“Get It Up for Love” is David Cassidy slipping past the spotlight—turning a flirtatious title into a tender, late-night kind of longing, where desire sounds less like bravado and more like need.
By the summer of 1975, the world already had its fixed idea of David Cassidy—the face, the frenzy, the tidy pop mythology. But “Get It Up for Love” belongs to a different David: the one leaning into grown-up material, drawn to songs that carried a little shadow, a little heat, and a little real-life complication. It’s the sort of track that feels like it was meant to be heard not in a screaming crowd, but in a quieter room—when the day’s noise is finished and the heart starts speaking in sentences it wouldn’t risk at noon.
The song’s first “expensive” truth is its origin. “Get It Up for Love” was written by Ned Doheny, a craftsman of smooth California soul-pop whose writing often sounds like confession disguised as melody. Before Cassidy ever touched it, the song had already entered the world in 1974, recorded by Stephen Michael Schwartz—a reminder that great pop songs sometimes travel for a while before they find the voice that makes people remember them. Cassidy’s version is not the birth of the song, but it is arguably the moment it gained a broader, sharper profile.
Cassidy recorded “Get It Up for Love” for his RCA album The Higher They Climb (also issued as The Higher They Climb, the Harder They Fall), released in July 1975 and co-produced by David Cassidy himself with Bruce Johnston. That pairing matters. Johnston—known to many as a member of The Beach Boys and as the writer of “I Write the Songs”—brought a sleek, West Coast musical intelligence, while Cassidy brought the hunger of someone trying to outgrow a public costume. The album’s very title feels like a quiet wink at the whole arc of fame: the higher you go, the harder it can be to land as yourself.
Here’s where the “at launch” story becomes especially vivid: in the UK and parts of Europe, “Get It Up for Love” was issued as a double A-side with “I Write the Songs.” That release reached No. 11 on the UK singles chart, with its peak week dated July 26, 1975—a concrete, unmistakable moment when Cassidy’s post-teen-idol ambitions still had real chart gravity. And in one of those deliciously old-world pop footnotes, the BBC reportedly banned “Get It Up for Love” for being too suggestive. The irony is gentle but perfect: the title looks bold on paper, yet the performance itself—at least in Cassidy’s hands—leans more intimate than crude. Sometimes censorship reveals more about the listener’s imagination than the singer’s intent.
Because when you actually listen closely, “Get It Up for Love” isn’t a swaggering seduction. It’s closer to a complicated invitation—desire mixed with insecurity, confidence brushing against the fear of being refused. Cassidy sings it with that unmistakable combination he had at his best: a warm vulnerability beneath the polished pop surface. He doesn’t sound like someone collecting romance as proof of power. He sounds like someone who genuinely wants closeness—and is trying to phrase that want in a way that won’t scare it away.
That’s why the song endures as more than a curious title. The lyric’s emotional engine is urgency—“tonight” energy—but not the careless urgency of conquest. It’s the urgency of someone who has waited too long to ask, who senses the moment might pass if he hesitates again. In that light, the title becomes less provocative and more human: love isn’t only spiritual or poetic; sometimes it is physical, immediate, and trembling with the fear of missing your chance.
There’s also a quiet career narrative humming under this recording. By 1975, Cassidy was navigating that difficult middle passage—where a famous young star tries to be heard as an adult musician, not just remembered as a memory. “Get It Up for Love” works in that context because it feels like an adult choice: a song with a sophisticated writer behind it, a modern feel for the mid-’70s, and a slightly dangerous edge that says, I’m not playing the old role anymore.
If you want one line to hold onto as you revisit it, it might be this: “Get It Up for Love” is Cassidy making a case for intimacy over image. It’s a pop record that carries the scent of after-hours—where charm isn’t performed for the crowd, but offered to one person, hoping it’s enough.
And maybe that’s the real meaning of the song now, decades later: not the shock of the title, but the tenderness under it. David Cassidy wasn’t just asking for attention—he was asking for something warmer, more private, and more real. In “Get It Up for Love,” you can hear him reaching for that reality—softly, urgently, and with the kind of longing that still sounds familiar when the world finally goes quiet.