B-side "Where Am I Going?" Format Vinyl Genre Pop | Released December 1965 Recorded 1965 Length 2:43 | |
"My Love" is a 1965 single release by Petula Clark which in early 1966 became an international hit, reaching #1 in the US: the track continued Clark's collaboration with songwriter and record producer Tony Hatch.
In November 1965 Tony Hatch, on a flight from London to Los Angeles, was putting the finishing touches on his composition "The Life and Soul of the Party" which he planned to record with Clark in Los Angeles to serve as her next single. In casual conversation with the American sitting next to him Hatch was advised that this song's title would be meaningless to the American public. Hatch then proceeded to write lyrics for a song whose title - "My Love" - could not conceivably present any comprehension issue: the lyrics were completed during the flight and Hatch completed the music soon after landing in Los Angeles.
"My Love" was recorded at Western Studios and featured the backing of the Wrecking Crew. Petula Clark would recall: "We recorded three songs on that session...I liked the two other songs quite a lot, but I really didn't like 'My Love'...I thought it was a bit ordinary. I had got so used to these wonderful songs that Tony had been writing with all these different moods and I thought "My Love" was just a bit flat." Clark would describe her discouraging Warner Bros a&r man Joe Smith from issuing "My Love" as a single: "he's a very small man physically...about the right height for me. I was able to get hold of his lapels, and I said to him, 'Joe, I don't care which [of the three songs] you put out, but just don't put out "My Love". And he said: 'Trust me, baby.'"
Smith did in fact okay the single release of "My Love" which would return Clark to the top of the US charts for the first time since her breakthrough success with "Downtown", as "My Love" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated 5 February 1966, making Clark the first British female to have two US #1 hits. Also a #1 hit in Canada, "My Love" returned Clark to the UK Top Ten for the first time since "Downtown" two years previous with a March 1966 peak of #4. " In the UK the single earned a Silver disc for sales of 200,000 units.
"My Love" also provided Clark with a hit in Australia (#4), Finland (#18), New Zealand (#6), Rhodesia (#1) and South Africa (#6) and reached #13 in both the Netherlands and the Dutch speaking region of Belgium. In Germany "My Love" became a hit first in its original English version (#13) and then again when rendered in German as "Verzeih' die dummen Tränen" (Forgive the foolish tears) (#21). Translated recordings by Clark also made "My Love" a hit in France and Italy, respectively as "Mon amour" (#12) and "L'amore e il vento" (Love is the wind) (#24).