The Lullaby That Wasn’t: How Taylor Hawkins Heard Forever in “Love of My Life”
Most fans hear a devastating goodbye in Queen’s “Love of My Life.” Penned by Freddie Mercury and performed with the raw ache of a ballad on the brink of tears, it is canonically a song of loss, of a love slipping through one’s fingers. But for the late, great Taylor Hawkins, the Foo Fighters’ drummer and rock’s eternal fan-boy, the song held a secret frequency—one of **eternal romance, not tragic breakup.**
For 17 years, Hawkins revealed in an intimate interview not long before his passing, “Love of My Life” was a non-negotiable part of his daily ritual. He didn’t just listen to it; he **communed** with it. “It made me hold her hand,” he said of his wife, Alison. “Even when she wasn’t in the room. It was like a three-minute meditation on what I had, what I never wanted to lose.”
Where the world heard Freddie’s plea—”Love of my life, don’t leave me”—Hawkins heard a vow. He heard not the desperation of a man watching his love walk away, but the profound, daily **recommitment** of a man who has found his anchor. The song’s tenderness, for him, wasn’t about absence; it was about the precious, fragile presence of the person beside you.
This wasn’t a private feeling. He chose the song for his first dance with Alison at their wedding, transforming what many see as a dirge into a public declaration of enduring devotion. “People thought it was a weird choice,” he laughed. “But it was the only one. It said everything. It’s not ‘I’ll love you forever.’ It’s ‘You *are* my forever, and even the thought of that changing wrecks me.’ That’s real.”
The song’s ultimate meaning for Hawkins was sealed at the monumental tribute concert held in his honor at Wembley Stadium in 2022. Among the many emotional directives he left for his friends and family was a specific, heartbreaking request: for his wife and three children to be on stage during the performance of “Love of My Life.”
And so, as Brian May’s acoustic guitar rang out through the hallowed stadium, Alison Hawkins and their children stood together in the spotlight. The performance, led by May and joined by a choir of Hawkins’ closest friends in music, was no longer a song of loss. It was **a lullaby from beyond.** It was Taylor’s final way of holding their hands, of surrounding them with the melody that, for him, always meant family, home, and a love that truly dared to last forever.
In the end, Taylor Hawkins solved the song’s great mystery. “Love of My Life” isn’t inherently sad. It is **inherently true.** It is about the terrifying, beautiful magnitude of a love so complete that its very existence contains the seed of its potential loss. Hawkins didn’t ignore that seed; he chose, every single day, to water the flower instead. He heard the heartbreak and answered it with a promise, turning Queen’s most aching ballad into rock and roll’s most enduring love story.
