I Honestly Love You
Released 28 April 1974
Format 7″
Recorded January 1974
Genre Soft rock
Length 3:40
Label MCA
Songwriter(s) Jeff Barry, Peter Allen
Producer(s) John Farrar
“I Honestly Love You” (first released in Australia as “I Love You, I Honestly Love You”, per its chorus) was a worldwide pop hit single for Olivia Newton-John in 1974. The song was Newton-John’s first number-one single in the United States and Canada.
Released on the Long Live Love album in the United Kingdom by EMI, it was eventually released on the album If You Love Me, Let Me Know in the United States on MCA. The song was written by Jeff Barry and the Australian composer Peter Allen; the latter recorded it around the same time on his album Continental American. It also appears in the musical about Allen’s life, The Boy from Oz. VH1 placed the song at No. 11 on its “40 Most Softsational Soft-Rock Songs” list. The song won Newton-John both the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 17th Grammy Awards. Andy Williams released a version in 1974 on his album, You Lay So Easy on My Mind.
A snippet of the song plays over Chief Brody’s radio in the second shark attack in Jaws, moments before Alex Kitner and Pippet the dog disappear beneath the waves.
The song topped the charts in the US on 5 October 1974, and went on to sell over 500,000 copies, being certified Gold. It also reached number one (three weeks) on the Adult Contemporary chart. and number six on the Country charts. The song won two Grammy Awards, for Female Pop Vocal Performance and Record of the Year. The song’s success also helped propel its parent album, If You Love Me, Let Me Know, to number one.
In 1998, Newton-John released a new version of “I Honestly Love You” from her album Back with a Heart, which featured Babyface on background vocals, and reached number sixty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100, her first charted single in the US in six years. The 1998 version also charted on the AC chart at No. 18 and in Country Music Sales at No. 16.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia