When RCA Victor released "Love Me Tender" / "Any Way You Want Me" on September 28, 1956 the label already had received over a million pre-orders. On October 20th Billboard listed "Love Me Tender" for the first time on their "Top 100" chart. It stayed there for 23 weeks and climbed from number 12 to the top of the hitparade. The b-side was also listed. It entered the "Top 100" at number 56 and peaked at number 27. Both songs were also listed on other charts. "Love Me Tender" could be found on the country chart (#3) and on the r&b chart (#4), "Any Way You Want Me" was listed on the r&b chart (#12), too. In 1992 the RIAA honored the domestic sales with a Platinum Award, seven years later it was updated to Tripple Platinum. Worldwide the single sold more than 4.5 million copies, which places it at number six on the list of the best selling 45s of the decade. Translated to the present 4.5 million physical sales equal 675 million paid streams.  

The single is not available on the streaming platforms since the tracks can be found on the album "Elvis' Golden Records" (1958). In 2016 the complete Presley catalogue was restored and remastered by Vic Anesini for a boxed set of 60 compact discs called "The Album Collection". Sony Music Entertainment provides the streaming platforms with the same versions of the individual tracks, albeit in 24 bit/90 khz flac. That means, if the platform of your choice supports high resolution audio, you can enjoy the songs in the same quality Sony used to scan and master them. On Spotify, which has a market share of approximately 30% and is the only platform that publishes streaming figures, "Love Me Tender" accumulates 4 million streams, "Any Way You Want Me" clocks in at 9 million. It has to be added, that the remake of "Love Me Tender", which features The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, was streamed 32 million times and therefore is much more popular than the original recording.

The cover was designed with a promo photo for the accordant movie, the backside advertised the singer's previous singles. To create some kind of a collector's item (and a purchase incentive) the sleeve was produced in three color variations.

The ballad was written by Ken Darby, who based it on the classic "Aura Lee" from 1861. Because Darby didn't want to be associated with the movie project he credited the song to Vera Matson, his wife. Elvis was also credited as writer, because his manager had dealt out a share in the royalties of 50%. The rock'n'roll king didn't spent much time on "Love Me Tender". He recorded it on August 24, 1956 at the soundstage of 20th Century Fox within two takes. RCA Victor released the track on the soundtrack ep "Love Me Tender" (1956), the albums "Elvis' Golden Records" (1958), A Legenary Performer (1974) and "Pure Gold" (1975) as well as on the boxed set "Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits - Volume 1" (1970). Live versions can be found on "Elvis" (1968) and "Elvis As Recorded At Madison Square Garden" (1972). The many lackluster performances prove, that Elvis himself didn't like the song too much. I cannot help to agree.

Just a week prior to the release of this single "Any Way You Want Me" had been the title track of an extended player. I guess RCA Victor speculated on a cross-promotion effect, but because the ep didn't sell more than 200,000 copies the plan didn't take off at all. However, the song later was also issued on "Elvis' Golden Records" (1958) and "Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits - Volume 1" (1970). Elvis recorded "Any Way You Want Me" on July 2, 1956 at RCA Studio 1 in New York City/New York. He needed 12 attempts to archive a satisfactory master. I don't like this ballad either, because Elvis performs it with a tad too much power and the song itself isn't very good, too. It was written by Aaron Schroeder and Cliff Owens.