Released 25 March 1966 Genre Traditional pop | Format 7" 45rpm Label Philips BF 1482 | |
B-side "Every Ounce of Strength" (Cropper/Hayes/Porter) (UK)
"Little by Little" (US) Recorded Philips Studio, Stanhope Place, London | ||
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" (originally a 1965 Italian song by Pino Donaggio and lyricist Vito Pallavicini: '"Io che non vivo (senza te)") is a 1966 hit recorded by English singer Dusty Springfield that proved to be her most successful hit single, reaching No.1 UK and No.4 US: the song subsequently charted in the UK via remakes by Elvis Presley (No.9/1971), Guys 'n' Dolls (No.5/1976) and Denise Welch (No.23/1995), with Presley's version also reaching No.11 US in 1970. "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" was also a Top Ten hit in Ireland for Red Hurley (No.5/1978), in Italy for Wall Street Crash (No.6/1983), and - as "En koskaan" - in Finland for Kristina Hautala (No.6/1966).
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Original Italian version
"Io che non vivo (senza te)" — "I, who can't live (without you)" — was introduced at the 15th edition of the Sanremo Festival by Pino Donaggio — who had co-written the song with Vito Pallavicini — and his team partner Jody Miller: the song got to the final at Sanremo and as recorded by Donaggio reached No. 1 in Italy in March 1965. "Io che non vivo (senza te)" would also be prominently featured on the soundtrack of the Luchino Visconti film Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa (aka Sandra), starring Claudia Cardinale, which was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival that September.
Dusty Springfield version
Dusty Springfield, who participated at the 1965 Sanremo Festival, was in the audience when Donaggio and Miller performed "Io che non vivo (senza te)" and despite having no awareness of the lyrics' meaning the song moved Springfield to tears. Springfield obtained an acetate recording of Donaggio's song, but allowed a year to go by before actively pursuing the idea of recording an English version.
On 9 March 1966, Springfield had an instrumental track of Donaggio's composition recorded at Philips Studio Marble Arch: the session personnel included guitarist Big Jim Sullivan and drummer Bobby Graham. Springfield still lacked an English lyric to record: eventually Springfield's friend Vicki Wickham, the producer of Ready Steady Go!, would write the required English lyric with her own friend Simon Napier-Bell who was the manager of the Yardbirds. Neither Wickham nor Napier-Bell had any discernible experience as songwriters: according to Napier-Bell, he and Wickham were dining out when she mentioned to him that Springfield hoped to get an English lyric for Donaggio's song and the two light heartedly took up the challenge of writing the lyric themselves: "We went back to [Wickham]'s flat and started working on it. We wanted to go to a trendy disco so we had about an hour to write it. We wrote the chorus and then we wrote the verse in a taxi to wherever we were going." Neither Wickham or Napier-Bell had any understanding of the Italian lyrics of the original song: according to Wickham they attempted to write their own lyric for an anti-love song to be called "I Don't Love You"; when that original idea proved unproductive it was adjusted first to "You Don't Love Me" and then "You Don't Have to Love Me" which was finalized as "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" to fit the song's melody. Napier-Bell was later to title his first book (an autobiographical account of the British music scene of the 1960s) You Don't Have to Say You Love Me after the song.
Springfield recorded her vocal the next day: unhappy with the acoustics in the recording booth she eventually moved into a stairwell to record. Springfield was not satisfied with her vocal until she had recorded 47 takes.
Released on 25 March 1966 in the U.K., the single release of Springfield's recording became a huge hit and remains one of the songs most identified with her. When Dusty died from breast cancer in March 1999, the song was featured on Now 42 as a tribute to her.
The song hit No.1 in the UK, and No.4 in the US. The song proved so popular in the US that Springfield's 1965 album Ev'rything's Coming Up Dusty was released there with a slightly different track listing, and titled after the hit single (the B side of the US single, "Little by Little" was issued in the UK as a separate A side and reached No.17 there). In 2004, the song made the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time at No.491.
Elvis Presley version
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" was recorded by Elvis Presley for his 1970 album release That's the Way It Is from which it was issued as the second single 6 October 1970. The track had been recorded in the evening of 6 June 1970 in Studio B of RCA Studios (Nashville), being the third of seven songs recorded that night: the session's producer Felton Jarvis felt that the second take was good enough to serve as the master track but Presley insisted on a third and final take. Reaching #11 on the Hot 100 in Billboard magazine, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" afforded Presley a #1 hit on the Billboard Easy Listening chart the single reached #1, also reaching #56 on the Billboard C&W chart. It became a gold record. A hit for Presley in both Australia (#7) and Canada (#6), "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" was twice a hit for Presley in the British Isles with its original release reaching #9 in the UK and #17 in Ireland, in which territories the track's 2007 re-release charted with respective peaks of #16 and #29.
English-language cover versions
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" has been recorded by many artists, including:
International cover versions
The Italian original "Io che non vivo" has been remade by Milva, Morgan (album Italian Songbook Vol 2/ 2012), and Russell Watson (album La Voce/ 2010): also Patrizio Buanne recorded "Io Che Non Vivo (You Don't Have to Say You Love Me)" - the track featuring lyrics from both the Italian and English-language versions - for his 2007 album Forever Begins Tonight. In October 1965 Richard Anthony recorded a French rendering of "Io che non vivo (senza te)": "Jamais je ne vivrai sans toi", which served as the title cut of an album release. In Quebec Anthony's version of "Jamais je ne vivrai sans toi" competed with a local cover version by Margot Lefebvre with both tracks co-ranked at No.38 in the annual ranking of the top hits of 1966. A Catalan rendering of "Io che non vivo" entitled "Jo no puc viure sense tu" was a 1965 single release for Renata. Pino Donaggio himself recorded a Spanish version of the song entitled "Yo que no vivo sin ti", which was remade in 1971 by Angélica María for her self-titled album and in 1987 by Luis Miguel on his album Soy Como Quiero Ser, Miguel's version ranking at No.26 on the Hot Latin Tracks in Billboard.
Most international versions of the song were subsequent to Dusty Springfield's 1966 success with "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" and reference that version's lyrics rather than the Italian original.
One of the earliest non-English renderings of "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" was the Finnish "En koskaan" recorded by Kristina Hautala on May 24, 1966: entering the Finnish Top Ten in November 1966 - in effect succeeding Springfield's version which had peaked at No.6 in Finland earlier that month - "En koskaan" spent eleven weeks in the Top Ten peaking at No.6. Subsequently "En koskaan" was remade by Lea Laven on her 1978 album release Aamulla Rakkaani Näin, by Kurre (fi) on his 1979 album Jäit Sateen Taa, by Mika Pohjonen (fi) on his 1993 self-titled album release, by Harri Marstio (fi) on his 1993 album release Sateenkaaren pää, and by Topi Sorsakoski on his 1997 album release Kalliovuorten kuu.
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" has also been rendered in Croatian as "Moju ljubav nisi hteo" recorded by Nada Knežević (sr) and also as "Nemoj reći da me voliš" recorded by Sanjalice; in Czech as "Hledej k mému srdci klíč" recorded by Eva Pilarová, and also as "Jarní Víra" recorded by Laďka Kozderková (cs); in Danish as "Du Kan Gi' Mig Hele Verden" recorded by Grethe Ingmann, and also as "Jeg har ikke brug for løfter" recorded by Ulla Pia (da); in Dutch as "Geloof me" recorded by André Hazes; in German as "Alle meine Träume" recorded by Peter Beil (de) and also by Corry Brokken and also by Ingrid Peters, while other German renderings have been recorded by Angelika Milster (de) ("Unser Traum Darf Niemals Sterben") and by Trude Herr ("Ich Sage, Wat Ich Meine"); in Swedish as "Vackra sagor är så korta" recorded by Marianne Kock (sv) and also Jan Höiland (sv) and also Anne-Lie Rydé; and in Spanish as "Yo que no vivo sin tí" recorded by Iva Zanicchi.
This song was covered by the late Singaporean singer/songwriter/lyricist Su Yin (舒雲) in Mandarin Chinese language with Chinese lyrics written by himself and given the title name of 祝福你, appearing on his LP album 黃昏放牛＊一片青青的草地, and released by EMI Columbia Records in 1967. While in 1969, Hong Kong songstress Frances Yip (葉麗儀) recorded the song in alternate Mandarin Chinese and English language mode under a title name of 誰令你變心/You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, on her EP album 不了情 with the local Life Records.