More Than Words by Extreme

More Than Words is an acoustic ballad by the Boston rock band Extreme, written by guitarist Nuno Bettencourt and singer Gary Cherone for the 1990 album Extreme II: Pornograffitti. A&M Records released it as a single on March 12, 1991, and in June of that year it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It also topped the charts in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and New Zealand and peaked at number two in the United Kingdom.

Extreme formed in Boston in 1985. Cherone and drummer Paul Geary had played together in a local band called the Dream, and when that group broke up they brought in Bettencourt and bassist Pat Badger. The new lineup signed with A&M and put out a self-titled debut in 1989. The band's sound leaned on funk rhythms, metal guitar and a lot of showy playing from Bettencourt, which made a quiet two-man ballad an odd fit for their catalog.

Bettencourt worked out the melody and the busy, percussive guitar part on a porch one summer evening, sang along to it on a micro-cassette recorder, and then added a harmony line. He has said the whole thing took him about an hour. He made a rough four-track recording and slipped the tape under Cherone's bedroom door. Cherone wrote the lyrics from there.

The lyric says that telling someone "I love you" is easy and means little unless actions back it up. Bettencourt has described it as a song about the phrase wearing out through casual use, not a straight love song.

Michael Wagener, who produced Pornograffitti, kept the recording sparse, with no drums or bass and none of the full-band final chorus most rock ballads of 1990 had. The track is Bettencourt's acoustic guitar with Cherone singing lead and Bettencourt singing harmony beside him. Bettencourt has pointed out that it does not follow the usual verse, chorus and bridge layout either. The album version runs about five and a half minutes and ends with a guitar solo and an extra vocal section. The radio edit cut it to just over four minutes and dropped that ending. Bettencourt did not like the change because it removed the final hook along with the solo.

The label did not want to release it. Bettencourt has said A&M told the band nothing on the radio sounded like it, at a time when hair metal acts were scoring with big electric power ballads. He fought for the single and threatened to stop touring and leave the band if the company did not put it out. A&M agreed to try it in a test market. A station in Phoenix played it, listener response was strong, and it climbed close to the top of that station's chart. A second test market gave a similar result, and the label went ahead with a full release. The lead singer of Skid Row, Sebastian Bach, had told the band he expected it to be a major hit.

The music video, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, was shot in black and white. It opens with Badger switching off his amplifier and Geary setting down his sticks, and the rest of the clip centers on Cherone and Bettencourt performing while the other two members hold up lighters. Badger and Geary do not play on the record. The video ends before the final solo, following the shorter radio version.

The single debuted on the Hot 100 at number 81 on March 23, 1991, and reached the top spot in June, where it stayed for one week. It ranked seventh on the Hot 100 for the full year and reached number two on the Adult Contemporary chart. The RIAA certified it gold. Overseas it went platinum in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Spain and Brazil, and gold in the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Sweden. Bettencourt later recalled that when the band learned it had a number one record, they ran down the hall in their underwear knocking on doors.

Cherone has said the group grew to resent being called the More Than Words guys, and they went through stretches of refusing to play it. On a tour of Poland opening for Aerosmith, they decided to leave it out of the set. A few nights later Steven Tyler wrote a blunt, profane message in large letters on their dressing room door telling them to play the song, because the Polish crowd wanted to hear it.

Westlife covered the song on their 1999 debut album, BBMak recorded one for their album Sooner or Later, and Frankie J released another. Weird Al Yankovic spoofed the video in 1992 with You Don't Love Me Anymore. The cast of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia sang it in a 2006 episode, Mike Myers performed it in The Love Guru in 2008, and Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta sang it in a medley with Warrant's Heaven in the 2012 film Rock of Ages. Bettencourt appeared as himself in a 2009 How I Met Your Mother parody of the video, and in 2015 Jack Black and Jimmy Fallon recreated the clip shot for shot on The Tonight Show.

The song's key and tempo are listed on the More Than Words key and BPM page, for anyone working out the guitar part.