Reception
The song had a slow climb to the top of the R&B charts after its debut in October 1983, reaching the top 10 by December of the year and peaking at number-one in January 1984, staying at the top spot of Billboard's Hot Black Singles chart for four weeks. LaBelle wrote in her memoirs, Don't Block the Blessings: Revelations of a Lifetime, that she got so excited hearing the news of the song reaching number-one on the R&B charts that she jumped on the top of her bed in celebration.
The song eventually crossed over to pop radio becoming a moderate success reaching number forty-six on the Billboard Hot 100, marking LaBelle's first-ever entry on the Hot 100 as a solo artist, six and a half years after going solo. It was also LaBelle's first ever solo single to hit number-one on the R&B chart. Prior to its release, LaBelle's biggest charted song was the Grover Washington ballad, "The Best Is Yet To Come", which reached number fourteen on the R&B chart in early 1983, resulting in the singer's first Grammy nomination. Besides "Lady Marmalade" with Labelle and "On My Own" with Michael McDonald, "If Only You Knew" remains LaBelle's sole number-one hit on the R&B charts as a solo artist.
The success of the song helped I'm In Love Again reach gold status in the U.S., her first solo album to do so. "If Only You Knew" has gone on to be one of the singer's signature songs in her solo career. LaBelle re-recorded the song for her 1990s live albums, Live! in 1992, and One Night Only! in 1998, but only performing the first verse of the original song.
Read more about this topic: If Only You Knew
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)