Songoftheday 3/2/16 - She got to me I'll let you know the reason I saw her with another guy...

"If It Isn't Love" - New Edition
from the album Heart Break (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's Song of the Day comes from the R&B vocal group New Edition, who had lost and/or fired Bobby Brown after their third album, and continued as a quartet with the oldies-laden contract filler Under The Blue Moon album in 1986, which landed them a top-40 pop hit with "Earth Angel". Now signing directly with MCA Records, they added Washington D.C. native Johnny Gill to their lineup. Gill, who released a pair of solo albums along with a duets album with Stacy Lattisaw that scored him a top ten R&B hit with "Perfect Combination" which also made the pop chart at #75. With his gruff lower-range vocals complimenting Ralph Tresvant's smooth-as-silk tenor, the group set out to record their fifth album Heart Break with Janet Jackson's go-to producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. That pair wrote most of the album, including the first single "If It Isn't Love". The slice of pop harmony perfection sported a video that Beyonce would later crib for her own "Love On Top"...

"If It Isn't Love" returned New Edition to the top ten on the American pop chart for the first time since their "Cool It Now" from 1984 in September of 1988. The single also climbed to #2 on Billboard's R&B chart (stopped by Bobby's "Don't Be Cruel"), while the extended version reached #20 on their Dance Club Play chart. Internationally, the record went to #21 in Canada...

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Here's the group performing live at the Apollo to promote the single...

...and lastly, from a concert in 2014...

Up tomorrow: Rocker chick is hot under the collar.