Lover, Come Back to Me
original show tune composed by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; from the 1927 operetta "The New Moon"
"Lover, Come Back to Me" is a popular song composed by Sigmund Romberg with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II for the 1928 production of the Broadway show The New Moon, in which the song was introduced by Evelyn Herbert and Robert Halliday (as Robert Misson).
The song was written and added to the musical during a thorough reworking of The New Moon following a poorly reviewed production which played for one week in Philadelphia at the end of 1927. The producers revamped the show for a year before mounting it anew in New York City. Hammerstein expressed great sadness in the song's words; he was emotional because his married paramour, Dorothy Jacobsen, told him she was cutting off the relationship. (Later they patched things up, divorced their spouses, and married each other the next year.) Romberg's music was a complex line which he believed was the main attraction of the song.
The song has become popular as a jazz standard, sung by people of every vocal range and style. Its lyrics are often changed by the performer, and the tempo can vary widely. For instance, Gogi Grant's slow refrain takes 150 seconds, while Barbra Streisand's peppy live rendition covers the refrain in 57 seconds.
Film
The song was performed by Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore in New Moon, the 1930 film adaptation of the stage musical, and by Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in the 1940 film adaptation, also titled New Moon.
Mildred Bailey
The American blues singer Mildred Bailey recorded the song several times from 1938 to 1947.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lover, Come Back to Me” as original show tune composed by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; from the 1927 operetta "The New Moon". Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as original show tune composed by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; from the 1927 operetta "The New Moon". Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q939331. VIAF identifies the subject as 186098943. The Library of Congress control number is no96046333. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 1927, 1930 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lover, Come Back to Me” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.