The 1970s File Feature
This Is Love
"This Is Love" — Oak and the Sound of 1979's Quieter SideA Different Kind of Summer SingleThe summer of 1979 was loud in some quarters and surprisingly tende…
01 The Story
"This Is Love" — Oak and the Sound of 1979's Quieter Side
A Different Kind of Summer Single
The summer of 1979 was loud in some quarters and surprisingly tender in others. While arena rock filled stadiums and disco filled the clubs, there was still a lane on the radio for something softer: a well-crafted love song that asked for nothing more than your full attention for three or four minutes. This was the lane that soft rock and adult contemporary occupied, a genre that critics occasionally dismissed but that millions of listeners turned to for exactly the kind of direct emotional nourishment it reliably provided. "This Is Love" by Oak lived in that lane, and if the group never became a household name, the song itself managed to find a genuine audience and a respectable run on the Billboard Hot 100.
Oak and the Adult-Contemporary Current
Oak was a group working in the adult-contemporary and soft-rock tradition that flourished in the late 1970s, a moment when radio programmers were happy to place polished, melodically direct singles alongside the bigger names of the day. The group's sound was clean and production-forward, built around warm vocal harmonies and arrangements that prioritized feeling over flash. "This Is Love" fits that template: the production is careful without being sterile, the melody is memorable without being intrusive, and the vocal performance conveys sincerity without tipping into melodrama. That combination was exactly what the adult-contemporary format was looking for, and the record delivered it with an assurance that clearly resonated with listeners.
Seven Weeks and a Modest Peak
The song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 21, 1979, entering at number 87, and climbed steadily through the summer weeks. It reached its peak position of number 58 on August 25, 1979, spending seven weeks on the chart in total. That is not a blockbuster run by any measure, but it is a solid performance for a group without major-label muscle behind it. Seven weeks on the Hot 100 means that radio stations across the country were spinning the record consistently enough to register significant audience response for nearly two months. That kind of sustained placement speaks to the track's ability to hold listener attention rather than simply capturing it for a moment and then losing it.
The Soft-Rock Landscape and Where Oak Fit
To understand what Oak was doing in 1979, picture the full breadth of what soft rock and adult contemporary meant at that moment. Artists like Christopher Cross, Ambrosia, and Little River Band were defining a sound rooted in studio craft and accessible melody. The Eagles had shown that warm, melodic music could coexist with rock credibility. Oak occupied a similar emotional space, and while "This Is Love" did not break through to the same altitude as the year's bigger hits, it found its audience. The song accumulating 39 million YouTube views in the streaming era suggests it continues to reach new listeners who discover it through playlists and recommendations, which is perhaps the truest measure of whether a piece of pop songwriting holds up against the passage of time.
A Snapshot Worth Keeping
There is something valuable about songs like "This Is Love" precisely because they were not designed to be canonical. They were made to be heard on a summer drive, to soundtrack a particular kind of uncomplicated feeling, and they succeeded at that task honestly and without pretension. The song is a photograph of a moment in popular music when the emphasis on warmth and melody felt like a genuine artistic choice rather than a commercial calculation (or at any rate, when the two things were not in conflict). Put it on today and you will hear the particular sweetness that defined a corner of the 1970s pop landscape just before the decade closed its doors.
"This Is Love" — Oak's singular moment on the 1970s charts.
02 Song Meaning
What "This Is Love" Says About Its Moment
The Straightforward Declaration
"This Is Love" belongs to a tradition of pop songs that refuse complication. At its center is a declaration, a statement of feeling rather than a story of conflict or loss. The lyrics position love not as something sought or argued over but as something recognized, named, and celebrated in the present tense. That directness was a deliberate artistic stance in the late 1970s, a moment when pop songwriting oscillated between maximalist emotional drama and this kind of clean-lined, confident sincerity. Oak chose the latter, and in doing so aligned themselves with one of the most important currents in popular music of that era.
Love Songs and the Late-1970s Adult-Contemporary World
By 1979, the love song had gone through a generation of reinvention. The earnestness of early rock and roll had given way to the complexity of singer-songwriters, then to the theatrical excess of some early-1970s pop. Adult contemporary as a format represented a partial return to simplicity: songs that said what they meant, that were built for the ear rather than the intellect, that delivered emotional satisfaction without demanding emotional labor from the listener. "This Is Love" functions squarely within that tradition. It asks you to feel something specific, and it provides the sonic and lyrical scaffolding to help you do exactly that, without detours or complications.
What the Song Offers
The lyric's power comes from its willingness to name the feeling without hedging. There is no narrative of courtship, no catalogue of obstacles overcome; there is simply the moment of recognition. The song treats love as a fact rather than a process, which is a bold choice in pop music where the drama usually lives in the pursuit or the loss rather than the steady reality of a feeling already arrived. For listeners in stable relationships, or for those who found themselves newly in one, that calm confidence must have felt exactly right. The song met them where they were rather than asking them to go somewhere else.
Why Quiet Songs Matter
It is easy to overlook tracks like "This Is Love" when constructing narratives about musical eras; the culture tends to remember its most extreme voices. But the songs that made people feel understood in ordinary moments, not in moments of crisis or ecstasy, are equally important to what popular music has always been for. Oak's entry into the 1979 Hot 100 represents a vast and sometimes undervalued category: the song that simply does its job with craft and feeling, that neither overreaches nor undersells, and then quietly exits. That discipline is its own form of artistry, and it deserves recognition alongside the more celebrated achievements of the same era. That, too, is a kind of love.
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