luther vandross - the night i fell in love [poll]

reflexively "other side of the world," a total dream

Not fond of of the Stevie cover but otherwise a wonderful album.

"My Sensitivity (Gets in the Way)" might as well be titled "My Homosexuality (Gets in the Gay)"

this is luther's most lush album, and i think his best. he tweaked his sound to adjust to the kashif and narada michael welden of it all but still remains grounded in the live instrumentation of traditional soul. just a really rewarding mix of synths and drum machines and live bass, strings etc. honestly think it's a complete marvel

there's so many little things i love on this album

"til my baby comes home" is easily one of his best singles. i particularly enjoy that he adopts the perspective of a very straight character but imbues the song w/ such a sense of glee for this one woman that it almost bends back on itself and ends up as gay idol worship. "if she stays away for long, she calls me on the phone / i jump up when i hear her voice, then i'm alright til my baby comes home" ... we all know that classic straight guy feeling of jumping up and running to the phone to receive a call from your wife. the way the organ (played by billy preston) mirrors his voice stepping up a key when he sings about the phone call -- "i JUMP UP when i hear her voice" -- is such a great way of conveying his unbridled excitement about this romance and harkens back to an often recounted, quietly pivotal moment in luther's career, when he was singing a jingle for gino's restaurant and imbued the word "sizzle" with the sound/feeling of meat touching a hot griddle

"the night i fell in love" ... this song is just stunning. an absolute showstopper. even more reverence for the concept of falling and being in love, but instead of leaping out of its skin w/ excitement this song is dreamy and meditative, luxuriating in the memory of this one night. the part of the chorus where he sings the word "tenderly" as basically two words so that it goes "i tender- / -ly remember / the night that i fell in love" is such a wonderful piece of writing and singing. i'm not sure i've ever heard tenderness applied to memory before, i just love that concept and it really threads through the way this song is arranged and sung. i cannot gush about this enough

i actually love the "creepin'" cover.. the way he slows it down a bit and fits it like a puzzle piece into the sonic scope of the album. also starts folding background vocal moments into the album in ways that really help emphasize the songs, there is something a bit more foreboding about luther's version to me -- the background vocals start coming in ways that both echo his emotion but also seem to sort of haunt him. i love when he sorta starts talking to the background singers like he's conversing with voices in his head. on the outro he sorta mutters "sing it to me four times now" and they go "creep creep creep CREEP". just great stuff

"my sensitivity (gets in the way)" is one more perfect meeting place between a more traditional luther sound and what the sound of the 80s was becoming. the way the chorus swells briefly w/ strings leading into another great back and forth w/ his background singers... "i can't help (but LOVE YA!)"

ultimately my vote is for the title track, i'd put it right up there w/ anything he ever recorded

OVAH NOW

My favorite is "If Only For One Night," another Luther song notable for its Bronski-level despair.

subtext hangs over that song like a mushroom cloud

Y'all will laugh because It’s So Soto, but in his quest for a perfect love thst he's too scared to touch Vandross reminds me of Bryan Ferry; and it's interesting how this era of Ferry presents objects of worship (never lust!) that his music increasingly abstracts.

'My Sensitivity' is prolly my fave Luther track...what a groove...so lush...one of the most upscale tracks ever recorded...Luther kills it...love it

there's something that happens w/ that song where it all feels like it's building up to this lift off in the chorus as luther sings "and that's when my sensitivity gets in the way" but instead he slows the song up and bends it towards down notes for a second, his sensitivity getting in the way of what should have been the effortless skyward sweep of not just this romance but this very chorus as well. initially it sort of bothered me, i could feel the lack of the pay off sticking in my craw, but it dovetails w/ some of the other parts of this album where something happens w/ the music to really deliberately match the emotional thrust of the song in a way i find clever

And he never defines what "sensitivity" means -- vulnerability? Guardedness? And the arrangement is a closed circle.

voted for "my sensitivity"

I think his 'sensitivity' might be ADHD...

Thank you, ILM, for introducing me to this amazing album

we can’t help but LOVE YA

there's something a bit stale about the uptempo songs on the album ('busy body') before this one, they're very lavishly produced but it doesn't feel like he has much to say as a musician about that style of soul by 1983. and then the album after this ('give me the reason') starts to migrate into cheesy 80s territory, the lead single ("stop to love") sounds like "sunglasses at night" or that kinda dreck (horrible screechy guitar solo). but he just sorta nails the moment in a real way w/ this album

The screechy guitar on "It's Over Now" (and the drum programming) has always reminded me of "Little by Little" by Robert Plant, which came out the same year. I guess migrating into cheesy 80s territory AND nailing the moment.

I worked as an usher for the Detroit show on this album's tour, and the melisma competition between Luther and the opener, Cheryl Lynn, was indeed something to behold.

My vote here is for "Other Side of the World." Talk about crooning on Venus!

“it’s over now” def pushes furthest into cheese i would agree, of the up tempo numbers it’s my least favorite. but also a lot of ear candy in there so i still let it play

Yeah, I wasn't really trying to denigrate the song, I like it (and "Little by Little" too.) I think both wear their 80's cheese pretty well.

Between "If Only For One Night" and "Wait for Love" for me, but since no one's mentioned the latter yet, I throw my vote its way.

Y'all are mad. "It's Over Now" is essential Luther: I love it when he gets petulant.

"Give Me the Reason" is top five Luther imo.

also: Marco Miller perfects the sound of slap bass on TNIFIL. You can hear every thump.

*Marcos

Alfred OTM

gonna need the Andy K pick from this album…

Voted "It's Over Now" but I've since played the album for the first time in ages and am slightly regretting that I didn't go with "Other Side of the World."

Can only imagine how sharply dressed that Detroit (Cobo?) crowd must have been.

"til my baby comes home" is easily one of his best singles. i particularly enjoy that he adopts the perspective of a very straight character but imbues the song w/ such a sense of glee for this one woman that it almost bends back on itself and ends up as gay idol worship. "if she stays away for long, she calls me on the phone / i jump up when i hear her voice, then i'm alright til my baby comes home" ... we all know that classic straight guy feeling of jumping up and running to the phone to receive a call from your wife. the way the organ (played by billy preston) mirrors his voice stepping up a key when he sings about the phone call -- "i JUMP UP when i hear her voice" -- is such a great way of conveying his unbridled excitement about this romance and harkens back to an often recounted, quietly pivotal moment in luther's career, when he was singing a jingle for gino's restaurant and imbued the word "sizzle" with the sound/feeling of meat touching a hot griddle

I can’t help but feel like the lyrics have a real “yeah I do have a girlfriend. You wouldn’t know her, she goes to another school” energy

hahaha yes

xxp very sharply dressed crowd at Masonic

voting for Wait For Love but this album GOES so all answers are correct imo

the performance of "wait for love" at his wembley show is amazing, he was such a showman. very sad i'll never get to see him perform

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shcjopxz1Js

"wait for love" isn't my favorite song on this album, but in its own way it might be most representative of why this album is great. it easily could have been a snoozy side B ballad but it's arranged so immaculately and generously -- the verse melody unfurls in an unexpected way, there are flutes pleasantly trilling away in the background a few times, the bass swims happily in a pool of empty space. it feels like a wheelhouse song that luther wrote a few dozen different times but he, nat adderly and marcus miller were just so deep in their bag on this album, idk

also in the pantheon of luther songs that apply to a general notion of longing for love but seem to carry a freight train's worth of subtext...

I remember not too long ago
I was just a lonely person with a lonely heart, yeah
And I was hoping there could one day be
Be a chance for me to...

Get the love that I'd been missing
Sometimes love takes a long time
But wait for love and you're gonna get the
Chance to love - wait for love, wait for love

one of the tensions that i find makes him so compelling is that privately he seemed to accept that a certain life -- being happily in love -- was off limits to him, and yet he retained such a public optimism about not just (in his words) the power of love, but also that we all one day will experience that power in all its wonder. in the face of his own life experience "wait for love" almost feels like a protest song. it dovetails wonderfully w/ the title track -- here he expresses his belief that if you just wait for love it will one day find you, and on "the night i fell in love" he pays reverence to the holiness of this feeling w/ a song that basks in the memory of the premonition actually, finally coming true. (even tho you get the sense that he is singing about a romance that was fleeting. the song savors the memory as if he is trying to remember the exact taste of something he got to try only once, years ago.)

After living with this record and playing it a lot for the past few days, I’m going with the title track for the reasons J0rdan says - a truly astonishing track.

it could burble on for another 20 minutes

<3<3<3

even the lyric "the star's lights were in your eyes" is at once a wordy way of saying something simple so that it lines up syllabically but also emphasizes this notion that luther is so reverent of the moment that he's fleshing out the imagery in almost fanciful detail, honoring the transcendence by coming up w/ new terms of description

I wish contemporary gay guys’ fulsome and overweening praise of women was more like this song and less like “she’s serving life after she dumped a slay toilet on her mother”

title track or “other side of the world” for me

amazing performance of "til my baby comes home" from the same aug 24 1987 show that i said was at wembley but i'm not actually sure now, i can't find any evidence of this show happening ... it might have been something he did specifically for the BBC. or perhaps the date is wrong. he played at the hammersmith odeon on feb 11 1987 which was recorded by the BBC... so it's probably that? i realize this is interesting to nobody but me anyway the choreo is so fun and playful here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbvZW_A7As

"Give Me the Reason" is top five Luther imo.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, July 19, 2025 10:56 AM (four days ago)

the song is great, i'm not sure i can quite get to top 5 status, but the chorus really pays off

spending more time w/ the album in question and i stand by my assessment of it getting a little too into chintzy territory in comparison to 'the night i fell in love' ... it's a matter of degrees but something like "i really didn't mean it" feels a bit lionel richie (i like lionel richie) whereas "my sensitivity (gets in the way)" has an immaculate sorta quincy jones touch to it, to me. it's an ever so slight difference but feels meaningful to me. idk if i'm making sense -- i'm less dissing 'give me the reason' which is a good listen than really trying to elevate 'the night i fell in love' as the apotheosis of middlebrow '80s R&B full lengths. "so amazing" is a really nice ballad on 'give me the reason' but i.e. "wait for love" just hits every mark perfectly

I love "Give Me the Reason" because the verses have this tick-tock suppression of hysteria, and the chorus offers just enough release; like "Other Side of the World" it simmers (Luther mastered the simmer).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

interesting winner. respect. was not in consideration for me but it's a nice end to the record