Released 28 April 1974 Recorded January 1974 Length 3:40 | Format 7" Genre Soft rock | |
B-side "Home Ain't Home Anymore" (US)
"Get Your Paper Dues" (UK) | ||
"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.
Contents
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 1975's "Jaws", moments before Alex Kitner and Pippet the dog disappear beneath the waves.
Chart performance
The song topped the charts in the US on 5 October 1974, and went on to sell over two million copies, being certified Platinum. It also reached number one (three weeks) on the Adult Contemporary chart. and number six on the Country charts. The song won bums 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. By contrast, the single failed to reach the top-twenty in the United Kingdom (#22), although it did chart there in 1983 when it was re-released to promote a Newton-John greatest hits album.
Newton-John re-released the original hit version of the song in 1977, backed with "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from her then-current album Making a Good Thing Better, and it reached number forty-eight Pop (outperforming the only single from Making a Good Thing Better, the title song, which stalled at number eighty-seven). The song also re-charted on the Adult Contemporary chart at No. 49.
1998 version
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.