Never My Love

"Never My Love" is a pop standard written by American siblings Don and Dick Addrisi, and best known from a hit 1967 recording by The Association. The Addrisi Brothers had two Top 40 hits as recording artists, but their biggest success was as the songwriters of "Never My Love." Recorded by dozens of notable artists in the decades since, in 1999 the music publishing rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) announced it was the second most-played song on radio and television of the 20th century.[2]

"Never My Love"
Single by The Association
from the album Insight Out
B-side"Requiem for the Masses"
Released9 August 1967[1]
GenreBaroque pop, sunshine pop, psychedelic pop
Length3:07 (album)
2:49 (single)
LabelWarner Bros.
Songwriter(s)Don Addrisi, Dick Addrisi
Producer(s)Bones Howe
The Association singles chronology
"Windy"
(1967)		 "Never My Love"
(1967)		 "Everything That Touches You"
(1968)
"Never My Love"
Single by The 5th Dimension
from the album The 5th Dimension/Live!!
Released1971
GenrePop
Length3:45
LabelBell
Songwriter(s)Don Addrisi, Dick Addrisi
Producer(s)Bones Howe
The 5th Dimension singles chronology
"Light Sings"
(1971)		 "Never My Love"
(1971)		 "Together Let's Find Love"
(1971)

History

The first recording of "Never My Love" to achieve success was by The Association, an American pop rock band from California. Their version of the song, recorded with members of The Wrecking Crew[3], including Hal Blaine on drums, Joe Osborn on bass, Larry Knechtel on keyboards, and Al Casey and Mike Deasy on guitar, peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, kept out of the number one spot by The Letter by The Box Tops[4], and hit number one on the Cashbox charts in October 1967, one of the band's five top-ten hits in the late 1960s.[5] Their third #1 on the Cashbox Top 100 Singles Chart, following "Cherish" (1966) and "Windy" (1967), it was featured on the band's album Insight Out (1967). The song also reached number one in Canada's RPM charts.

By the time The Association's record was certified Gold by the RIAA for one million copies sold as of December 1967, Billboard noted that sixteen artists had recorded the song.[6] Their third number one single had made them a top concert act and highly in demand by the TV variety series, specials, and talk shows that were a predominant format at the time, and they performed the hit on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Hollywood Palace, The Dean Martin Show, Dick Clark's American Bandstand, Hullabaloo, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Dick Cavett Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Steve Allen Show, and a Carol Channing special.[7]

Description

AllMusic's Stewart Mason wrote of the "laid-back and dreamy" single with a "sleek and sophisticated" tune that "the dual lead vocals, by Terry Kirkman and Larry Ramos, are supported by wordless harmonies as effortlessly airy as whipped cream." Mason credited Ray Pohlman's "clever arrangement (with adding) space to the sound through juxtaposing disparate elements like the five-note bass riff that introduces the verses and the electric piano lick that ornaments the chorus, rather than jamming them on top of each other." Mason observed that it sounded "like Pohlman had been paying particular attention to Burt Bacharach's work with Dionne Warwick, a resemblance The 5th Dimension later amplified on their cover of the song."[8]

Chart history

Weekly charts
The Association

Notable cover versions

That cover by the American pop group The 5th Dimension was produced by the same man behind The Association's record, Bones Howe. Recorded live in 1971, their version reached number 12 on the Hot 100 in November of that year.[5] The recording also hit number one on the Billboard Easy Listening chart, the group's fourth to top that chart, following "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" (1969), "Wedding Bell Blues" (1969), and "One Less Bell to Answer" (1970).[30] The group's version of "Never My Love" reached #45 on the Billboard R&B chart.[30] This version also hit #9 in the Canadian charts. Allmusic's Matthew Greenwald wrote of The 5th Dimension's single, "This version, a vocal solo from Marilyn McCoo, is a great vehicle for her powerful pop voice... A song that has one of the most direct, straightforward loving messages, it remains one of the most-played and performed songs of the pop era, and for good reason."[31]

The Swedish rock band Blue Swede covered "Never My Love" in 1974. This version peaked at number seven on the Hot 100 and remained in the Top 40 for eight weeks and was the third hit version of the song.[5] This version reached #7 in Canada.[32] Their version was an upbeat take on the song.

The Addrisi Brothers themselves recorded the song three times: The first recording from 1970 remained unreleased until 2001, when Varèse Sarabande released the CD Never My Love - The Lost Album Sessions. The second recording was released as an album-track on their 1972 debut album We've Got To Get It On Again on Columbia Records. The third recording was released in late 1977 as a single on Buddah Records which peaked at number 80 on the Hot 100 and number 28 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart[30] and was also included on their second album Addrisi Brothers.

Barry Manilow covered the song for his album Summer of '78 (1996). Additional versions of the song that reached the Billboard charts in the U.S. include The Sandpebbles (#98 pop, 1968); Vern Gosdin and Janie Fricke (#9 country, 1978); and Chill Factor (#62 R&B, 1988).[30]

Other versions were recorded by popular artists as diverse as Hans Christian (a.k.a. Jon Anderson, Later of Yes) in 1968, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Vikki Carr, Percy Faith, Peter Nero, The Four Tops, Lou Christie, Billy Crawford, Astrud Gilberto, Etta James, Steve Lawrence, Brenda Lee 1974, The Lennon Sisters, The Lettermen, The Sandpipers, David Hasselhoff, Pekinška Patka, Henry Mancini, Johnny Mathis, Della Reese, Smokey Robinson, Donny Hathaway, Tinkerbells Fairydust, Tom Scott, Sylvia, Cal Tjader, The Ventures, Kathy Troccoli, Andy Williams, Boris Gardiner, Sarah Vaughan, Vern Gosdin, Samantha Jones, Spencer Day.

The Quebec crooner Raymond Berthiaume covered "Never My Love" in French (Non, non jamais) in 1968

Mexican band Los Freddy's covered "Never my Love" in 1968 as (Vuelve mi Amor) traduced by Arturo Cisneros in Spanish.

Mercy released a version of the song on their 1969 album, Love Can Make You Happy.[33]

In November 2013, the Japanese boy group A.B.C-Z covered the song.[34]

In 2014, Bryan Adams recorded a version for his album Tracks of My Years.

In 2019, Jakob Dylan and Norah Jones covered the song on the Echo in the Canyon soundtrack.

One of the most-played songs

In 1999, the song was recognized as the second most-played song in history, with performances of more than seven million, according to BMI. The #2 rank on the Top 100 Songs of the Century, listing the most-played songs on American radio and television, placed "Never My Love" between the #1 song "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", written by Barry Mann, Phil Spector, and Cynthia Weil, and the #3 song "Yesterday" by Lennon–McCartney. BMI estimated that the song had received, as of 1999, what amounted to about 40 years of continuous airplay in its 32 years.[2]

Television and film

In 2020, historical drama Outlander features this song during the opening of its season 5 finale episode, the episode also being titled "Never My Love".

gollark: No alts? Troubling. I may have to remove my 14 backup accounts.
gollark: I would assume that if you're fairly young you're more likely to die while awake and doing things, but it sounds like maybe you should try and get actual mental health support about this?
gollark: I have not.
gollark: Not really, I just won't get one for ages.
gollark: The inconvenient thing about the internet is that there's tons of sometimes-contradictory information on everything ever, and it's hard to find out about subjects which are new for you.

See also

References
  1. "Record Details". 45cat. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
  2. "BMI Announces Top 100 Songs of the Century | News". BMI.com. 1999-12-13. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  3. Hartman, Kent (2012). The Wrecking Crew. St. Martin's Griffin. pp. 261–263. ISBN 978-1-250-03046-7.
  4. https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1967-10-14
  5. Whitburn, Joel (1996). The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits (6th ed.). Billboard Publications.
  6. "Two Gold Records To the Association". Billboard. 79 (49): 6. December 7, 1967.
  7. "The Association - Inductees - The Vocal Group Hall of Fame Foundation". Vocalgroup.org. Archived from the original on 2013-12-27. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  8. Stewart Mason. "Never My Love - The Association | Song Info". AllMusic. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  9. "Item Display - RPM - Library and Archives Canada". Collectionscanada.gc.ca. 1967-10-21. Retrieved 2019-06-23.
  10. List of number-one singles of 1967 (Canada)
  11. Flavour of New Zealand, 1 December 1967
  12. Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955–1990 - ISBN 0-89820-089-X
  13. Cash Box Top 100 Singles, October 14, 1967
  14. "Item Display - RPM - Library and Archives Canada". Collectionscanada.gc.ca. 1971-11-20. Retrieved 2019-06-23.
  15. Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955–1990 - ISBN 0-89820-089-X
  16. Cash Box Top 100 Singles, November 13, 1971
  17. "Item Display - RPM - Library and Archives Canada". Collectionscanada.gc.ca. 1974-10-26. Retrieved 2019-06-14.
  18. Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955–1990 - ISBN 0-89820-089-X
  19. Cash Box Top 100 Singles, October 19, 1974
  20. "Item Display - RPM - Library and Archives Canada". Collectionscanada.gc.ca. 1978-01-14. Retrieved 2019-06-14.
  21. Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955–1990 - ISBN 0-89820-089-X
  22. "Cash Box Top 100 Singles, January 14, 1978". Archived from the original on February 14, 2015. Retrieved June 22, 2019.
  23. "Official Charts Company". Officialcharts.com. 1981-10-17. Retrieved 2019-06-18.
  24. "RPM Top 100 Singles of 1967". Archived from the original on 2016-08-12. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
  25. Musicoutfitters.com
  26. "Cash Box Year-End Charts: Top 100 Pop Singles, December 23, 1967". Archived from the original on September 30, 2018. Retrieved June 22, 2019.
  27. Billboard, December 25, 1971.
  28. Canada, Library and Archives (January 16, 2018). "Image : RPM Weekly".
  29. Whitburn, Joel (1999). Pop Annual. Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. ISBN 0-89820-142-X.
  30. Hyatt, Wesley (1999). The Billboard Book of #1 Adult Contemporary Hits (Billboard Publications)
  31. Matthew Greenwald. "Never My Love - The 5th Dimension | Song Info". AllMusic. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  32. "Item: 7014". RPM. Vol. 22 no. 10. 26 October 1974. Retrieved 22 June 2017.
  33. "Mercy (4) - Love Can Make You Happy (Vinyl, LP, Album)". Discogs.com. Retrieved 2016-10-01.
  34. "Johnny's net". Johnny & Associates. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
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