Never My Love

“Never My Love” is a pop standard written by American siblings Don and Dick Addrisi, and best known from a hit 1967 recording by the Association. The Addrisi Brothers had two Top 40 hits as recording artists, but their biggest success as songwriters was “Never My Love”. Recorded by dozens of notable artists in the decades since, in 1999 the music publishing rights organization Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) announced it was the second most-played song on radio and television of the 20th century in the U.S. The first recording of “Never My Love” to achieve success was by the Association, an American sunshine pop band from California. Their version of the song, recorded with members of the Wrecking Crew, peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, kept out of the number one spot by “The Letter” by the Box Tops,[4] and hit number one on the Cashbox charts in October 1967, one of the band’s five top-ten hits in the late 1960s. Their third number 1 on the Cashbox Top 100 Singles Chart, following “Cherish” (1966) and “Windy” (1967), it was featured on the band’s album Insight Out (1967). The song also reached number one in Canada’s RPM charts. By the time the Association’s record was certified Gold by the RIAA for one million copies sold as of December 1967, Billboard noted that 16 artists had recorded the song. Their third number one single had made them a top concert act and highly in demand by the TV variety series, specials, and talk shows that were a predominant format at the time, and they performed the hit on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Hollywood Palace, The Dean Martin Show, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, Hullabaloo, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Dick Cavett Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Steve Allen Show, and a Carol Channing special. AllMusic’s Stewart Mason wrote of the “laid-back and dreamy” single with a “sleek and sophisticated” tune that “the dual lead vocals, by Terry Kirkman and Larry Ramos, are supported by wordless harmonies as effortlessly airy as whipped cream.” Mason credited Ray Pohlman’s “clever arrangement (with adding) space to the sound through juxtaposing disparate elements like the five-note bass riff that introduces the verses and the electric piano lick that ornaments the chorus, rather than jamming them on top of each other.” Mason observed that it sounded “like Pohlman had been paying particular attention to Burt Bacharach’s work with Dionne Warwick, a resemblance the 5th Dimension later amplified on their cover of the song.”