Love for Sale is a 1930 jazz standard written by Cole Porter. It was introduced by Kathryn Crawford in the Broadway musical The New Yorkers, which opened on December 8, 1930. The song is told from the viewpoint of a prostitute advertising “love for sale,” and its chorus runs 64 bars in an A-A-B-A form with an eight bar tag that is often omitted; the music shifts between B flat minor and B flat major. When first released it was seen as in bad taste and some radio stations avoided it, so Porter moved the setting to Harlem’s Cotton Club and Elisabeth Welch sang it in the show; popular 1931 recordings followed by Libby Holman and Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians. Over the years it has become a jazz standard with many notable versions by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, and Tony Bennett, among others, and a 2021 collaboration by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga on the album Love for Sale which features a studio video and various live performances.
