Songoftheday 5/2/16 - You were my friend good friend and sometimes I would wonder, could the one to save me possibly be you?

"Till I Loved You" - Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson
from the album Till I Loved You (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #25 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's song of the day comes from the stage and studio legend Barbra Streisand, who had followed her instincts after trying to forge ahead with a pop music career in the 80s by recording a collection of musical standards, her wheelhouse. The resulting Broadway Album became a massive hit, topping the albums chart in 1986, selling millions of records, and nearly claiming a top-40 pop hit with her version of "Somewhere" from West Side Story. Two years later, while she starred in the comedy Nuts, she scrapped a planned second Broadway set for a return to soft-pop music, releasing Till I Loved You that fall. The title track featured a duet with Miami Vice star Don Johnson, who she was dating at the time. Johnson, who had pop success of his own with his top-5 hit "Heartbeat" in the fall of 1986, was only eight years younger than Barbra, but with his more recent success seemed a bit May-December almost to the media. Their collaboration, "Till I Loved You", was written by Tony Award-winner Maury Yeston, and intended for a musical about painter Francisco Goya. Instead, it was released with the air of a 'vanity' project for Streisand and her beau for radio...

"Till I Loved You" reached the American Top-40 in December of 1988. The record climbed all the way to #3 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the song made it to #9 in Ireland, #16 in the UK, and #22 in France.

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Before Barbra and Don recorded "Till I Loved You", the song was done for a tie-in to the musical by opera star Placido Domingo and Jennifer Rush, and reached #24 on the British chart a year after...

Domingo recorded an alternate Spanish-language version with Gloria Estefan, which made the top ten on the Latin Songs chart in Billboard...

Up tomorrow: A suave British rock singer has a wake-up call.