1980 · Behind the Songs
Before the solo fame, an uncredited Luther Vandross sang the title track of an Italian disco project — and stole the whole record.
In the spring of 1980, record buyers who flipped over Change’s debut album found a sleek Italian disco record with no famous names on the sleeve. The voice carrying its title track, though, belonged to a 29-year-old New York session singer named Luther Vandross — uncredited, and utterly unmistakable.
Change was the brainchild of businessman-producer Jacques Fred Petrus, with the music largely shaped by Mauro Malavasi. The basic tracks were cut at Fonoprint Studios in Bologna, Italy, then the title song was recorded and mixed at Mediasound in New York, with Vandross’s vocals captured at the Power Station. The writers were Davide Romani, Malavasi, and Wayne Garfield.
Vandross sang lead on “The Glow of Love” and on “Searching,” and added background vocals across the album. Jocelyn Brown handled lead vocals on several other cuts. When the title track went out as a single in October 1980, club DJs didn’t need a credit line to know who they were hearing — AllMusic’s Ed Hogan would later call the performance “a startling introduction to Vandross.”
The record that introduced him without naming him
The irony is that anonymity made the introduction louder. The song’s long, glowing groove gave Vandross room to do what session work rarely allowed: stretch out, testify a little, and sound like a star. Within a year he had signed with Epic as a solo artist and released Never Too Much (1981), and the voice that had slipped in through the side door of disco was suddenly front and center.
“The Glow of Love” kept glowing long after disco’s commercial peak. Janet Jackson borrowed from it for “All for You” (2001), Aretha Franklin for “Here We Go Again” (1998), and Phats & Small rode a sample of it to a hit with “Turn Around” (1999). Vandross himself later re-recorded the song, reclaiming the tune that had first carried his voice to the world — this time with his own name on the label.