NEW DOCUMENTARY ‘LUTHER: NEVER TOO MUCH’ HITS CINEMAS IN THE UK AND IRELAND ON JANUARY 30TH FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY

The late legendary R&B vocal virtuoso Luther Vandross today shares the single ‘Speak Your Love’. The song features on his recent ‘Never Too Much: Greatest Hits’ album, and comes ahead of the release of the new documentary ‘Luther: Never Too Much’ which hits cinemas in the UK and Ireland on January 30th – only for one night. Tickets go on sale this week.

 
‘Speak Your Love’ is classic Luther Vandross, all silk-smooth balladeering and seductive romance, delivered by one of the R&B world’s all-time most soothing vocal talents. The song was written and produced by Luther Vandross alongside Fonzi Thornton.
 
Directed by the award-winning filmmaker Dawn Porter, ‘Luther: Never Too Much’ chronicles his remarkable life. Using a wealth of rarely seen archives, Luther tells his own story with assistance from his closest friends and musical collaborators including Mariah Carey, Dionne Warwick, Valerie Simpson and Roberta Flack. The film relives the many stunning moments from his Grammy Award-winning career, while exploring his personal life, health struggles, and a lifelong battle to earn the respect his music deserved.
 
The film adds to a growing rediscovery of Luther Vandross’ talents following Kendrick Lamar’s song ‘luther’which sampled ‘If This World Were Mine’, as well as the release of ‘Never Too Much: Greatest Hits’ late last year. The compilation features his iconic hits like ‘Never Too Much’, ‘So Amazing’ and ‘Any Love’ alongside his distinctive interpretations of classics like ‘A House Is Not A Home’ and ‘The Closer I Get To You’ (a duet with Beyoncé). It also includes ‘Michelle’, a previously unheard cover of The Beatles’ classic that Luther recorded in 1989 and resulted in him returning to the Billboard Adult R&B Airplay chart after 18 years.
 
Luther Vandross was more than just a great singer. An elegant and warmhearted New Yorker who became one of popular music’s most beloved performers, from his solo breakthrough in the early ‘80s to his untimely death in 2005, he was a vocalist whose understanding of singing as an art form was so profound, he changed notions of what it could be. That’s just what he did in balancing the innovation of 1980s R&B in the irresistibly joyful title track of his 1981 solo debut, ‘Never Too Much’, to his astonishing 1981 cover of ‘A House Is Not a Home’, transforming the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic into an acutely personal demonstration of his control, dexterity, and expressiveness. In the process, he transcended the ‘60s divas who inspired him – Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin – to create a model for those who followed: Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Celine Dion have all acknowledged the impact that their sometime duet partner had on them.
 
Luther’s success in the 1980s launched him after many years of working behind the scenes as a session vocalist and arranger for acts like David Bowie and Bette Midler and as the singer of ‘Searching’ and ‘The Glow of Love’, two classy hits for the Italian/American disco group Change. In the decades that followed, Luther Vandross continued to find ways to push the art forward instead of relying on the tried and true, releasing 11 consecutive Platinum albums in the process and garnering 31 Grammy nominations and 8 Grammy Awards. Grammy winners like 1991’s ‘Power of Love/Love Power’ and 2003’s ‘Dance With My Father’ remain as technically accomplished as they are emotionally moving, serving as testaments to his enduring legacy.

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