| Somewhere in My Lifetime | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | Phyllis Hyman |
| Cover: | Hyman somewhere.jpg |
| Released: | January 10, 1979 |
| Recorded: | 1977–1978 |
| Length: | 42:39 |
| Label: | Arista |
| Producer: | Larry Alexander, Skip Scarborough, Barry Manilow, Ron Dante, Theodore Life |
| Prev Title: | Sing a Song |
| Prev Year: | 1978 |
| Next Title: | You Know How to Love Me |
| Next Year: | 1979 |
Somewhere in My Lifetime is the third studio album by singer Phyllis Hyman. It was released by Arista Records in 1979, becoming Hyman's debut Arista release (see 1979 in music).
Six of the tracks first appeared on her previous album, Sing a Song, on Buddah Records. Three tracks were produced by Theodore Life, with the title track co-produced and arranged by Barry Manilow. "Kiss You All Over" was one of the newly recorded tracks for this album and was a cover of the hit single by the band Exile, which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 a few months before the album was released.
Both singles from this album were only released in North America.
The first single "Somewhere in My Lifetime" was released in December 1978. The single contained the album version with "Gonna Make Changes" as the B-side.[1] It peaked at no. 12 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, spending 16 weeks on that chart in total.[2]
The second single was a double A-side release containing "So Strange" and "Kiss You All Over". The 7" single contained edited versions of both songs.[3] A promotional 12" single was also released with extended versions of both songs.[4] The double A-side single did not chart on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, but did reach no. 75 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, becoming her second entry on this chart.[2]
Somewhere in My Lifetime received its first Compact Disc release in Japan on September 22, 1999.[5] The first CD release in the United States did not come until 2010 when Reel Music released an expanded edition of the album with the 12" versions of "Kiss You All Over" and "So Strange" as bonus tracks.[6] SoulMusic Records released their own expanded edition in 2013 in the United Kingdom, with the aforementioned 12" versions added as bonus tracks, as well as the three songs from Sing a Song that did not make it onto Somewhere in My Lifetime on its original release.[7] SoulMusic Records expanded the album further in the 2021 boxset with a sixth bonus track – the song "As You Are" from the Pharoah Sanders album Love Will Find a Way.
The Bay State Banner deemed the album "black MOR," writing that most of the songs are "so marginal that Hyman's talents wind up buried in dross, stale arrangement and meandering production."[8]
Tracks 4, 6–10 were first released on Sing a Song.