Songoftheday 11/12/13 - Now lovers come and go people give themselves too easily...

Joyce Kennedy featuring Jeffrey Osborne - "The Last Time I Made Love"
from the album Lookin' For Trouble (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #40 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 2

Today's Song of the Day is by R&B vocalist Joyce Kennedy, who sang lead for the funk fusion group Mother's Finest from the early 70s, scoring a minor hit single with "Baby Love".  When the band when on a break in the early 80s, Joyce released her debut solo album, and for its first single enlisted the help of another former funk band leader, Jeffrey Osborne of L.T.D. Jeffrey was carving a nice solo career already, scoring two top-40 pop hits apiece from each of his solo albums. His last, Stay With Me Tonight, spun off "Don't You Get So Mad" and "Stay With Me Tonight".

The ballad that they teamed up for, "The Last Time I Made Love", was written by the team of Jeff Barry, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil, and is the kind of MOR soul that Whitney Houston would take to the top of the pop charts in the next year...

"The Last Time I Made Love" spent a couple weeks in the pop top 40 in October of 1984, while becoming a big hit on R&B radio, reaching #2 on that format's chart in Billboard. It also crossed over to the adult-contemporary (easy-listening) chart peaking at #37. It would be Joyce's only solo top-40 pop hit. Joyce followed this up with "Stronger Than Before" (which Chaka Khan would go on to record), which went to #30 on the R&B chart. The next year she would have her last solo R&B hit with "Hold On (For Love's Sake)" (#72). After that, she would return to Mother's Finest, where they still are active touring today.

But really, to be frank, whoever approved and shot this single cover needed to be fired. Pronto. For reals.

Up tomorrow: A country-pop star, a gravelly rock singer, and Quincy Jones' muse walk into a bar....