Songoftheday 12/4/15 - And forever and a day together we will be, nothin' on this earth could ever take you away from me...

"Never Knew Love Like This" - Alexander O'Neal featuring Cherrelle
from the album Hearsay (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 6

Today's song of the day reunited two soul singers for a second time up the pop and soul chart. Alexander O'Neal and Cherrelle first hit the American mainstream radio list in a big way with their 1986 jam "Saturday Love". The following year, O'Neal released his classic Hearsay album, which had dropped the mic with the lead off single "Fake". While the follow-up single, "Criticize", was a huge hit worldwide, becoming his biggest British hit at #4 (the same position he reached on the American R&B chart), it stopped short at #70 on the Hot 100. He rebounded with a similar midtempo kin to "Saturday Love". "Never Knew Love Like This", written and produced by Flyte Tyme crew Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, was the exuberant emotional high of the Hearsay album, with the two solidifying a Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell-style bond for this generation...

"Never Knew Love Like This" became O'Neal's third and Cherrelle's second top-40 pop hit in April of 1988. The song also climbed to #2 on Billboard's R&B chart (matching the peak of "Saturday Love"). Internationally, the single went to #26 in the UK (one of five top-40 hits from the Hearsay album), while it also made the top-40 in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Alex continued to have success across the pond, scoring nine more top-40 singles after this one. In America his next album All True Man was a little more subdued (more Karyn White than Janet Jackson), and while the title track made the R&B top five, it missed the pop top-40 in 1991 (it'll be a "robbed hit" on this blog some time in the future). Another track from the album, "What Is This Thing Called Love", made the top-10 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. His next album release in 1993, Love Makes No Sense, saw its new-jack-swing-style title track peak at #13 on the R&B chart, and just "bubble under" the Hot 100 pop list (it did make the top-40 in Britain, though). In 1996, Alex had his most recent top-40 UK hit with "Let's Get Together" (#38), while in America the albums title tune "Lovers Again" stalled out at #54 on the R&B chart, while the "booty-call" follow-up "Grind" was his last soul hit so far at #83. While his last appearance in the UK was a revamp of "Criticize" that topped out at #51, his profile in that country is much higher, made even more so by his ill-fated stint on the trainwreck Perez Hilton edition of Celebrity Big Brother, where he left early and had a drug addiction relapse from the torment of being cooped up with that toxic leech.

As for Cherrelle, she kept the momentum up off the bat with her next album, Affair, with lead single "Everything I Miss At Home" becoming her first solo #1 R&B hit in 1991, and a top-5 follow-up with the title track from the record. The album, after, The Woman I Am in 1992, netted her a couple more top-40 soul hits with "Tears Of Joy" reaching #23, but after "Never Knew..." she wouldn't have another top-40 hit in the UK.

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Here's Alex and Cherrelle appearing live on British TV to promote the single in 1988...

and the pair reuniting in 2009....

Up tomorrow: the princess of the mall remakes yet another 60s tune for a big hit.