“Nobody Loves Me Like You Do”
Anne Murray with Dave Loggins
Written by James Dunne and Pamela Phillips
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
November 9, 1984
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
December 15, 1984
Dave Loggins had one big pop hit as a singer in the seventies. “Please Come to Boston” made it to the top five of the Hot 100 and topped the Billboard Easy Listening chart, which was later renamed to the Adult Contemporary chart.
He returned to the top ten of that listing with this Anne Murray duet, which is also his only big country hit as a singer. He’s written a ton of country hits for other artists, so it’s interesting that his only country hit as a singer was written by others.
That’s about all that’s interesting here, really. This record is dull as dishwater. Murray remains a captivating vocalist, but she has little to work with here. Loggins emulates her style so much that it can be hard to distinguish which one of them is singing on the individual lines. When they sing together, they are less than the sum of their individual parts.
Still, it was well received at the time, and it was enough to net the pair the Vocal Duo of the Year award at the 1985 CMA ceremony. This was when that category was a proxy for Vocal Event, if you’re wondering why it didn’t go to the Judds, who dominated Vocal Group of the Year before the CMAs introduced the Vocal Event category in 1988.
We’ll see Loggins again as a songwriter for No. 1 hits by Juice Newton and Kenny Rogers, and we’ll cover Anne Murray’s final No. 1 country single when we get to 1986.
“Nobody Love Me Like You Do” gets a C.
Every No. 1 Single of the Eighties
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This feature has highlighted how blind I have been to how much I love the music of Anne Murray.
It has also uncovered the contributions of female artists’ like Janie Fricke, Crystal Gayle, and Anne Murray, whose significance I would have previously unfairly undervalued as meaningful influences on the female stars of the ’90s.
This song is tattooed onto my brain.
I have memories of this single being all over the radio in 1984.
It may be dishwater dull, but it somehow still comforts me.
…fairy tale stuff it seems.