Lobo’s plaintive voice cuts through the hush of a living room like a confession. “How Can I Tell Her,” from his album Of a Simple Man, remains a small, aching classic — a song older listeners keep returning to when the house grows quiet.
Roland Kent Lavoie, known simply as Lobo, released the song early in his career and it quickly became one of his biggest hits. The tune is spare and slow. The words are simple, but they carry the heavy weight of a man who must tell his partner that his heart has strayed. That plainness is the point: the melody lets the feelings breathe, and the feelings do most of the work.
Longtime radio hosts and record-collecting fans say the record plays differently as years go by. It is not flashy. It does not shout. It sits beside a kettle on the stove, or rests on a nightstand beside a lamp, and becomes the soundtrack of private thoughts.
It captures the ache of a man who cannot be honest with himself, and it never feels dated — it feels like someone singing your private sorrow, Dr. Emily Carter, professor of popular music at State University.
The song’s story is simple, but that simplicity turns sharp under an honest voice. Lobo’s delivery is soft, almost conversational. He does not embellish the pain with big vocal moves. He lets it sit in the spaces between the notes. That restraint is why many older listeners say the song lands differently now—when memory and regret have more room.
A short video keeps drifting through online playlists and nostalgic channels. It pairs the song with naïve performance footage and sun-faded scenes. Fans say the footage emphasizes how gentle the song always was — a quiet confession framed by acoustic guitar and strings.
When I hear it on late radio, I think of my first love — it brings everything back, Maria Thompson, longtime listener and fan.
Musical historians point to the song as a clear example of the soft rock ballad that dominated mellow radio for a time. It has been covered by other singers and keeps appearing in compilations aimed at listeners who prefer melody over flash. Those small reappearances keep the tune alive for people who grew up with it and now listen with deeper, softer ears.
For communities of older listeners, the song functions like a bridge to a different era. It reminds them of milder rhythms and cautious heartbreaks. In gatherings at local clubs or on late-night radio requests, “How Can I Tell Her” appears again and again as a safe place to feel exposed without being exposed to anything new.
The song’s theme also surfaces in conversations about honesty, aging and the cost of withheld truth. People who have lived long enough to have regrets find the lyrics familiar — not in the specifics, but in the tone of a person trying to do the right thing at the wrong time. That universality is perhaps why it still matters to so many people.
There is a quieter kind of fame at work here: not the fast-burning spotlight of a chart-topper that everyone cites, but the steady, private loyalty of those who carry a record in a glove compartment, a drawer, or the back of their minds. It is a loyalty that accounts for cover versions, reissued vinyl and the steady flow of requests on shows aimed at older audiences. The song remains a small, stubborn presence in the soundscape of private memory, and that presence keeps raising questions about honesty, love and the ways we tell — or fail to tell — the people closest to us when everything changes
Video
Lyric
She knows when I’m lonesome, she cries when I’m sad
She’s up in the good times, she’s down in the bad
Whenever I’m discouraged, she knows just what to do
But girl she doesn’t know about you.I can tell her my troubles, she makes them all seem right
I can make up excuses not to hold her at night
We can talk of tomorrow, I’ll tell her things that I want to do
But girl how can I tell her about you.How can I tell her about you
Girl please tell me what to do
Everything seems right whenever I’m with you
So girl won’t you tell me how to tell her about you.How can I tell her I don’t miss her whenever I’m away
How can I say it’s you I think of every single night and day
But when is it easy telling someone we’re through
Ah girl help me tell her about you.
