| I Couldn't Live Without Your Love | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Petula Clark |
| Cover: | i_couldn't_live_without_your_love_warner_bros.jpg |
| Released: | September 1966 |
| Recorded: | June 1966 |
| Studio: | Pye Studios (Great Cumberland Place, London) |
| Genre: | Pop |
| Label: | Pye (UK) Warner Bros. (U.S.) |
| Producer: | Tony Hatch |
| Prev Title: | My Love |
| Prev Year: | 1966 |
| Next Title: | Colour My World |
| Next Year: | 1967 |
I Couldn't Live Without Your Love is a Petula Clark album released in the United States and the UK in September 1966. Clark's fifth US album release, I Couldn't Live Without Your Love was the first Petula Clark album to include creative personnel besides Tony Hatch, who produced the album and arranged some of the tracks, along with Johnny Harris.
The album was released subsequent to the Top Ten success in both the UK and the US of the "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love" single. Unlike the parent albums of Clark's precedent hits which had favored original material over cover versions, the I Couldn't Live Without Your Love album featured seven contemporary covers plus the traditional pop standard "Come Rain or Come Shine". This formula proved to be a popularity booster in the UK where I Couldn't Live Without Your Love became Clark's first charting album; its #11 peak remains Clark's UK album chart best. In the US the album reached #43.
The mid-60s hits Clark covers on the album include "Elusive Butterfly"; its original artist and writer Bob Lind has called Clark's recording his favourite version despite its omission of a verse. Also included is Clark's version of the Mindbenders' "A Groovy Kind of Love"; that track became a hit for Clark in Rhodesia (#7) and South Africa (#5) in the summer of 1967. The set opens with Clark's bouncy rendition of Frank Sinatra's recent #1 hit "Strangers in the Night". Her nasal version of the song was reportedly in retaliation for Sinatra's version of "Downtown". Clark performed the song on "The Hollywood Palace".
The song "Two Rivers" was penned by Clark as autobiographic, with references to the Thames and the Seine Rivers, as well as to her husband.
I Couldn't Live Without Your Love also features "Wasn't It You", which is Clark's only recording of a Gerry Goffin/Carole King song.1[1] [2]