B-side "Tell Me" Format 7" (45 rpm) Genre Pop | Released September 30. 1984 Recorded 1983 | |
Length 3:46 (single version)
5:35 (album version) | ||
"Penny Lover" is the title of the fifth and final single released from Lionel Richie's multi-platinum and Grammy Award-winning 1983 album, Can't Slow Down. The song was written by Richie and his then-wife, Brenda Harvey Richie.
As with all the other singles taken from Can't Slow Down ("All Night Long (All Night)", "Running with the Night", "Hello" and "Stuck on You"), "Penny Lover" was a top ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, spending two weeks at #8 in December 1984. The song reached an identical #8 peak position on the Billboard R&B chart, while on the Billboard adult contemporary chart, the song logged four weeks at #1. On the UK Singles Chart, the song reached #18.
In a song review printed in Billboard by an anonymous writer in 1984, "Penny Lover" was described as "another of his unfailingly effective universal-appeal ballads."
Music video
The music video was directed by Bob Giraldi, who had also directed "Running with the Night" and "Hello".