“Love Will Turn You Around”
Kenny Rogers
Written by David Molloy, Kenny Rogers, Thom Schuyler, and Even Stevens
Radio & Records
#1 (4 weeks)
August 20 – September 10, 1982
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
September 4, 1982
Kenny Rogers revisits the acoustic flavor of his early New Edition hits with winning results.
“Love Will Turn You Around” is smartly written, with clever turns of phrase like “life will deliver a shock that will shiver.” The track’s steady, insistent pace supports the lyric’s insistence that no matter how much a man is closed off, love will turn him around.
Rogers is most closely associated with crossover country, and this song was a big hit on the AC and pop charts. But it’s a damn good country song at its core, and a reminder that Rogers became a genre superstar through catchy songs that sound great on the radio and even better with an arena singing along with him.
This is one of the high points of Rogers’ remarkable decades-long run as a hitmaker.
“Love Will Turn You Around” gets an A.
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This song was a pleasant surprise. After going heavy into the pop/r&b direction, Rogers came back more with this country sounding hit.
To this day when it comes on the radio, my toes start to tap. It’s just a great song all around.
Kenny could sing it all. Such an amazing talent. I loved the follow up single, A Love Song, written by the great Lee Greenwood as well.
It is worth mentioning this is a song from the soundtrack of “Six Pack”, a 1982 film starring Rogers as race car driver Brewster Baker who takes on six mechanically inclined orphans as his pit crew.
As a kid, I thought the boy who described taking a leak as “shaking the dew off his lily” was scandalously edgy.
Kenny is stringing together a pretty impressive run of hits in the early eights.
This one does sound great.
I remember this song from the movie Six Pack, and Kenny does it brilliantly. I heard a really interesting cover by Sandy Posey on a CD I bought at random of hers, too, but Kenny’s is the definitive version. I love the sentiment of this one, romantic but realistic, for a song.
I was a Kenny Rogers fan when I first heard “The Gambler” as a 4-year-old.
Always loved this song and remember hearing it on adult contemporary radio in my parents’ cars.
“Six Pack” is a fun movie. Rogers was a decent actor.