Love Expression

Mercy Chinwo keeps “Love Expression” to a single idea and lets it ring: “I love, I love You... Because You first love me.” Stripped of arrangement, the chorus works like a chant, and the verses mix English with Nigerian Pidgin to explain the feeling: “Your love for me is original,” she sings, and “I can't explain this feeling.”

The comparisons are playful and local. She has “neva seen a love like this,” love “wey strong like this,” sweeter than anything sold as pure, “even pure water, no pure like this.” One line says “Jehovah no dey do first come, first serve,” pushing back on the idea that God's love is rationed, and another says his love is “sweet pass honey.” A short spoken line names the source: “Unconditionally, that's kind of love / My Father has for me.”

1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us,” is the song's whole argument, and Psalm 19:10, where God's words are sweeter than honey, is the closest scriptural source for the honey comparison.