"Like Someone in Love" is a ballad performance from John Coltrane's 1957 album Lush Life, featuring the tenor saxophonist in a trio setting with Earl May on bass and Art Taylor on drums. Jimmy Van Heusen's standard, with its 32-bar ABAC form in A-flat, receives a deeply personal single-chorus treatment from Coltrane at a slow tempo of 57 beats per minute. Without a piano or other chordal instrument in the group, Coltrane bears full responsibility for outlining the harmony while simultaneously creating melodic interest, a challenge he meets with characteristic inventiveness. His solo unfolds with a combination of tender lyricism and harmonic probing, his broad, full-bodied tone carrying each phrase with emotional weight and musical conviction. The trio format, relatively unusual for Coltrane, strips the music to its essentials, placing his saxophone in sharp relief against the minimal accompaniment of bass and drums. The recording captures Coltrane during a prolific period of growth and exploration, as he worked through the technical and harmonic challenges that would lead to his revolutionary innovations of the late 1950s and early 1960s. "Like Someone in Love" demonstrates that amid this intense period of harmonic experimentation, Coltrane never lost sight of the beauty inherent in a well-crafted melody and the art of ballad interpretation.
