: Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell of America provided background vocals on “Damned If This Ain’t Love”—a quiet stamp of West Coast craftsmanship, like sunlight on the edge of a lyric. Their presence matters because it frames Cassidy not as an isolated former idol, but as a working musician surrounded by peers who respected the work enough to show up and sing.
What the song ultimately means—at least the way it reads when you listen with a long memory—is this: love doesn’t always arrive like a trumpet. Sometimes it arrives like weather. You notice it in small changes first: the way a room feels warmer when one person walks in, the way your patience grows thinner whenever they’re far away, the way your thoughts keep circling back no matter how busy you try to stay. “Damned If This Ain’t Love” captures that dawning recognition with a kind of rueful grace. It doesn’t romanticize surrender; it accepts it. And acceptance, in its own quiet way, can be the bravest thing a heart does.
So even without a flashy chart legacy, David Cassidy left something here that endures: a three-minute admission that love can still surprise you—especially when you were so sure it wouldn’t.